Anora is a grittier experience. All the performances are impressive and I will not be surprised if Madison receives an Oscar nomination.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 17, 2025

It’s a rollercoaster ride, yet Baker never confuses movement with action. Every twist takes you somewhere you hadn’t quite expected to be, revealing an emotion you hadn’t expected to share.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 21, 2024

As brazen and unapologetic as many of Baker’s characters are… There is a desperation and a dependency on others that Ani refuses to let define her.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Nov 23, 2024

It's absolutely breathless in terms of its energy.

| Nov 22, 2024

I know you won’t believe it’s as good as everyone is saying it is until you hear it from me so here you are: yes, it’s as good as everyone is saying it is.

| Nov 22, 2024

At its core it’s a romantic dramedy that’s gotten a lot of comparisons to Pretty Woman, though it seems even more spiritually akin to Federico Fellini’s Nights of Cabiria.

| Nov 15, 2024

A fairy tale — or at least a version of one — shatters into a million tiny pieces in "Anora"...

| Original Score: B+ | Nov 9, 2024

“Anora” isn’t a fairy tale that plays by the rules of Prince Charmings and happy endings. Instead, it thankfully explores something more real: people just trying to get through the day with some sense of hope and human connection.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 8, 2024

No part of the audience believes in the reality of their love, and yet it is nonetheless wonderful to see them fool themselves so ecstatically.

| Nov 6, 2024

Baker shoots and choreographs like a punk Cassavetes, toying with dynamics, colours and textures while always creating chunky knots of overlapping dialogue in a bid to heighten tensions to breaking point and beyond.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 6, 2024

At once a frenzied fairy tale and a tender-hearted character study, Anora is an intoxicating pairing of director and star. Baker’s unique, humanistic approach to filmmaking is as riveting and rewarding as ever.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Nov 6, 2024

Much of the film now plays as caffeinated farce, shot in a Brighton Beach stuffed with anxious Armenian handlers and hired muscle not long off an Aeroflot. The comic energy is delirious. 

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 5, 2024

Yet again, Sean Baker nails it. Anora somehow straddles a fine line as the year’s funniest and most heart-wrenching movie.

| Nov 2, 2024

In an awards season of overlong seriousness, Madison’s Anora pops like Shirley MacLaine in The Apartment.

| Nov 1, 2024

For all its volatility and rage, its stripper catfights and clicking acrylic fingernails, at its heart this is a film about the transactional relationships between men and women and how deleterious that capitalistic spirit can be on the human soul.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Nov 1, 2024

There’s a significant work of art lurking within “Anora,” but it’s confined within the limits of a potboiler.

| Nov 1, 2024

Perhaps the director’s most conventional effort to date; it even veers toward cliché in its final scene. But what comes before is strong enough to make it hit anyway.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 1, 2024

It also marks the arrival of Mikey Madison who, after smaller roles in films like “Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood” and the “Scream” reboot, sets the screen alight in a breakout performance for the ages that already feels profoundly timeless.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Nov 1, 2024

Anora is a small film that feels much larger, elevated by humour, chaos, and human tenderness.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 31, 2024

Each change of tone is handled with sinuous ease by Baker, one of the best independent directors, who is finally getting the props he deserves.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Oct 31, 2024