Anora

Mediocre. As simple as that. How can a movie, not necessarily stylized, but constraint by budgetary issues, full of clichés and lacking in originality both in the screenplay storyline and its characters, with average acting by all cast, become such an industry darling? There's no redeeming qualities that would lead ANORA to get such high scores by both moviegoers and, especially, critics.

The main character's journey brings her and us back to where the story began. She learns nothing and we are left wondering what could make it a special show. It is not by any standards, except for the current need to reward what is not considered mainstream.

I wanted to see this film for a long time due to high rating on Metacritic, also won Palm D'or, so was very excited to watch it and finally when it won the Oscar, I bought the film on Amazon prime and watched it To say the least, I was a utterly disappointed. Yes movie had some sequences which were good, but nowhere is the movie Oscar worthy. It should not even be nominated in the best films category. I don't know what has happened to Hollywood that the level of movies that win Oscars has degraded so much over the years. Winning the Oscar for best film was a life goal and this movie winning it really undermines the value of an Oscar.

The script, the narrative is okay, nothing new, some surprises here and there, and that's about it.

The performances I would say are good. The lead actress has done a great job. Maybe she deserved an Oscar nomination, but not win the other side characters, except for one or two are interesting. Rest are not making any sense or any depth of your thinking about them a lot.

Cinematography is good. There is a lot of frames are well placed and lot of imagery. I would say photography is good, but again when the narrative is not strong enough to hold everything falls apart.

I've not seen the other movies which have been nominated. Maybe they are even worse than this, but of course, this does not live up to expectations and Hollywood needs to up their game. Otherwise, I need to stop watching any new movies.

The movie is truly an enticing advertisement for why all girls should stop studying and work a stripper/escort. Acting is mediocre at best and the story is well .... for the lack of a better word mind-numbing as it reflects the super consumption fueled glam lifestyle every fashion magazine and Kardashian reality shows attempt to sell. How is this borderline pornographic crap-fest for 14 to 18 year old audiences was deemed worthy of an Oscar was beyond comprehension. I do have to admit the staging, scenery and costumes were quite suitable to tell the story but the dialogues (straight out of high school locker room was cringeworthy. Please help me comprehend how low the Oscar bar has been dropped in recent years or who the Russian mob paid off to make sure this mediocre flick received such high praise.

Overrated and boring. Gratuitous nudity and sex scenes with a ton of fluff and fill dialogue. I'm not exactly sure what people were seeing when they gave it a great review, but there was only one solid takeaway from this movie, and that is that Mikey Madison can act. Caveat to that opinion is that specifics of her character can become quite annoying. You'll have to see it to understand exactly what I'm saying without giving any spoilers away. The movie starts out strong and sets itself up pretty well, only to come crashing down not even half way through. If you're not that curious of a movie buff, then you definitely won't regret passing on this one.

I don't understand at all how this got 5 Oscar's this year. I'm watching for the first time as it has now hit streaming and I was left very confused. It was slow in the first half, picked up a little in the second and then the last half went back to being slow. A lot of scenes were super drawn out, there was no need for the film to be as long as it was. We got absolutely no back story on Anora at all which is what I was waiting for. Don't get me wrong, Mikey Madison isn't a bad actress but I was waiting for more. For the most part she just cursed, showed her body and screamed a lot. I didn't really see a performance worth best actress, even though her performance wasn't terrible. The script also wasn't that good, there were a lot of pieces that were overly repetitive and the characters were pretty much one dimensional. I guess the audience is left to use our imagination but I wish we were given more for the runtime.