Anora – Movie Meister Reviews

Every year on this blog I talk about the Oscar nominees and the potential winners in each category. It’s the reason this blog exists and it’s a fun thing to do around this time of year, even when (thanks to a real-world job that takes a lot of my time) I’ve missed a few of the bigger films that got a bunch of nominations. I still can look at some of the bigger trends and have a guess about how the ceremony is going to go… it also doesn’t help that, as usual, some of these films are incredibly hard to find in Australia in a way that I can legally see them at a convenient time. So, here are my predictions for what will win, what should win and the wild card choice that might sneak in at the last minute.

Besides, if the members of the Academy can vote for movies to win the award without ever watching them, I can predict what they’re going to do without seeing everything.

Continue reading →

Released: 26th December 2024
Seen: 22nd February 2025

When it comes to film, stories about sex workers are often played badly. Be they stories about strippers, porn stars or escorts there’s always this vibe that the person doing the sex work (usually a woman, let’s be honest) requires saving from the industry. She might be tough but she’s also a damsel in distress who is only doing this job because she has no choice. Recently there have been some films that are at least trying to improve how they portray people in that industry, films like Hustlers make them into a charming gaggle of powerful women who control their destinies, films like X or Maxxxine present porn stars as whole beings (albeit beings that end up being victims of killers but still, they’re people who deserve dignity) and then there’s Anora. One of the big Oscar darlings of the year with 6 nominations, Anora presents a sex worker with rough edges who is still a human being that doesn’t deserve the shit she’s put through and it’s a wildly fascinating time.

Continue reading →