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What Makes Us So Sure Sean Baker Can Sneak Anora Into the Oscars?
And nine other unanswered questions hovering over the 2025 Academy Awards season.
Critics like Dana Stevens call the movie “a crowd-pleaser, funny and sexy and raucous, while also being startlingly wise and tender.” That likability should ensure Anora plays well on the preferential ballot, but there’s also a real message here about class and labor. With all the major male contenders competing on the Drama side of the ballot, the Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy award is there for the taking, and it would be hilariously Globes-y for the left-for-dead Phoenix to rise from the ashes and claim the trophy. “Sometimes a movie actually earns the old cliché of a ‘star-making turn,’ and I’m here to say that Sean Baker’s Anora is this year’s star maker,” declares Alyssa Wilkinson, who calls Madison “mesmerizing” as a Brighton Beach stripper who goes toe-to-toe with the Russian elite’s hired help.
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