Nostalgia Kinky

Before I talk about Sean Baker’s Anora (2024), I’d like to tell you about the saddest-looking building in Newburgh, Indiana. Newburgh is a small river town just across the river from Henderson, Ky, a city once known for its gangsters and gambling. This incredibly tragic-looking building is right in the middle of town, and is it ever hard to miss. It looks like a solid white box sitting just to the side of the main strip on the way to my old high school. Kind of like a huge coffin just off the road of my youth. There are no markings on the building, just a large marquee out front with the words “Hell is Real” on one side and “Jesus Loves You” on the other.

Every time I drive by what used to house my favorite theater of my teenage years, I’m greeted with the sight of that goddamn church. It is an eternal hard ask for me to believe that it’s the same building that I saw Weird Science and Back to the Future In.
Hell, I saw Lethal Weapon 2 in this literal place of worship.
“Knockin on Heaven’s Door” indeed.
It’s depressing.
What does this all have to do with Anora? I mean, after all, the once thriving two-screen beauty of my youth, where I fell in love with Phoebe Cates in Gremlins and screamed with joy seeing Bruce Willis play John McCain in the first Die Hard, closed decades ago.
What does this have to do with Anora?
Nothing really, other than Anora reminds me of the American films of my youth. And, I don’t mean that in some sort of Stranger Things nostalgia baiting way.
I’ve seen Anora three times now, and each viewing takes me back to that temple of my youth, reminding me that while the building is gone the spirit very much remains.

This piece on Anora has been something I have wanted to write since the film came out. These days though, I’m always so hesitant to focus on new films, especially new American films, as my thoughts on this country have become so deeply conflicted and troubled.
I miss the movie theater as an escape.
I stopped going for the longest time you know, unable to deal with the depression of Midwest multiplexes.
I’m trying to do better.
To not be such a cantankerous old fuck.
It’s hard.
I’m trying.
Some days are better than others.
I find it hard not being a nihilist these days, you know?

Anyway.
Recently, a special friend gifted me the gorgeous Criterion deluxe 4K/Blu-ray edition of Anora.
So,
This seemed like an ideal moment to write about Anora.
But
how
and
where
should I write about Anora?

Well, I have chosen
alone,
heartbroken
and in a coffee shop.
The alone part I am used to, but goddamn am I ever alone these days. It’s become a real monster. The heartbreak is something I haven’t dealt with in a bit, and I must admit that my life is currently kind of like a Bukowski novel, or maybe just someone’s sad unpublished copy of one. And the location, a Louisville coffee shop, one I have never been in before. Funnily enough, I actually work in a coffee shop struggling to save money, like I’m passing time washing dishes in New Orleans.
It’s fairly empty in here this morning.
I picked this spot as it’s near where one of my favorite theaters used to stand.
I can see the shuttered doors still off in the distance.

So,
the gift combined with my current sad boy depression, location, and general isolation made Anora hit especially hard this latest watch, and I can’t stop thinking of it.

Two years on, Anora has been picked apart intensively, resulting in a barrage of written and visual essays probing the film, its characters, its themes, etc.
What can I add to all that?
I don’t know.
Nothing much probably.
Let’s see. There’s a moment early in Anora when a frustrated Mikey Madison rushes out to her stoop to escape the noise of her small home. It’s lightly snowing, she’s smoking, and the audience feels everything she feels.
Every emotion.
The disappointment.
The rage.
The cold.
Also, the endurance.
And spirit.
It’s just a little moment, but goddamn if it doesn’t choke me out, like Black and White Brando with his pigeons or Jack Nicholson playing that out of tune piano on the back of that truck.
Not that I just wanna compare Anora to past works, but this is absolutely infused with the spirit of BBS and the New Hollywood and like the great filmmakers of that period, Sean Baker plays with genre so masterfully, and it is so much fun watching the unexpected places his films go. I’ll end up watch Anora a dozen times and will still be surprised where it ends up and how it gets there with each viewing.
It’s impressive.


I wish I could have seen Anora in that two-screen theater as a teenager. It would have become one of my favorite films of my youth. I was a pretty hip teen for Southern BFE Indiana thanks to my obsession with Andy Warhol’s sixties scene that introduced me to so much important diversity in my terribly white straight-laced community. I would have so embraced the film’s message about sex workers and obsessed over how truly independent everything about Anora is.

Anora reminds me of all my favorite closed theaters from my youth. They are spread all over Kentucky mostly. The Vogue in Louisville where I saw more walkouts than ever before during the unrated Bad Lt (complete with Scooly D score) or The Skylight in Frankfort, where my parents took me to see The Exorcist when I was an actual infant. I just love thinking about how that film’s sound design affected my little forming brain. Probably why I gravitated so easily towards Throbbing Gristle and works like Metal Machine Music.
I digress.
Good stuff, but all these places are gone or transformed into someone’s nightmare of progress.
The Vogue is now the front of a shopping center, and The Skylight just stands abandoned in ruins with only the crumbling Marquee remaining.

The shuttered theater I can see from where I am sitting? The long-standing
Baxter Avenue Theater,
recently closed in Louisville,
outlasting its bargain sister palace
The Village 8 by several years.
I saw Binoche and Carax on the big screen here.
Do you understand?

How about The Ross in Evansville, Indiana? Where I was turned away from Henry and June despite having an ID showing I was 17.
I’m still angry about that.
I don’t let go of anything.
Well, The Ross is gone as well.
This is the story of middle America, which is mostly the story I know, save for spots out West and then further out West.
Denver had some cool theaters when I lived there ten years ago, but I just have this bad feeling some aren’t there anymore.

Watching Anora feels like getting the chance to see one last great film in your favorite theater just before it shutters.
Wait,
there’s my review.
Let me try to clean that up.
Anora is the last great film screened at the favorite theater of your youth.
No, that’s not right.
I’ll work on it.
You get what I’m saying.
Anora is both pure cinema and an incredible character study.
It’s like The King of Marvin Gardens
only completely different.

My favorite thing about Anora is how sympathetic and how human it is.

Legalize all sex work.
Let consenting adults do with each other
whatever they want under
whatever terms they want.
Why’s that so hard?
Legalize all sex work.

There’s a great moment on the bonus Criterion Extras disc where a dancer speaking on stage with Mikey Madison notes how much she has noticed a change in her community.
How much more camaraderie there is.
I love that.
I also like Anora reflects the flip of that as well, often resulting in the film’s more hilarious moments.
“Fuck your boss!”
The funniest thing about Anora is actually how funny it is.
Because Anora is really funny, during moments when it has no right to. Sean Baker has that rare gift as a writer and filmmaker where he finds the humor in the most unexpected but real places.
Anora manages to be an uber-important character study focusing on some of society’s most unfairly marginalized and yet it still manages to be hilarious as fuck.
It’s impressive.

It reminds me, the theater where I saw Magnolia in Lexington is closed now. Hey, at least The Kentucky Theater where I saw Altman’s Kansas City is still there.
I still have visions of the
Jennifer Jason Leigh of my youth
on the big screen,
my memory’s Jennifer Jason Leigh beats yours.

Oh, hey, so yeah, Mikey Madison is tremendous in Anora.
I’m glad she won the Oscar.
She deserved every bit of that gold statue.
She infuses Annie with such dignity and power.
It is one of the best and most moving performances of the century.

I wonder if that theater where I saw Michelle Pfeiffer in The Fabulous Baker Boys is still around?

Of course, you know Sean Baker is a fellow
Euro Cult head
as well?
Wait, is that what we are called?
What are we called?
Anyway, I love the design of this Criterion set.
I mean, I named one of my publications Soledad
so I can spot a tribute to Jess Franco’s Vampyros Lesbos.
Baker even notes it during the bonus interviews.
Anora is packed with film history and real love for cinema.
I cannot wait for Baker’s upcoming Ornella Muti curated set for Cult Epics.

Speaking of Baker’s distinct gifts. Anora is distinctly American, but the film’s got these wonderful touches of European film history scattered about.
Like you just know you are watching a film by a guy who loves the movies and he has seen a lot of diverse ones when you watch a Sean Baker film.

I still have a promo sheet from Take-Out btw
from my old Moon in the Gutter days,
Hard to believe it was so long ago.

When Baxter Avenue closed, I wanted to go the last week, but I literally couldn’t find a film that I wanted to end the palace’s run on.
Anora would have been an ideal film for that.

I love the snow in Anora. You get a good glimpse of the hands behind it on the film’s excellent hour-long documentary here. I remember the night I saw Fire Walk With Me for its one and only lonely week at this isolated Bowling Green, KY theater that’s long been buried by an industrial plant that’s taken its place. I recall walking in to see David Lynch’s most nightmarish vision with the knowledge that a freakish fall snowfall was expected. And sure enough, as I walked out of the theater, fresh with Sheryl Lee’s screams in my head, there was beautiful falling snow reflecting the parking lot’s illuminated lights.
It was a lovely moment I think of often.
There’s some lovely snow in Anora.

Back to this lonely little coffee shop.
There’s hardly anyone here as I watch the workers all in various stages of
“I want to go home.”

Damn, this heartbreak.
The effect of burning two
beautiful bridges
simultaneously
and by mistake.

In the wake of Anora’s theatrical release Mikey Madison named some of the films and performances that were so influential to her and her performance. As Sylvia Kristel’s biographer, I took special note of LouLou (1980) being singled out. Madison even sat down for an interview with Isabelle Huppert after Anora’s release. LouLou is one of my favorite films, and I am always thrilled to see it mentioned, this case especially.
Why?
I live with the awareness that Maurice Pialat wrote Huppert’s famed role directly for Sylvia, whom he practically begged to star in it. It remains one of the key roles written for Sylvia Kristel that would have absolutely changed her career. It would have changed everything.
So, I like that at least a role written for Sylvia Kristel played a part in influencing such a great modern film performance like Mikey Madison in Anora.
That shit makes me smile.

This Criterion set I was so kindly gifted is gorgeous. This is one of the best-looking and sounding 4Ks in my collection, and the hours of supplements are extremely strong. I still have to listen to the commentary tracks, but I so enjoyed all of the other extras. The day-by-day hour-plus documentary is fantastic, as is the Cannes press conference, and especially the sex-workers-only screening is wonderful. This is a fantastic set from Criterion and the limited booklet will make any fellow Euro-Cult-loving fans immediately smile.
I promise.

A couple of years on and Anora is still devastating and will remain one of the most vital modern films.
It will be looked upon as one of the last great American films of a certain era before AI and illegal mergers truly cocked everything up.
Thanks to Sean Baker for
creating such an
emotionally and physically naked film.
I absolutely adore Anora.

I’ll never get back to that Evansville, Indiana theater where I saw Drugstore Cowboy opening weekend,
will I?
They sold old posters in the back room for a dollar a piece. I found an original Heaven’s Gate one-sheet there.
I still have it.
There’s an empty strip mall there now.
Anora would have played at that theater.
It would have played at all of the theaters of our youth.
Perhaps, if time truly does run concurrently,
somewhere it is.
Anora is one of our movies.

-Jeremy Richey, July 2026-