In a year with at least three other Dimes Square Pinterest movies (Immaculate, The First Omen, Nosfufu) this was the most brazen in being an unlicensed fictionalization of Red Scare (Russian immigrant specificity, thongs, faggot, rape joke, TATU, someone saying "he might be with Dasha"). Immaculate and First Omen took the Catholic fawn/ nun area of the mood board and made election year woke abortion propaganda out of it while Nosfufu was painting avi antiwoke for beginners with a "cuck husband" character and conspicuous Easter egg references to BAP. I had my own TV adaptation last year in Grotesquerie, with its dichotomy of binge eating and alcoholism and apocalypse speeches lifted directly from my podcast. Part of this phenomenon is that everything being referenced is from the "bad" side of pop culture so all familiarity can be denied while the creator draws as much influence as he wants and everyone thinks blatant references must be just a funny coincidence. Anora is antiwoke in the way that Red Rocket--which I liked aside from the prosthetic penis--was, with a screenplay embedded with hot button topics intended to be provocative, like age of consent, rape, prostitution, slurs. It's filled with sexualized female nudity and came accompanied with media buzz about Mikey Madison "not needing an intimacy coordinator," which predictably caused Letterboxd libtards to swirl around it. I'm on the pro sex pro nudity anti-intimacy coordinator side of of all of that, obviously, and yet something about this movie stank to me from the start with its trailer featuring a Blondie remix promising you'll fall in love with Anora, played relentlessly before every movie I saw last year. My intuition was correct, because after the pleasing opening segment which feels like a Las Vegas tourism ad on Tubi, the proceedings screech to an absolute halt and turn into a meandering, shrill Cassavettes Buffalo 66 thing with mobster characters running around New York. You're clearly supposed to be in love with every screwball moment of it and be impressed with the specificity of the "Russian stuff" and Twittery New York ethnic grievances (no one normal knows what it's supposed to mean that they keep saying "fucking Armenians" but the audience is to be impressed and intimidated and assume it is meaningful). The F words and profanity are like a Rob Zombie movie, just completely juvenile and unacceptable. Her accent is absurd and no 23yo in NY talks like that. I have a headache from the screaming. I did not fall in love with Anora.