The Butcher
You love ’em, he hates ’em! The Butcher carves up your favourite films, and this week, he applies his sharpened cleaver to director Sean Baker’s 2024 Oscar triumph Anora starring Mikey Madison, Yura Borisov, Karren Karagulian and Aleksei Serebryakov.
With noted crack-head and hallucinogens enthusiast Aaron Sorkin’s latest opus The Social Reckoning out in “picture houses” this week, The Butcher immediately tried to stop thinking about how much he hates this flashy wanker and his self-serving, attention-seeking screen work. Seriously, has any TV show sucked more arse than The West Wing? What a Presidential-level nightmare!
But when The Butcher put this noted pothead out of his mind, thoughts drifted unpleasantly to Mikey Madison, the star of Sorkin’s The Social Reckoning and famed Once Upon A Time…In Hollywood flame-job victim. While not as anger-inducing as Aaron Sorkin, The Butcher does not like this current “it girl” and Oscar winner. Sure, the “esteemed” Oscar voters frequently get it wrong (Sandra Bullock has one…we rest our case), but have they ever got it more wrong than they did when they, ahem, showered gold on Mikey and her film Anora?
Directed by noted sex worker fan Sean Baker (seriously, how many films can a director make about prostitutes before they begin to look a little sketchy?), Anora is the tale of the titular stripper and hooker, who is played by the aforementioned Ms. Madison in a piece of hamminess that would make Al Pacino proud. In a Noo Yawk accent so thick you could slice it like pastrami, Mikey emotes, screams, and strips her little heart out, all pitched horribly right up to eleven in an alarming act of thespian excess.
This shit won an Oscar? Personally, we think there might have been more than a few one-handed Oscar voters who got li’l Mikey and her big-budget fuck-flick over the line. There is, of course, a “rich history” of actresses playing hookers who hooked Oscars, from Janet Gaynor in Street Angel to Liz Taylor in Butterfield 8. Even Julia Roberts got a nom for her ridiculous street walker chic in Pretty Woman! You wouldn’t pick Mikey’s bump and grind to Brooke Candy’s “Drip” as “Oscar bait”, but hey, don’t forget that a lot of Academy members were friends with Jeffrey Epstein and Harvey Weinstein.
But it’s not just Mikey that The Butcher hates…it’s the whole fucking film! Anora is a 139-minute cinematic shriek filled with horrible characters in which nothing really happens. Mikey’s titular hooker/stripper is basically just a desperado who marries a rich Russian fuckwit for his cash, and is then surprised when he freaks out and bails. We’re supposed to have sympathy for this twit? Puh-lease! Then we just watch Anora and some other nut-jobs try and find him. That’s the film! Yes, that’s it!
Holy shit, man, Anora is one cinematic street walker The Butcher wishes he’d never picked up…
