Anora
Focus Features | Release Date: October 18, 2024 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
91
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 62 Critic Reviews
Positive:
60
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
Watch Now
Stream On
Stream On
Stream On

Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
The TimesEd PottonDec 19, 2024
Each change of tone is handled with sinuous ease by Baker, one of the best independent directors, who is finally getting the props he deserves. Read full review
100
The Observer (UK)Xan BrooksNov 4, 2024
Anora deepens and darkens with each twist and turn and provides a violent corrective to so many Hollywood fairytales. Read full review
100
iChristina NewlandNov 1, 2024
Mikey Madison gives a sparky, vulnerable, devastatingly real breakout performance as a strip-club dancer and sometime-sex-worker. Filmed with neon-lit nocturnal verve, Anora is as gorgeous to behold as it is deranged. Read full review
100
The Irish TimesDonald ClarkeOct 31, 2024
No purer entertainment has come our way this year. Read full review
100
Original-CinLiz BraunOct 24, 2024
Anora is frenetic and entertaining and sometimes very funny, but it will break your heart. Read full review
100
San Francisco ChronicleMick LaSalleOct 23, 2024
Baker is concerned with people who are broke and on the outside (“The Florida Project,” “Red Rocket”), and while there are aspects of “Anora” that make us aware of the distance between people born with everything and those born with nothing, he doesn’t let politics or economics dwarf his characters. Read full review
100
Film ThreatAlex SavelievOct 18, 2024
The laughs in Anora come in so fast and frequently that they almost eclipse the underlying tension; things are constantly on the edge of exploding, amusement on the verge of anxiety. Read full review
100
ABC NewsPeter TraversOct 18, 2024
Mikey Madison, Oscar’s new Cinderella, leads a cast of crazies as a Brooklyn sex worker who finds her prince charming in the son of a dangerous Russian oligarch. No list of the year’s best films would be complete without Sean Baker’s whirlwind blast of fun and social provocation. Read full review
100
Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerOct 18, 2024
Baker is a humanist – there is nothing exploitative about what he does here. He’s after deeper emotional truths. Read full review
100
SlateDana StevensOct 17, 2024
It’s a crowd-pleaser, funny and sexy and raucous, while also being startlingly wise and tender. Read full review
100
New York PostJohnny OleksinskiOct 17, 2024
Endlessly entertaining and frequently hysterical, “Anora” is one of the year’s best films and a formidable Oscar contender. Read full review
100
Los Angeles TimesGlenn WhippOct 17, 2024
Baker wrote the part for her, and Madison returned the favor with a star-making performance, leaning into Ani’s audacity while revealing the fragile façade, the vulnerabilities and self-deception lurking underneath. Read full review
100
The New York TimesAlissa WilkinsonOct 17, 2024
This is a story of wealth, and power, and what love can and can’t overcome. But it’s also about something far more heart-rending: what it means to be accustomed to being looked at one way, and then experiencing, out of the blue, what it feels like to actually be seen. Read full review
100
The Associated PressLindsey BahrOct 15, 2024
It’s not trying to pretend that it’s not exploitative on some level; that might even be the point. And anyway, you might be surprised just how quickly you commit to this once-in-a-lifetime ride. Read full review
100
RogerEbert.comTomris LafflySep 11, 2024
On the whole, what Baker has created here is nothing short of pure movie magic— his smartly interwoven urban machinations make you giggle and inexplicably tear up on repeat (sometimes within the same sequence), while somehow keeping you acutely aware of the sorrow that is bound to rise to the surface. Read full review
100
The A.V. ClubJason GorberSep 9, 2024
This heroic journey is Ani’s story through and through. It’s a brilliant role, written with such range that it takes Madison’s strong performance to bring her to life without succumbing to archness. She makes us believe every second. Read full review
100
The TimesKevin MaherSep 1, 2024
A wonderful movie from one of the world’s best independent directors. Read full review
100
The Irish TimesTara BradyMay 23, 2024
An inspired cast jolly along Baker’s back-alley Lubitsch towards an unexpectedly circumspect denouement. Tart observations about money, class, and power are encrypted in a lumpenprole romp. Read full review
100
TimeStephanie ZacharekMay 22, 2024
There are few filmmakers as open-hearted, as stone-soup inventive, as Baker is. In movies like Tangerine and The Florida Project, he’s always shown a knack for doing a lot with a little. But with Anora, so playful yet so emotionally fine-grained, he maybe does the most. It's his best movie yet. Read full review
100
The TelegraphRobbie CollinMay 22, 2024
Every character in Anora might be an utter nightmare, but they’re also a joy to spend time with, and the cast understand them down to their smallest behavioural tells. Read full review
100
Time OutDave CalhounMay 22, 2024
It shouldn’t all be so funny, but it is, and it’s to Baker’s huge credit that he’s able to inspire laughs and huge enjoyment from this madcap story without leaving you feeling that the woman at the heart of this mess has been short-changed and exploited for our pleasure. Read full review
100
IndieWireDavid EhrlichMay 21, 2024
Splenetically hilarious for more than two hours before reality catches up with it in the film’s unforgettable final scene, “Anora” has next to nothing to do with romance, and almost everything to do with the kind of working-class heartache that a modern Hollywood studio would never even try to get right. Read full review
94
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Barry HertzOct 23, 2024
Madison never loses grip on the character for a second. Together with Baker, the pair craft a whirlwind of a character, provocative and powerful and so very easy to imagine as the object of anyone’s obsession. Read full review
91
The Film StageLuke HicksMay 22, 2024
Anora is a devastating, gut-busting beauty––regular cinematographer Drew Daniels lending his brilliance to yet another Baker triumph––the kind that hurts your heart and holds you tight to recover at the same time, tears of laughter streaming down your face. Read full review
90
Arizona RepublicAmanda LubertoOct 23, 2024
It’s lush, it’s electrifying, it’s wild. But more than that, the movie has real heart. Read full review
90
Rolling StoneDavid FearOct 16, 2024
The writer-director gives these unsung, oft-judged heroes of labor empowerment via empathy and representation. Read full review
90
The New YorkerJustin ChangOct 14, 2024
By turns a teeming slice of life and a virtuoso farce, reveals itself in the final stretch as a cracked fairy tale. Read full review
90
SlashfilmJacob HallSep 24, 2024
I'm not saying all movies need to feel this effortless, and deliver such big emotions wrapped in such thoughtful complexity. But I am saying movies like this remind me why I like movies so much in the first place. Read full review
90
Screen RantPatrice WitherspoonMay 28, 2024
Anora is a lovable tale of rags to riches that comes exploding with chaos, hilarity, raunchiness, and a stupendous performance from Mikey Madison. Read full review
90
New York Magazine (Vulture)Bilge EbiriMay 27, 2024
For all its charm, Anora is a movie in which just about everybody’s fighting for survival, and they only ever manage to succeed when they start working together. Read full review
90
IGNLex BriscusoMay 23, 2024
Baker cuts straight to the feeling – and because of his fearless filmmaking, this career-best film, in all its crushing and chaotic glory, demands to be felt. Read full review
90
The Daily BeastEsther ZuckermanMay 22, 2024
The film is very funny, until it punches you in the gut with a beautiful ending, and it entirely rests on Madison’s performance as the tough-as-nails Anora. Read full review
90
ColliderChase HutchinsonMay 21, 2024
Anora is Sean Baker's most searing and shattering film yet with a breakout performance from Mikey Madison. Read full review
90
Screen DailyWendy IdeMay 21, 2024
A wildly entertaining, modern-day screwball comedy ... Baker continually ups the ante on the picture’s unruly humour and propulsive pacing. Read full review
90
VarietyPeter DebrugeMay 21, 2024
Baker’s subversively romantic, free-wheeling sex farce makes "Pretty Woman" look like a Disney movie. Read full review
89
Austin ChronicleRichard WhittakerOct 24, 2024
This is an undeniable star-making performance for Madison, who finds the grace and charm and stupidity and selfishness and wild-eyed wonder of Mikey, a tough survivor who falls for the oldest fairy tale in the book. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames BerardinelliNov 12, 2024
Here’s hoping the movie finds its audience because it’s one of the freshest and most audacious films available in this year’s sparse cinematic landscape. Read full review
88
LarsenOnFilmJosh LarsenNov 4, 2024
Anora is a tale of two shots: its first and its last. Read full review
88
Washington PostTy BurrOct 30, 2024
The movie is superficially a comedy — and ultimately a love story, just not the one we think — but there’s a great deal of striving and sadness beneath its layers of glitter and soot and, beyond that, the exhaustion that comes from slowly admitting to yourself that the doors of the kingdom will almost certainly never open for you. Read full review
88
The Seattle TimesChase HutchinsonOct 30, 2024
It’s a scalpel of a film that cuts into how stacked the deck is and how solidarity — or the lack of it — can determine whether you survive unscathed. Read full review
88
Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsOct 30, 2024
It’s not perfect, but Anora is a touching comic and dramatic odyssey, driven by a terrific performance by Mikey Madison in the title role. Read full review
88
ObserverDylan RothOct 18, 2024
Like Mikey Madison’s title character, Anora is pretty, messy, witty, wild, and highly competent, one of the funniest, saddest, and best films of the year. Read full review
88
The Daily BeastNick SchagerOct 17, 2024
More impressive than its nimbleness, however, is its poise and empathy, the latter of which is chiefly bestowed upon its protagonist. Read full review
85
TheWrapSteve PondMay 21, 2024
A thoroughly fun and provocative time at the movies. Read full review
83
Paste MagazineJesse HassengerSep 27, 2024
Baker obviously loves most of his characters, and while Anora doesn’t necessarily give off warmth, spending so much of time in the visceral chill of a Coney Island winter, it regards the entire situation with nonjudgmental good humor and a touch of melancholy. Read full review
83
Entertainment WeeklyMaureen Lee LenkerAug 31, 2024
In Madison, Baker has found a perfect conduit for his ideals, making Anora a culmination of the themes that have dominated his work for years. Read full review
80
The IndependentClarisse LoughreyNov 1, 2024
Madison takes a character trained by life to always pounce – on an opportunity or a threat – and subtly, but consistently, reveals to us her softness and her soul. Read full review
80
ScreenCrushMatt SingerOct 30, 2024
If Anora does well and enables Baker to keep making quirky films about the lives of richly-detailed working-class people, that’s great news. His is one of the truly unique voices in American film today. Read full review
80
EmpireBeth WebbOct 30, 2024
At once a frenzied fairy tale and a tender-hearted character study, Anora is an intoxicating pairing of director and star. Baker’s unique, humanistic approach to filmmaking is as riveting and rewarding as ever. Read full review
80
Little White LiesDavid JenkinsOct 29, 2024
It’s an amazing, hypermodern concept for a film, one which operates as a brutal critique of the class system, while also acting as a metaphor for geopolitical relationships and the moral and ethical lapses we sometimes overlook in the name of making rent. Read full review
80
Wall Street JournalKyle SmithOct 18, 2024
Though Anora frequently sparkles, it’s also inconsistent, so it falls short of becoming a classic of its genre. Still, thanks to its appealingly youthful energy and its earthy performances, it’s one of the spiciest comedies of the year. Read full review
80
BBCNicholas BarberMay 25, 2024
Anora fizzes with energy and laugh-out-loud moments, but it isn't recommended for anyone with high blood pressure. It builds into the kind of hectic farce in which not just one person is stressed: everyone is stressed. Read full review
80
Vanity FairRichard LawsonMay 21, 2024
It’s a wild, profane blast. But Baker is also zooming in, very slowly, so that in the movie’s startling, disarming final scene we are forced to reconsider what we’ve just watched. Was it a raucous chase movie or a quiet tragedy? Read full review
80
The GuardianPeter BradshawMay 21, 2024
What would Pretty Woman look like if it bore the smallest resemblance to the reality of sex work? Maybe something like this, Sean Baker’s amazing, full-throttle tragicomedy of romance, denial and betrayal. Read full review
80
The Hollywood ReporterDavid RooneyMay 21, 2024
While Anora could stand to lose 10-15 minutes, it’s a very satisfying watch; the director continues firmly staking out his niche as a chronicler of the messy lives of an often invisible American underclass. Read full review
80
Total FilmJames MottramMay 21, 2024
Baker controls the narrative with real aplomb, crafting a time-bomb mix of physical comedy and high drama. Better still, the final third alights on real pathos. Read full review
75
Boston GlobeOdie HendersonOct 24, 2024
What saves “Anora,” and makes it worth seeing, is the performance by Madison. Read full review
75
Slant MagazineMark HansonAug 31, 2024
The film’s initial pull lies in the way that Sean Baker intoxicatingly keys his aesthetic to the fervor of a budding romance that we clearly know won’t end well. Read full review
67
The PlaylistGregory EllwoodMay 21, 2024
While Baker has proven his worth as a true cinematic auteur, his greatest skill has been guiding his actors to new heights wherever his stories may take them. You’ll have to decide if that’s enough to gloss over the rough patches this time around. Read full review
65
The Film VerdictStephen DaltonMay 23, 2024
An overlong runtime, underwritten characters and some uneasy tonal wobbles dampen the film’s punchy humour and propulsive energy. Read full review
60
The New YorkerRichard BrodyOct 23, 2024
There’s a significant work of art lurking within “Anora,” but it’s confined within the limits of a potboiler. Read full review
50
Movie NationRoger MooreNov 18, 2024
Anora lacks the raw emotion, street energy and urgency of Baker’s transgender romp “Tangerine” — and the pathos of his acclaimed peek at childhood homelessness in the “paradise” of “The Florida Project.” Read full review
More From This Movie

91 Critic Reviews

tbd User Reviews

Details & Credits|Trailers

Current Movie Releases
By MetascoreBy User Score
1 81 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
2 77 Project Hail Mary
3 75 Send Help
4 73 Hoppers
5 72 The Sheep Detectives
SEE ALL
Essential Links
New on Amazon Prime Video
New on Netflix
Coming Soon to DVD/Blu-ray
SEE ALL