Lost in the Movies: July 2025 Patreon round-up: EXCLUSIVE

Although it won the Palme d'Or at Cannes over a year ago, Anora is currently the most recent piece of media I've covered; its orthographic neighbor Andor, which concluded in May, will take its place once I'm finally able to transcribe a lengthy guest discussion on that Disney streaming series. Despite Anora's contemporaneity, the film may actually take place pre-Covid (perhaps even immediately pre-Covid), one of many fascinating aspects to this socioeconomic portrait, sweeping and satirical romance, and tragicomic experiment in narrative perspective. Anora is set in the Russian enclaves of Brooklyn where it documents the rising hope and fallen promise of Ani (Mikey Madison) - not Anora, despite her given name and the film's ironic title. She's a stripper whose quickie customer Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) becomes more long-term, more enamored, and eventually married to her (to the horror of his far-away, mega-wealthy parents, who attempt to aggressively intervene after the fact - via a comic trio of local enforcers). Having previously covered Sean Baker's similarly grungy-yet-wistful The Florida Project, I'm intrigued by the continuity of theme and vision; both works are caught between the enchanting illusion of the fairy tale and the vulgar vigor of the everyday. Anora's similarities to the handful of other films which won both the Palme d'Or and the Oscar for Best Picture, its vivid cinematography which revels in the texture of Tungsten film, the onscreen crosscurrents of an unsuspected and less glamorous attraction rising while the prospects for another relationship collapse, and the generational undertones of this whole tale and its timing...all these subjects, and much more, are discussed in one of my longest reviews for this podcast. Elsewhere on Patreon, I've begun conducting polls for Films in Focus topics a couple months before the episode in question (rather than a few weeks, as was the case), and I also shared an advance work-in-progress with all tiers.

What is the exclusive July reward?

$5/MONTH TIER