Film

Tandy and Reba Look at the Films The Brutalist and Anora

In this episode of The Hollywood Beat, Tandy and Reba look at two films — one, the stark, dramatic story of a Polish immigrant who survived a concentration camp, the other, the often madcap of a stripper of Russian descent who befriends the son of a Russian oligarch.

The Brutalist is true to its title. The original screenplay from writer-director Randy Corbet unfolds in a film that runs some 3.5 hours not including a ten-minute intermission. The title refers to a kind of clean-lines architecture style.

Adrien Brody portrays architect Laszlo, a Polish Jew who survived the horrors of World War Two. While he is working as a manual laborer, he is discovered by a wealthy man named Van Buren, who becomes his patron and who hires Laszlo to design a multi-purpose institute near Philadelphia. Over the course of many years, their’s becomes a sometimes contentious relationship.

Brody is considered a lock for his second Oscar. (At the time of this posting, the 2025 Academy Awards have yet to be held.) Guy Pearce and Felicity Jones co-star.

Anora is a very, very black comedy. Mikey Madison stars as the title character who prefers to go by Ani. Ani works at a club where the young women divide their shifts between pole dancing and lap dancing in private rooms. One of the club’s patrons, Vanya, (Mark Eydelshteyn) the son of an oligarch with the wife from hell.

Filmmaker Sean Baker’s movie has drawn comparisons to Gary Marshall’s Pretty Woman. Debatable. Anora serves up a twenty-minute scene I can’t do justice to here. Plus, Madison’s character drops an F-bomb so often, both as nouns and present participles, that the viewer might be tempted to wash her mouth out with soap. The obscenities aside, the Oscar-nominated Madison is brilliant.

Published by Tandy Culpepper

I am a veteran broadcast journalist. I was an Army brat before my father retired and moved us to the deep South. I'm talkin' Lower Alabama and Northwest Florida, I graduated from Tate High School and got botha Bachelor's degree and Master's in Teaching English from the University of West Florida, I taught English at Escambia County High School for two years before getting my m's in Speech Pathology and Audiology from Auburn University. Following graduation, I did a 180 degree turn and moved to Birmingham where I began ny broadcasting career at WBIQ, Channel 10. There I was host of a weekly primetime half-hour TV program called Alabama Lifestyles. A year later, I began a stint as a television weathercaster and public affairs host. A year later, I moved to West Palm Beach, Florida and became bureau chief at WPTV, the CBS affiliate. Two years later, I moved to Greensboro, North Carolina where I became co-host of a morng show called AM Carolina. The next year, I moved cross-country and became co-host and story producer at KTVN-TV in Reno, Nevada. I also became the medical reporter for the news department. Three years later, I moved to Louisville, Kentucky and became host and producer of a morning show called today in WAVE Country at WAVE-TV, Channel 3, the NBC affiliate. Following three years there, I moved to Los Angeles and became senior correspondent at the Turner Entertainment Reportn, an internationally-syndicated entertainment entertainment news service owned by CNN. I went back to school afterwards and got an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Goucher College in Towson, Maryland, a suburb of Baltimore. Oh, yes. I won a hundred thousand dollars on the 100 Thousand Dollar Pyramid, then hosted by Dick Clark.

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