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.