Sean baker

Usually, when a film wins Best Picture at the Oscars, the inevitable backlash takes years, if not decades, to come to the surface. Sometimes, it’s simply because the “wrong film” won (Crash over Brokeback Mountain, Shakespeare in Love over Saving Private Ryan), and on other occasions, it is because a film’s social or sexual politics have dated incredibly badly. (Here’s looking at you, American Beauty.) Yet after what must be the most contentious and controversial Oscar season in living memory, during which no fewer than four separate films were all tipped for glory at one point, the eventual victor ludorum, Sean Baker’s Anora, is facing a vicious and sustained assault on its credentials that is without precedent.

Sean Baker’s Anora won the Palme d’Or at Cannes and is hotly tipped to win big at the Oscars and I know you won’t believe it’s as good as everyone is saying it is until you hear it from me so here you are: yes, it’s as good as everyone is saying it is. All the cast are stellar but Madison is mesmerising and carries the whole thing It stars Mikey Madison – who is a total knockout – as a sex worker who marries the son of a Russian oligarch. But this is not Pretty Woman. This film takes Pretty Woman and smashes that fantasy over its knee, but with heart and soul and in a way that is as compelling as it is surprising. It came out a while ago but is still in cinemas so do yourselves a favour and get on it. It beats Gladiator II handsus downus.

Mikey (Simon Rex) first appears striding down a road in utterly wrecked jeans and shirt. He is carrying nothing and seems to be going nowhere until he walks up the pathway to the house of the wife he abandoned and her venomously disapproving, chain-smoking mother. Sean Baker’s Red Rocket is a movie set in Texas City in Galveston County. It’s basically an oil town and almost all the action in this film takes place on the perimeter of a vast refinery. Everything is very grainy, especially the dark interiors. This is because the film is shot on 16mm film, a medium which, on the big screen, produces a lively, speckled blur. After several attempts, Mikey charms his way back into his home.