Anora

I knew that there was one movie this year that centered on a transgender character, but I really didn't remember whether it was Anora, Emilia Pérez, or I'm Still Here.  With Anora being the first of these three movies that I watched, I kept on thinking to myself, I wonder which of these characters is transgender, or when will the transition take place?  Long story short, Anora wasn't the movie to feature a transgender character, but it definitely does make for a different viewing experience when you expect a certain subject to be addressed, but you can't imagine how it will tie-in with the movie that you're currently watching.  Anora it turns out is a movie about an American girl, who works as an exotic dancer in New York City, who gets into a relationship with a young man, who is the son of a Russian oligarch.  In the middle of the movie there was a scene that I liked, that qualifies as the two things that I liked about this movie:  1) As a group of Russian bodyguards try to hold the title character, Anora, against her will, she fights back, seriously injuring the bodyguards and causing significant damage inside the house.  I liked the raw energy Mikey Madison as Anora exuded during this scene, it had intensity and was crazy funny.  2)  I liked that the Russian bodyguard played by Yuriy Borisov, was unwilling to hit Anora, and instead sat on her to subdue her; the body language of this scene, the contrast between the violence and the gentleness was extremely well done.  All-in-all the movie was about an ambitious exotic dancer and a snot-nosed Russian rich kid; while there were moments of humor and intensity, overall this was a shallow jaunt through a seedy world that I'm not that interested in.  Perhaps in Anora Part II, the Russian rich kid will return to America as an exotic dancer too.