“Anora” Is a Strip-Club Cinderella Story—and a Farce to Be Reckoned With

Sean Baker’s thrilling film, starring Mikey Madison as a New York sex worker, pushes comic misadventure to the brink of chaos.

By Justin Chang

October 11, 2024

Mark Eydelshteyn and Mikey Madison star in Sean Baker’s film.Illustration by Leonardo Santamaria

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Searching for the cause of a catastrophic plane crash.
The man who spent forty-two years at the Beverly Hills Hotel pool.
Gloria Steinem’s life on the feminist frontier.
Where the Amish go on vacation.
How Colonel Sanders built his Kentucky-fried fortune.
What does procrastination tell us about ourselves?
Fiction by Patricia Highsmith: “The Trouble with Mrs. Blynn, the Trouble with the World”

Justin Chang is a film critic at The New Yorker. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for criticism.

The Current Cinema

The Political Drama of “I’m Still Here” Is Moving but Airbrushed

In Walter Salles’s Oscar-nominated film, Fernanda Torres plays a woman whose family is torn apart by Brazil’s military dictatorship.

By Justin Chang

Persons of Interest

Catherine Breillat’s Unsettling Cinema of Desire

The French director has built her decades-long career on transgression. She sees herself as a romantic.

By Victoria Uren

The Front Row

“This Woman” and Her Tangled World

The Chinese artist and filmmaker Alan Zhang, in her first feature, dramatizes a married woman’s struggle for freedom amid financial and emotional obstacles.

By Richard Brody

The Front Row

The Brief and Brilliant Career of Sara Gómez

Gómez, the first woman to direct movies in Cuba, created a body of work that’s revolutionary in form and politics alike.

By Richard Brody

Letter from Los Angeles

Mourning David Lynch in a City on Fire

In L.A., the death of the director of “Mulholland Drive” and “Inland Empire” leaves an unfillable void.

By Justin Chang

The Theatre

“Hugh Jackman LIVE” and “Beckett Briefs” Make a Spectacle of Time’s Passage

In two new shows, the Oscar-nominated, Tony Award-winning star and F. Murray Abraham play against their younger selves.

By Helen Shaw

A Critic at Large

What if the Attention Crisis Is All a Distraction?

From the pianoforte to the smartphone, each wave of tech has sparked fears of brain rot. But the problem isn’t our ability to focus—it’s what we’re focussing on.

By Daniel Immerwahr

A Critic at Large

What We Learn About Our World by Imagining Its End

Some fear we’ll be buried in brimstone; others expect to be extinguished by A.I. But is there comfort to be found in our apocalyptic visions?

By Arthur Krystal

Goings On

Liza Minnelli’s Desire to Touch

Also: Merch love for L.A., the Australian comedian Sam Kissajukian’s “300 Paintings,” Heartbeat Opera’s innovative “Salome,” and more.

Essay

Lessons for the End of the World

On Octavia Butler, the L.A. fires, and the uses and misuses of the things that cannot be recovered.

By Hanif Abdurraqib

Musical Events

L.A.’s New-Music Bastion

Monday Evening Concerts has showcased living composers for eight decades.

By Alex Ross

Under Review

The Other Side of Sherman’s March

The general’s campaign through the South is known for its brutality against civilians. For the enslaved who followed his army, though, it was a shot at freedom.

By Scott Spillman

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