Physical Specimens: New 4K Reviews, Including Anora, Brimstone & Treacle, and More
This week in Physical Specimens, our biweekly round-up of new physical media and 4K reviews, we assess new 4K UHD releases of the most recent Best Picture winner, a John Wayne World War II classic, and a cult British film that features the musician Sting’s best acting performance.
Anora
Mikey Madison more than earned that Oscar. She dominates Anora from its opening moment with a powerful, supremely confident performance as a sex worker who marries the young son of a Russian oligarch, and is almost immediately threatened into an annulment by his vaguely criminal family. Madison’s so good and so fully committed to the role, and the pacing so tense and reckless, that it’s almost easy to overlook how Anora the character has very little agency throughout. She marries the callow and spoiled Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn, with another one of the movie’s many great performances) on his sudden party-fueled whim mostly because of his money, leaving her job and moving into his large, soulless mansion where the sum total of their relationship seems to be partying, having sex, and Anora watching Vanya play videogames. Once his family learns of the marriage and sends Vanya’s America-based godfather to take care of everything, Anora becomes an unwilling captive of both the goons who watch after Vanya and the movie’s plot. The bulk of the film is as loud and unrelentingly stressful as Uncut Gems, and between the constant shrieking and occasional outbursts of (sometimes cartoonish) violence Anora becomes a bit of a roller coaster, albeit one built on starkly drawn characters and actual emotion.
Sean Baker’s movie is tricky. It’s simultaneously funny, sad, and exciting, shot with Baker’s typical leanness and naturalism, and with Madison’s show-stopping role contrasted by an understatedly powerful performance from Yura Borisov as a deeper-than-he-seems hired goon. It subverts standard rom-com expectations throughout, while remaining in obvious conversation with them. It’s also received understandable criticism over Anora’s perceived lack of control and depth—how her focus remains on money throughout, and how she ultimately has almost no power against Vanya’s impossibly wealthy family. How much power could a working-class woman from Brighton Beach have against billionaires, though? The final scene, when Anora’s default mode of defiant, “fuck you” confidence slides and she shows true emotion for the first time, immediately after offering sex as a transactional “thank you” to another character, can be read in a myriad of ways, both positively and negatively. It’s tempting to call it a kind of Rorschach test for how the viewer feels about sex work. It’s also a devastating moment that highlights Anora’s general lack of power despite her unflaggingly strong-willed exterior.
This typically top-notch Criterion set offers a beautiful 4K master with 5.1 DTS-HD surround sound, and has all the bonus features you’d expect, from commentary tracks with Baker and the cast, to deleted scenes and a making-of doc, to smart essays by Kier-La Janisse and Dennis Lim. Unfortunately it also sports a misguided new cover that pointlessly references Vampyros Lesbos and comes off as shameless fanservice for film nerds. (Also, anybody who feels that Anora is less interested in its heroine as a person than as a sexual commodity will see this cover as extra proof.) Otherwise this is yet another great Criterion release of a zeitgeist-y movie that is one of the very few to win both the Palme d’Or at Cannes and Best Picture at the Oscars.
Anora
Original Release: 2024
Director: Sean Baker
Format: 4K UHD Blu-ray
Label: Criterion
Release Date: April 29, 2025
