Anora (2024) review

One night, professional dancer Ani (Mikey Madison) meets Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), the son of wealthy Russians Nikolai (Aleksei Serebryakov) and Galina (Darya Ekamasova), at her place of employment - he offers her money to come over to the mansion he's staying in (for sexual favors), flies her and some friends out to Las Vegas and then convinces her to marry him ... but when his parents find out about this and send their cronies to confront Vanya, he flees and abandons his young bride.  Baker's genuine affection for members of society on the "fringe" is once again on display here - Ani lives in a small house in Brighton Beach with her sister and sees her marriage to Vanya as her "way out" - and the movie artfully shifts from the main couple (undeservedly) having a ton of fun, drinking and doing drugs and spending an obscene amount of (unearned) cash to a tensely-directed (but still comedic) sprint through New York City's active nightlife.  The cast is uniformly superb - especially Los Angeles-raised Madison with her Brooklyn accent, as well as Yura Borisov as an empathetic henchman - and it acts as a warning to ladies to be wary of "easy escapes" out of sex work ... and is a stellar example of how Vanya's "affluenza" prevents him from recognizing Ani as an actual human and not another commodity.