If there’s one name even non-movie lovers will remember from the 2025 Oscars, it’s “Anora.”
The indie sex-worker dramedy earned director Sean Baker a whopping four Academy Awards for the film (for Original Screenplay, Film Editing, Best Director and Best Picture), matching the long-standing record of Walt Disney.
And it scored star Mikey Madison — who plays the titular Anora “Ani” Mikheeva, a 23-year-old Brighton Beach stripper whose Cinderella dreams of living happily ever after with the son of a rich Russian oligarch get brutally squashed when his parents and their henchmen find out they eloped in Las Vegas — her first Oscar for Best Actress.
Where to stream ‘Anora’
“Anora” begins streaming on Hulu on Monday, March 17
“Anora” wowed audiences not only with its lively screwball action, profanity-laden brazenness and glossy strip-club atmosphere but also its bare vulnerability. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film boasts a 93% approval rating from 300-plus reviews.
If you want to see more where that came from, you can obviously stream Baker’s other feature films, including “Tangerine,” “The Florida Project” and “Red Rocket,” or you can check out these five great movies like “Anora” below, all of which possess a similar blend of chaos and complexity as this year’s Best Picture winner.
‘Zola’
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If you were on social media in the past decade, you no doubt came across the viral 148-tweet thread posted by Detroit waitress A’Ziah “Zola” King to Twitter in 2015.
Clearly the editors at Rolling Stone did, as they published an entire article on it, calling the true story “the greatest stripper saga ever.” And so did filmmaker Janicza Bravo, who then turned that article into this 2020 black comedy-crime flick.
The zany, stylish film follows waitress-slash-stripper Zola (played by Taylour Paige), who is invited by fellow dancer Stefani (Riley Keough) to join her — as well as Stefani’s mysterious roommate X (Colman Domingo) and her dimwitted boyfriend Derrek — on a road trip to Tampa, Florida, where the women could earn major money dancing.
However, things quickly go off the rails when it becomes clear that Stefani wasn’t exactly upfront about the trip, and their travels become tangled up in all sorts of debauchery, from prostitution rackets to gang violence.
► Rent/buy on Amazon or Apple
‘Boogie Nights’
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Set in Los Angeles’s San Fernando Valley in 1977, this groovy Paul Thomas Anderson classic is widely regarded as not only one of the best ’90s movies but one of the best films of all time.
Powered by an all-star cast that includes Mark Wahlberg, Julianne Moore, Burt Reynolds, Don Cheadle, John C. Reilly, William H. Macy and the late, great Philip Seymour Hoffman, the Oscar-nominated “Boogie Nights” chronicles the transformation of teenage busboy Eddie Adams (a breakout Wahlberg) into porn superstar Dirk Diggler.
“Boogie Nights” is a sprawling satire packed with all of the decadent glamor and damaging excess of the era, but with a surprising amount of tenderness given the raunchy subject matter.
► Rent/buy on Amazon or Apple TV
‘Uncut Gems’
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There’s a lot of overlap in both the style and scope of Sean Baker’s films and those of Josh and Benny Safdie, the brother-director duo behind titles like “Good Time,” “Daddy Longlegs” and the upcoming “Marty Supreme.”
The filmmakers trade in gritty neo-realism, often populating their movies with non-actors and plopping viewers into the hectic hustle of America’s working-class communities.
And speaking of hectic, no Safdie Brothers movie is more anxiety-inducing than 2019’s “Uncut Gems,” led by an against-type Adam Sandler as Howard Ratner, a Jewish-American jeweler with an unfortunate gambling addiction who must race around New York City to retrieve a 600-carat black opal he purchased in order to pay off his debts.
Fast-paced to the point of frenzy, the audacious film teeters between dark comedy and psychological thriller and pulls off that high-wire act.
► Rent/buy on Amazon or Apple
‘Hustlers’
![Hustlers | Official Trailer [HD] | Own it Now on Digital HD, Blu-Ray & DVD - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/P_dfc0iqmig/maxresdefault.jpg)
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Another fact-is-stranger-than-fiction story, Lorene Scafaria’s 2019 dramedy “Hustlers” is based on a real-life crime ring made up of New York City strippers who stole hundreds of thousands of dollars by drugging wealthy Wall Street stock traders and CEOs who visited their club, then running up the men’s credit cards.
At the center of the film’s gang, which includes Keke Palmer, Lizzo, Lili Reinhart and Cardi B., is veteran stripper Ramona Vega — played excellently by Jennifer Lopez, who earned a Golden Globe nomination for her performance — who takes younger dancer and single mom Destiny (Constance Wu) under her wing.
On Rotten Tomatoes, where the title holds a strong approval rating of 88%, critical consensus calls Lopez’s acting “a career-best performance” and praises “Hustlers” as “a uniquely empowering heist drama with depth and intelligence to match its striking visual appeal.”
► Rent/buy on Amazon or Apple TV
‘Spring Breakers’
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Written and directed by Harmony Korine (“Kids”, “Gummo”), “Spring Breakers” is a coming-of-age cautionary tale that captures the same kind of fantastical, frolicking rise and catastrophic downfall as “Anora.”
Instead of one young woman, though, we’ve got four college-aged gals — played by Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and the director’s wife, Rachel Korine — on a trip down to St. Petersburg, Florida for spring break, where they get pulled into a dangerous cycle of drugs and debauchery via a dealer-slash-rapper named Alien (an extra-smarmy James Franco).
The initial titillation of machine gun-waving bikini babes turns transgressive as Korine and co. swerves that trashy celebration into a satire on the vacuousness and recklessness of modern-day youth.
► Watch on Hulu
