Anora

Today we have Criterion's release of Sean Baker's biggest film yet, Anora.  And by biggest, I guess I mean mostly in terms of accolades.  It just won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Director, Actress, Editing and Original Screenplay, plus a nomination for Supporting Actor.  And that's not getting into the Palme d'Or, its many BAFTAs and all its other prizes.  Compare that to his previous pinnacle, The Florida Project, which just got the one nomination for Dafoe.  Criterion's already been working with Baker, though.  They released his early film, Take Out, in 2022, and one of his more obscure films, Prince of Broadway, is scheduled for next week.  Maybe next year we can look forward to a Greg the Bunny boxed set.  Anyway, Anora.  It's just come out this month and is available in a 2-disc DVD set, a 2-disc BD set and a 3-disc UHD/ BD combo-pack.

Anora, starring Mikey Madison (Once Upon a Time In Hollywood, Scream 5) and Karren Karagulian (who's been in all of Baker's films), feels a bit like the perfection of themes Baker's been developing throughout his earlier work.  I mean, this is what, his fifth film about sex workers in a row?  And he's announced that his next will be, too.  This man is definitely settling into a groove.  Anora's living conditions with her sister and her boyfriend feel like a reprise of Starlet, and her desperate search for her husband Vonya throughout Coney Island plays almost like a remake of Sin-Dee's search for Chester throughout Hollywood in Tangerine.  But what the hell, we don't get mad at Dario Argento for making more and more giallos about black gloved killers.  And Baker is definitely in his Tenebrae period now, not his Card Player, so settle in and enjoy.

2025 Criterion BD top; 2025 Criterion UHD bottom.

2025 Criterion BD left; 2025 Criterion UHD right.

Anora is presented in its OAR of 2.39:1.  There's nothing about the transfer in the enclosed booklet.  This film was shot on 35mm, but as a brand new release, I'm sure Criterion was just given the same DCP Neon's been screening; they wouldn't have done any film scanning or restoration on their own.  There's a definite jump in PQ from the BD to the UHD, though, just from the resolution bump alone.  We can just about read that "11 23" window tag on either disc, but it's a pixelated mess on the BD compared to the smooth photo-realism of the UHD.  And the HDR breathes a little m ore life into this film's many shadows, though the club and neon sign colors are attractively vibrant on either disc.  Really, you can't go wrong, but the UHD does go that extra mile, and then even a little bit more.

Both discs also have the 5.1 audio track in DTS-HD with optional English subtitles.  In addition, there's an audio descriptive track in Dolby 2.0.

The extras package is really nice here.  Some Criterions have been getting rather light in recent years, but they're pulling out all the stops for Anora.  First off, there are two lively audio commentaries.  The first is Baker with his DP and producers, where they're having fun but still staying relatively focused and giving out a lot of behind the scenes information.  It does veer towards the technical at times, especially when the DP starts talking about the lighting, but personally I dug it.  Then Baker is back on the second track with his stars, Madison and Karagulian.  In addition, three of the Russian supporting players have comments edited into the track during their key scenes.  It's a good track, too, but Baker wastes a lot of time repeating himself (i.e. he points out every cameo from his earlier films in both audio commentaries, makes the same observations about the locations, etc).  But they're ample enough that I'd recommend both.

That repetition does leak into some of the other extras, too.  We've got an on-camera interview with Baker, a joint interview with him and Madison and a press conference with many of the cast and crew at Cannes.  Then there's another press conference specifically for sex workers with Madison and co-star Lindsay Normington, which is a bit silly.  For instance when Normington first brings up the term a big graphic comes up giving the dictionary definition of "sex worker," as if anybody on Earth would have made it to the special features blu-ray of Anora without knowing what it meant (and it's completely self-explanatory in the first place).  And anecdotes are getting repeated throughout all of these features, so viewers may prefer to skip around rather than watch everything all the way through.

One thing you should definitely not skip, though, is the feature length 'making of' doc, comprised entirely of on-set footage that takes us through every single day of shooting.  Additionally, there are a handful of deleted scenes (two of which I think they maybe should've kept in the movie), audition footage for many of the supporting cast members, and three trailers.  Criterion's combo-pack is a digibook housed inside an outer slipbox with a 24-page booklet with essays by experts Dennis Lim and Kier-La Janisse.

Playing Play It Again, Sam Again

They say physical media is dying, but there have been a lot of exciting blu-ray upgrades in 2025.  And it may not've been high up on the list of fancy, boutique label cult titles, but one of the ones I was most excited to see announced was Play It Again, Sam, a film by... no, not Woody Allen, Herbert Ross.  It stars Woody Allen, and is written by Allen, based on his own Broadway play from 1969.  Allen plays a film critic going through a break-up when he's visited by the spirit of Humphrey Bogart who gives him romantic advice.  It's as silly as it sounds, and some of it's naturally a bit dated, but it still largely holds up as smart and funny.  Diane Keaton and Tony Roberts also reprise their roles from the Broadway version, and Messiah of Evil's Joy Bang plays a small role.

Paramount first released Play It Again on DVD back in 2001.  It was barebones, which frankly most Woody Allen DVDs have been anyway, but at least it was anamorphic widescreen.  They released it the next year in the UK, and reissued it here in the US in 2017, but apart from the British disc being PAL, it's always been the same disc.  It was fine for the time, but it's been feeling pretty creaky for the past decade.  And finally, 2025 was the year.  It was restored in 4k and released on blu in the US by Kino and Australia by Imprint.  I see a lot of people went with the Imprint because it comes with a bonus documentary, but I went Kino.  I'll get into why below.

2001 Paramount DVD top; 2025 Kino Lorber BD bottom.

To Paramount's credit, the old DVD and the new 4k restoration don't look worlds apart.  The color timing is essentially the same, except the blu has slightly deeper blacks.  The framing is very similar, too.  The aspect ratio has shifted from 1.77:1 to 1.85:1, which mostly comes down to fixing a slight pinch.  The benefit all comes in the jump to HD.  Finer edges replace the typical softness of SD, and yes, more detail comes into focus.  We can now read the title of that book on Woody's desk ("THE COLLECTOR").  The DVD also has some light haloing, which the BD fixes.  Film grain is visible for the first time and fairly distinct.  It's captured a little unevenly, something that would surely come off much better on an actual UHD.  But for a 1080, this is pleasingly film-like.

Paramount's DVD offers the original mono track in Dolby 2.0 with optional English subs and a mono French dub.  Kino keeps the subs and bumps the audio up to DTS-HD, but dumps the dub.

As I said, Paramount's DVDs were all barebones, but the blu-rays give us something.  First of all, both include their own expert audio commentaries.  I've only heard Kino's, but I can tell you it's a solid mix of informative and fun.  Critic Justin Humphreys is joined by writer/ director Alan Spencer (Sledge Hammer, Tomorrow Man).  There's some joking around but they're also prepared to break down the differences between this and the original play and well researched historical info (you'll be surprised who was originally intended to star in this... it wasn't always Woody Allen).  Kino also located the original theatrical trailer (which neither Paramount nor Imprint have) and threw on some bonus trailers.  Both blus also come in slipcovers.  But as I mentioned earlier, Imprint does have one thing Kino doesn't...

2011's Woody Allen: A Documentary was directed by Robert B. Weide, who produced the Marx Bros doc In a Nutshell (which, you may recall, is the one that features an interview with Woody Allen), this is a made for TV, three and a half hour film that originally aired on PBS in two parts.  There's also a cut-down theatrical version that lost over an hour of material, but fortunately, every home video release seems to be the full TV edit, so we can forget all about that hatchet job these days.  This is essentially a career overview, it's not especially biographical, and definitely not interested in his scandals.  They do spend a lot of time with Woody, revisiting his old neighborhood and stopping by the set of his then latest film, You Will Meet a Tall, Dark Stranger; but this mostly consists of interviews with practically all of his collaborators over the years: Diane Keaton, Jack Rollins, Scarlett Johansson, Tony Roberts, Mariel Hemingway, Martin Scorsese, Louise Lasser and so many more.  This is the documentary we'd all hoped we were getting when Allen handed us us Wild Man Blues.

Docurama first released this in a nice, 2-disc DVD set in 2012.  It has special features and everything.  But the doc did air in HD, so us die-hards naturally wanted a blu-ray.  And fortunately, there were a couple of import options who had our backs.  I went with the UK blu from Soda Pictures because it had an additional, exclusive interview.  And now, of course, it's available as a special feature on Imprint's Play It Again blu, but the doc must be in SD, if they're squeezing all 3 and a half hours onto the same disc with the feature and the other extras.

2012 Docurama DVD top; 2012 Soda BD bottom.

There really is a strong difference between the SD and the HD.  Both discs present the film in 1.78:1, although the DVD is slightly off at 1.73:1.  Just like with Play It Again, the DVD's a little pinched.  In this case a little bit moreso.  The DVD colors are also very slightly more feint, which is especially clear in some close-up interview shots, where the subjects appear a bit paler on the DVD.  But mostly it's about the clarity.  You can really see the difference in steady HD shots like that set second above (there's also plenty of vintage footage and film clips from different sources in varying degrees of quality).  Just like you could only read the book title before, here you can clearly read the visible license plate numbers next to those girls on the blu but not the DVD.  And there's some funky compression noise on the DVD when you get in close, that just gives the whole thing a low quality sheen.

The DVDs give you an option between a 5.1 and 2.0 mix with optional English subtitles.  Soda just gives us the 5.1 (which is fine, as that's the actual original mix, and it'll just down mix on your stereo TV anyway) in lossless DTS-HD, also with optional English subs.

Docurama's set includes five deleted scenes/ featurettes ranging from an interview with Weide, 12 questions with Woody to the shortest, a 45-second clip of Allen's mother.  It's not massive, under half an hour's worth of stuff, but any Allen fan who enjoyed the doc will appreciate these.  And these core extras are featured on just about every Woody Allen: A Documentary release, including Soda's and even Imprint's Play It Again blu.

But Soda goes further, with two additional featurettes.  The first is called Woody's Favourite Actor, an interview between Weide and John Doumanian, the actor who's actually been in more of Allen's films (sixteen!) than anyone else.  And the other is a a 16-minute pre-screening Q&A with Weide.  It covers a lot of the same ground as the first director's interview, but hey, I'll take it.  Obviously the Doumanian interview is the bigger prize.  And you won't find either of these on the Docurama set or the Imprint disc.  Soda's blu also includes a bonus trailer for Eames: The Architect and the Painter.

So Imprint's doc is a nice bonus for many viewers, but if you're serious about it, you need the Soda blu anyway.  And at that point, you might as well get whichever Play It Again blu is easier to obtain in your region.  I suppose, if you're really hardcore, you might even want both for the two commentaries.  But they're just experts and presumably cover most of the same ground.  So I'd recommend the Kino/ Soda route, it's how I went myself, but if you're just mildly interested in the doc, I'm sure you'll be more than satisfied with the Imprint and saving the extra cash.