Weekend Watch: Anora, Shrinking Season 2

An exotic dancer finds unlikely love and a therapist goes out of bounds

Image Credit: Neon

Welcome to the latest edition of Weekend Watch, where I recommend (or occasionally warn against) movies or TV shows I’ve been checking out. This week, Mikey Madison breaks out in an unlikely love story and Jason Segel’s therapist dramady goes full sitcom mode. Follow James on Twitter: @jamwhite and Threads/Instagram:@jammerwhite

I practically have critical whiplash from how differently I’ve responded to writer/director Sean Baker’s more recent films. I really enjoyed his breakout, Tangerine, loved his follow-up, The Florida Project and then couldn’t find a single reason to like his last effort, Red Rocket.

Good news –– for me, at least… His latest, Anora swung back to being a charming, sad and often very funny delight.

It’s the story of Anora (played beautifully by Mikey Madison, who I’d always enjoyed on TV series Better Things), an exotic dancer and sex worker who meets spoiled, goofy Russian oligarch scion Ivan (Mark Eydelshteyn) while working at a strip club.

The pair quickly bonds, and their dynamic evolves from transactional sex into something approaching love. They marry in Vegas, and it seems that they’re living a Pretty Woman-style fairy tale. But it all comes crashing down when Ivan’s wealthy parents back in Russia get wind of the unlikely union, dispatch their fixers (a trio played by Karren Karagulian,

Vache Tovmasyan and Yura Borisov, who swing between frustration, menace and incompetence with ease) to get it all sorted.

Baker has managed to craft something here that runs the gamut between laugh-out-loud hilarious (witness the fixers trying to subdue a pissed-off Ani) and painfully, truthfully sad about the way the world works and how a situation such as this might really play out.

The script, direction (boosted by shots of a frosty Brighton Beach, Brooklyn locale) and performances are all excellent, and while I have some quibbles –– it’s a tad flabby in places at two hours and 19 minutes and the actual final scene had me scratching my head –– this is one I can heartily recommend.

Anora is on limited release in US cinemas now and will arrive in the UK on 1 November.

Image Credit: Apple TV+

As a big fan of show producer (and frequent hitmaker) Bill Lawrence, and actors/writers Jason Segel and Brett Goldstein, I was already a likely candidate to enjoy Shrinking, the low-key sitcom that the three created (with Segel starring) that debuted last year on Apple TV+.

It began, as many Lawrence shows do, with a premise that never quite held firm, that of Segel’s Jimmy, a therapist in LA who, after the death of his wife in a drink-driving accident, starts to tell his clients some unvarnished advice for how to live their lives.

Yet while that idea soon dwindled down to really just one client (Heidi Gardner’s abused wife Grace), the real strength of the show began to emerge in another Lawrence specialty –– shows where you’re just happy to spend time with the characters.

That’s thanks to a combination of solid writing and some great performances, including from Jessica Williams, Luke Tennie, Lukita Maxwell, Michael Urie and the third Lawrence stalwart feature, his actor wife Christa Miller, she of the nuclear put-down.

And not to forget Harrison Ford, who is permitted to go full grump as Paul’s senior therapist colleague Paul, a man who suffers fools about as gladly as he deals with his own worsening health via Parkinson’s.

Season 2, after taking a moment to (mostly) wrap up Grace’s storyline, largely focuses on the dynamics between Jimmy, his friends and his daughter (Maxwell, excellent), and that’s no bad thing. Sprinkle in some fresh tension thanks to Goldstein popping up as –– spoiler alert Louis, the depressed man responsible for Jimmy’s wife death –– and some welcome new faces (Damon Wayans Jr. as a potential new beau for Williams’ Gaby), and you’ve got the making of a fun, if often lightweight series.

It’s not going to change the world, but if you’re into its groove, it’ll slap a smile on your face when it’s not playing your heartstrings like a trained harpist. And if you’re worried about it going away, there was the good news this week that it has been renewed for Season 3.

Shrinking Season 2 has launched with its first two episodes. New episodes will debut weekly. I’ve seen 11 of the 12.