Sure. Right. Yeah. But come on.

A tale of Russian oligarchs and a first-gen immigrant sex worker’s tangle with them — the exploited and the exploiters switching roles, if only briefly — is a movie of the moment, of this dark American moment?

For my money, “The Substance” had more to say to women than our Best Actress/Best Picture etc. winner. And for damned sure Demi Moore gave a better performance playing the hell out of a more fascinating character than Oscar’s Best Actress winner.

Sean Baker’s obsession with sex workers and that exploited and increasingly threatened corner of American life has paid off with a dominant night at the Oscars. But “The Florida Project” was his best film, one that had more to say, and “Tangerine” had more edge and a lot more laughs.

Screen scrolling The Morning After the Oscars has produced a “generational” disconnect for the five time Oscar winner, with one some of the most salient points being made on Gen Z Central, Reddit.

“We must be rich while we’re young or what’s the point of life?”

It’s a slippery, sex-lubed saga (the damned thing was too long, too) to try and get a handle on in terms of its appeal. The story is simple to the point of simplistic, and the “improvised” dialogue is nothing to quote on a T-shirt, or quote period.

Films gather a “cachet,” and one can point to “The Brutalist,” the Best Animated Feature winner “Flow” and “Anora” as having that this year, the movies eating up a lot of major media outlet conversation. Most years, that cachet carries the day. But is anybody still talking about “The Artist” or “The Shape of Water?”

An editor I had early in my career used to quote her grandmother whenever given evidence of a further slide into depravity by the culture, as evidenced in film, media or politics.

“Fall of Rome,” she’d mutter. “Fall of Rome.”

So here we are, another Oscars where the “message” Hollywood is sending is a sort of futile shout into the void and against the grain, and not against a nation sliding into Russian oligarchical fascism.

Our only champion here is a sex worker determined to land her whale or at least get her cut. That’s “Golly, we really ARE doomed” dark.