Tangerine

My friend put me on to this, with no mention at all of what it was about... so totally unexpected. What I really liked about Tangerine is that it didn't pull its punches. None of the main characters are 100% hero or villain... everyone is sad/funny/cruel/kind at some point. I can't say I'd want to hang out with ANYONE in this movie... but they're all presented as complex characters, people, which is great.

I can see why John Waters liked it, it does remind me a bit of his earlier films with their various crazed characters in crazed worlds... though Tangerine feels much more real and gritty than any of those Waters films, which were heavy with fantasy.

Anyway, it's excellent... I hope it garners a huge following and we start getting more films like this and less superhero trash.

I saw this Premiere at Sundance 2015. This is what a Sundance film should be. You start watching at a distance. The subject matter of prostitutes, pimps, drugs, sex, homosexuality and gender roles is foreign to most and even repulsive to some. But that's the beauty. It draws you in...you start to care about the characters, you start to laugh with them. You then admire their pluck. You feel their frustration, sadness and even shame. Then you identify with it. Then, eventually, you admire it. Finally, what you see are human beings with the same, or even better, values that you have. The music is cutting edge street sound that propels you along the LA sidewalks and, combined with the colors of the film (i.e. tangerine), it pulls you into the brash and jolting life on some of the worse streets of LA. The power of the film is that, in powerful ways, that street community seems a better home than you have in safe suburbia. This is what indie film should be.....it takes a different subject matter, perhaps something disturbing, draws you in and changes the way you view the world. Forever. Not just during the course of a film festival.

Even better, this film was shot entirely on three iPhone 5s. At the Premiere, the audience audibly gasped when this fact rolled on screen during the credits. Another thing an indie film should do...change the way you look at how films can be made. (I'm actually going to try to make a film this summer...seriously).

This film should have won the Sundance NEXT award....and probably would have if it was not by audience vote. This is not mainstream..it is an independent film. This film will change your life.

P.S. Both female leads were powerful and legitimate, in every sense of that word. But Kiki Kitana Rodriguez has screen presence and karma enough to fill Dodger Stadium one hundred times over. I could watch her for yours, and hope we all have a chance to do so again.

This was just a complete free for all! I didn't know about this film until watching The Florida Project. This was moving in just the same way. I liked these people and I disliked these people. I was fully invested. Point being, I cared about them as PEOPLE. I saw Starlet as well a while ago, but it didn't grab me like this and Florida. More, please.

Glad to see the theater packed for this one. The way it was shot feels like a documentary, but the raw subject matter and unpolished acting were in-your-face in the best ways. There's no time to judge these fast-moving, trans-gendered prostitutes, and why would you? Everything's f***ed up. Family people are not what they seem, everyone's motivations are unique, people are desperate for acceptance, affection and enough money to make it to the next day. They play the hands they're dealt, like all of us, spinning around and around, trying to get answers and making stupid mistakes along the way. In the end, it's still a friendship movie, not a package with a shiny, redeeming bow. Sick of safe, sanitized, statistical NPR? Here's your movie.

The first thing everyone always says about Tangerine is that it's shot on iPhones. That is true. IPhone 5's, three of them, with an added lens and a stabilising gimble. It's not a gimmick though. Take that fact away and this is still an impressive film. Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) is a transgendered prostitute, who's just found out that her pimp boyfriend Chester (James Ransome) is cheating on her. Taking to the sunkissed and dirty streets of LA, she's on a mission with friend Alexandra (Mya Taylor) to sort Chester and Dinah (Mickey O'Hagan) the girl he's cheating with out. Although cut conventionally, a lot of it feels very real, honest, unscripted. The choice of kit will certainly help with this, but it doesn't feel cheap. Apparently it's Christmas Eve and Alexandra is planning an event. A event Sin-Dee needs to be at, but her somewhat aggressive sleuthing is getting in the way. Christmas in LA looks weird to me, not a hint of snow and certainly not the way this film is graded. Everything is bathed in burnt orange... hence the name. I want to like it more than I do, maybe because I admire what it's trying to do and how it's doing it, but it's not an easy watch. It plods a little in places, despite the larger than life characters and a pulsating score and Sin-Dee isn't the easiest character to like. That said, although I wouldn't categorise this as enjoyable, it's still an interesting film. Funny, bleak and chaotic.