Tangerina (2015)

**On the Christmas eve in the LA streets.**

Just one day event based theme and brilliantly made film. This film was made using iPhone 5s and this is not some film school project. The quality was really top notch, with great performances by all who involved in. I have never seen such perfectly rendered transgender story. I mean no offense, but it looked so real. Hats off to the director, writer and the actors.

Last year, there were some talks about this film's chances at the Oscars, but in the end it did not make. So after that I kind of lost interest in it, but now I had an opportunity to watch and I liked it very much. How a simple story and its simple characters developed were the highlights. You can't predict this stuff, because you won't know what comes after the each twist.

Most of the film takes place on the evening time, so that colour of the sky is what the title represents. I don't think anybody would dislike this film. It was slow, but short and sweet. One of the best films from the 2015. You much choose this to watch for its uniqueness in the filmmaking and the storytelling. In addition to that, it also entertains, so there's your reason to go for it.

_7/10_

So it was all filmed on my favourite iPhone - the 5S. I had one until only recently when the failing battery finally forced me onto the 12 mini. Aside from that impressive technical feat, though, this really isn't anything special. "Sin-Dee" (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) gets out of jail after a 28 day stint for possession, only to find that the guy she took the fall for - her boyfriend "Chester" (James Ransone) has been fooling around with "Dinah" (Mickey O'Hagan). Livid, she sets off with her best friend "Alexandra" (Mya Taylor) to find this woman and to confront her beau with his treachery. Meantime, cabbie "Razmik" (Karren Karagulian) breaks up that narrative with some quite entertaining vignettes with his passengers. "Mia", a man named after a bird, a couple who have been over-indulging in pre-Christmas booze - and leave him a smelly, unwanted gift - all whilst he cruises for some transvestite action in an alleyway. The stories gradually merge together as it turns out the married Armenian driver has the hots for "Sin-Dee" and it all comes to an head in a donut shop with his wife, child, mother-in-law as well! The handheld photography is intimate, presenting us with a fly on the wall style documentary around half a dozen not especially nice or interesting people going about their lives. It is made largely on the move, there is rarely a let up as the story fluidly moves along - but that story is frankly pretty lame. "Sin-Dee" drags "Dinah" around downtown LA in her bare feet at will; nobody intervenes - even when she drags her onto a bus! The dialogue is weak and angry, the characters selfish and I found that after about half an hour I just couldn't really care less about any of them. Is it supposed to be about friendship? They all appear to be as ready to betray each other as to get up in the morning. Sean Baker does create a film here that is intense, but there is nothing to hook the audience. If this were documentary on transvestite hookers in LA, then it would show nobody in anything like a sympathetic light and adding dialogue to that doesn't change that basic sentiment. As an example of how film-making is going to change profoundly with the advent of small, hand-held, filming technologies this is a great example of a flexible and portable technique. As a story about people, it is pretty miserable.

Filming on consistently overpriced hardware that is a manifest of chokepoint capitalism (term coined by Cory Doctorow) is not enough make great cinema.