“Tangerine” is the kind of film you probably wouldn’t have seen five or 10 years ago. For one, it was shot on an iPhone 5s (several, actually) and stars two transgendered actors. The last mainstream – albeit indie – film to feature a transgendered main was “Transamerica” (2005), in which Felicity Huffman played the cross-gendered protagonist; she was deservingly nominated for an Academy Award in the Best Actress category. “Tangerine” was clearly conceived and shot long before the public transition of Caitlyn Jenner, but the conjunction of the two points to a fresh ripple in the zeitgeist.
Beyond the tightly coiled energy of Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, who plays Sin-Dee, a motormouth streetwalker newly out of jail and anxious to catch up to her cheating beau, what makes “Tangerine” kick is the fantastic editing and scoring by Sean Baker, who also writes, directs and shoots. The combination boasts a kinetic buzz that simultaneously emulates and accents Sin-Dee’s vulnerable rage as she plows through trash-strewn streets and seedy alleys looking for Chester (James Ransone) who, as her bestie Alexandra (Mya Taylor) puts it, has taken up with “a real bitch, vagina and all, real bitch.” (If the word offends, skip “Tangerine.” because it’s dropped as frequently as the article “the”).
The film begins and ends in a doughnut shop in a gritty section of West Hollywood, but follows three threads: Sin-Dee, collaring the other woman, Dinah (Mickey O’Hagan) in the middle of a trailer park-esque sex party – a depraved scene down at a level reserved for the likes of (early) John Waters and Harmony Korine; Alexandra, wandering through the burnt-out industrial landscape worried about Sin-Dee and mixing it up with a few johns – she points out to one parsimonious trick that she’s “got a dick too” and is willing to throw down to collect her pay; and Razmik (Karren Karagulian), a married Armenian taxi driver who likes to perform oral on transgendered beings of the night. A meet-up with Chester becomes inevitable.
It also happens to be Christmas Eve, bringing into sharp focus the freedom, hopelessness and loneliness of life on the street. But as the frenetic climax comes, “Tangerine” slips up, losing some of its mojo – where there once hung a stocking stuffed with edginess and unpredictability, something like a JV Judd Apatow effort fills the sock.
No matter. What Baker has cooked up here with verve, can-do, vision and a stellar effort from a cast who feel like they genuinely inhabit the skins of their characters should register as a jewel of wonderment and is most certainly a promise of bigger things to come.
Heineman gained a perilous unlimited access to his subjects; it might be more accurate to say he’s embedded. The film begins with the steamy nighttime capture of an outdoor meth lab where the brewers wear bandannas to conceal their faces from the camera – and the noxious vapors. They do what they do out of opportunity. “As long as god allows it, we make drugs,” one offers meekly. They learned how to make their cocktail from an American chemist and his son. (Maybe Walter White is still kicking around?)
Much of what propels “Genisys” lies in the basis for James Cameron’s game-changing B-film some 30 years ago: the notion of rewinding the clock and altering history and destiny. Wrinkles upon wrinkle in time have changed the game so much you almost can’t tell where rebel leader John Connor (Jason Clarke, with a scar-marred face) ends and Skynet begins.
The roots for the documentary go back to when Moselle ran into the boys, a.k.a. the Wolfpack, on the street, caught by their eye-catching long hair (down to their waists) and demeanor. What unfolds is talking heads and recreations looking back to their early childhood, when the boys were kept under lock and key. Their father, Oscar, a Hare Krishna who met their mother, Susan, in his native Peru, blessed all his offspring with uber-long Sanskrit names. As a patriarch and a man, Oscar’s more hippie than overbearing despot, but his logic – to lock the boys within the plastered walls of a tenement apartment in the projects to keep them safe from outside harm and violence lurking in the streets – seems odd given the blood-soaked nature of their cinematic diet.
Bujalski’s first film cost just $30,000 to make (it grossed about $75,000) and starred no-name actors; here he’s blessed with the reliable Guy Pearce, Cobie Smulders (Agent Maria Hill in the “Avengers” movie and “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” television series) and character actor Kevin Corrigan (“Superbad” and “Goodfellas”) who steps to the fore and delivers a knockout performance. “Results” is based on the well-being fad, in which everyone wants to get physically and emotionally fit and fortified. Danny (Corrigan) newly and painfully out of a marriage he didn’t want to exit, transplants to Austin. He’s doughy, rich and angry. He also wants to be able to take a punch, so he signs up for a personal trainer at Power for Life, a boutique health spa run by Trevor (a gaunt and toned Pearce) who pushes the philosophy that wellness is more than physical beauty, even though his crew of crack coaches look like magazine cover specimens. The upbeat but aggressive Kat (Smulders) gets the assign and spends time at Danny’s palatial spread trying to get him lean and buff, but he drags her down into his routine of single-malt scotch and weed. Turns out she’s a bit depressed and angry too. If there’s a deadbeat client, Kat’s more than happy to switch over to into loan collector mode, and boy can she run – look out Lola, she’s on your tail. 
For What it's Worth 