Member review

Tangerine: "the transgender revenge comedy of the year". I have a feeling that is because there were no other transgender revenge comedies this year. In fact this might be the only one of its kind. Unfortunately transgender characters rarely appear in film or TV and on the rare occasions they do, they are the punchline. Or the punch line is that they're not a "real" man/ woman so a film that genuinely supports the transgender community is amazing. What's best about the film is that although there are transgender actors playing transgender characters it's not a transgender film. This film glazes over the fact that they are transgender, which is how it should work. This film was marketed on the basis that it was the first feature film to use only iPhone 5s. In some ways it was incredible quality for a camera on a phone but overall the film looked grainy, it certainly wasn't HD which did result in making the film look amateurish. Following that note, It seemed like a student film in quite a few ways. The dialogue seemed rather cheesy at times, often the language sounded like a 40 year old trying to "#GetDownWithTheKidz". Slang although current now locks the film into a certain time period rather than keeling it timeless. The sound editing was off at times such as loud dubstep music smashing in and out with no grace or elegance. The acting was very good especially for actors that hasn't played many big roles before. The jokes and comedy were well written and did manage to crack a smile and a few laughs out of me. This film had a lot of potential and unfortunately I don't think that potential was entirely fulfilled, although things may have been different if the budget was bigger. Tangerine has a rating of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, even though I do disagree with this, it was still an above-average film that supported rather than insulted the LGBT+ community like a lot of transgender films. I give this a 6.5/10 and I hope more films follow suit.