Sean Baker’s ‘Tangerine’

February 5, 2015
Film

BEST OF SUNDANCE 2015

Hellin Kay, stylist and editor of Champagne and Heels, picks her favorite films from this year’s Sundance Film Festival.

Tangerine
Directed by Sean Baker and starring James Ransone, this is an old-school throwback to real indie films. The movie is shot almost entirely on an iPhone 5S, with almost no budget, but a really great story, which follows a transgender woman on Christmas Eve as she hunts down the pimp who broke her heart.

Dope
A great script, cool young cast, and a story full of heart, soul, depth, music, intelligence, and just the right touch of political undertones. Rick Famuyiwa directed this breath of fresh funny air, which Forest Whitaker produced, about young Malcolm (played by Shameik Moore) and his friends as they navigate high school through a bad neighborhood, bullies, and adults who constantly disappoint.

The Stanford Prison Experiment
Directed by Kyle Patrick Alvarez, and starring Billy Crudup, Gaius Charles, Olivia Thirlby, and Ezra Miller, the film is an account of a six-day psychological study, exploring the power dynamic between prisoners and guards, that took place in 1971. It was supposed to be two weeks but the “subjects” were so traumatized that it had to be stopped. What transpires is not a good look for humanity, but definitely makes for a great film.

James White
This is exactly the kind of raw, itchy film I love. Directed by John Mond—who is part of Borderline Films, where they take turns directing the films they produce and in the past has resulted in the incredibly brilliant and creepy Martha Marcy May Marlene (Sundance 2011)—this film stars Christopher Abbott and Cynthia Nixon. Abbott plays a twenty-something New York City kid who goes from losing a father to dealing with his mother’s (Cynthia Nixon) cancer while on a semi-nihilistic tour of post-adolescent angst and an inability to deal with reality.

Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Alfonso Gomez-Rejon directed this tearjerker about two high school kids (Thomas Mann and RJ Cyler) who befriend a young girl (Olivia Cooke) dying of cancer. Nick Offerman, Connie Britton, and Molly Shannon (where has this funny lady been?) star as the adults in the quirky equation, which makes this a must-see, aside from the fact that it won two of the major prizes at this year’s festival.

The Diary of a Teenage Girl
Alexander Skarsgård stars as a 38-year-old man who sleeps with his girlfriend’s fifteen-year-old daughter (Bel Powley), in the directorial debut of actress Marielle Heller, who also wrote the screenplay of this Sundance hit. Kristen Wiig plays the mom in this story of sexual precociousness, which turns out not to be as lecherous or salacious as the storyline may imply, set in 1976 San Francisco.

The Wolfpack
Crystal Moselle’s fascinating documentary about a family with seven kids who have essentially grown up as shut-ins, living in government housing on the Lower East Side of New York. Disturbing, yet hopeful, it is a unique view of a situation most of us have never seen before. Watching the six brothers and their sister grow into themselves and out of the cocoon built for them by their parents is at times shocking and infuriating, but anything but boring. The six boys spend a lot of time recreating Hollywood films in their living room and we get the sense that one of the boys will be bringing his own film to Sundance someday.

Digging For Fire
Joe Swanberg, the current Whit Stillman, does young privileged white people problems really well. The cast reads like a who’s who of cool young Hollywood, starring Rosemarie de Witt and Jake Johnson, both of whom I love, with Sam Rockwell, Ron Livingston, Anna Kendrick, Chris Messina, Orlando Bloom, Jenny Slate, Brie Larson, and Melanie Lynskey. It’s a fun, easy film about a married couple with a new baby trying to find their way to themselves again.

Z for Zachariah
An unconventional story directed by Craig Zobel (Compliance, 2012) of the last woman left alive in a small American town, played by Margot Robbie, who befriends two men (first Chiwetel Ejiofor and then Chris Pine) wandering a post-apocalyptic land. Although the tone grazed the surface much more than his last film, and was paced more conventionally, I was still taken in by the story, the acting, and compelling nature of it.

What Happened, Miss Simone?
This documentary, directed by Liz Garbus, gives a deeply personal view of Nina Simone’s life, work, and family throughout decades of extreme change in this country. The film is timely, packed with archival footage of the Selma march, speeches by Malcolm X and Stokely Carmichael, as well as the Shabazz daughters, who grew up with Lisa Simone, Nina’s daughter and the producer of the film.

Take Me to the River
Matt Sobel wrote, produced, and directed his début film, which has a creepy, perpetually-on-the-edge-of-your-sexual-seat kind of vibe until the end of the film, when you finally find out what the big secret is and what the hell is really going on with this family. Newcomer Logan Miller plays the gay California teen that accompanies his parents on this twisted family reunion to Nebraska and is at the center of all the drama.

The End of the Tour
I can never get enough of films that delve into the perpetually haunting existential dialogue we all have as artists. The script of this quiet narrative is based on a book by David Lipsky (played by Jesse Eisenberg) about his travels on a book tour with writer David Foster Wallace, who kills himself twelve years after this particular tour ends at the age of forty-six. It’s a slow-burn film which delivers a lot of heart, soul, and depth. The film’s director James Ponsoldt also directed The Spectacular Now in 2013, which I loved.

Mistress America
Noah Baumbach’s latest collaboration with Greta Gerwig (they co-wrote the script and she plays the lead muse Brooke) has that cool, slightly lost, always-on-the-brink-of-a-crisis, liberal-arts-college-graduate tone that the kids from the suburbs who now live in the city tend to love. Lola Kirke plays opposite Greta as her soon to be stepsister, as the two navigate their new relationship and some unexpected adventures with ex-lovers, future business partners, and sometime friends.

Going Clear
Based on the book of the same name written by Lawrence Wright and published in 2013, this is the much-anticipated documentary, directed by Alex Gibney, about Scientology. Should be out in limited release on both coasts soon, and will air on HBO in March.

Welcome to Leith
Michael Beach Nichols and Christopher K. Walker’s documentary spans a year the filmmakers spent covering the ridiculous antics of Craig Cobb, a white supremacist who tried to start a whites-only colony in Leith, North Dakota, by buying up plots of land and giving the deeds to other Nazis. It’s pretty disturbing to hear them talk, but worth keeping in mind that these idiots make up about 125,000 people in a country of 316 million and, thankfully, the Southern Poverty Law Center keeps them in check.

Vincent Lacoste Is French Film's Rising MVP

In the winking new film On a Magical Night, the charming young actor continues his Cannes-approved collaboration with director Christophe Honoré as the younger version of a philandering professor’s husband, guiding her on a trip through her own past.

Anders Hayward Is a New Kind of Triple Threat

As he makes his feature début as a teenager dealing with existential ennui in the gritty new film Run, the dancer-turned-model-turned-actor expands his study of character in a new direction, finding himself in a range of new projects, whether on the page, the stage, or the screen.

Julia Fox Finds Her Way

After stints as a designer, an artist, a club kid, and a dominatrix, the breakout star of Josh and Benny Safdie’s visceral Uncut Gems is ready to take on the movie industry.

Anson Boon Wants to Get Inside Your Mind

Whether onstage in the three-hander “Master Harold”…and the Boys or in Sam Mendes’s Golden Globe-winning, big-budget World War I epic 1917, the young English actor puts his natural curiosity to use in every project he tackles.

Naoki Kobayashi Dances Onto the World Stage

With his English-language début as an enigmatic photographer caught in a love triangle with Alicia Vikander’s Lucy and Riley Keough’s Lily in Earthquake Bird, the Japanese dancer-turned-actor brings his intense presence to new audiences.

Gabriel Luna Is a Terminator With Heart

As a murderous Rev-9 in the new Terminator: Dark Fate, the Texan pulls from his real-life experiences and natural charisma and steps into the shoes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Robert Patrick as a robot who is almost, but not quite, terrifyingly human.

Michael Tyburski Finds the Silence in New York City

In his first feature, The Sound of Silence, starring Peter Sarsgaard as a house tuner and sound theorist who suffers a crisis of faith caused by a client played by Rashida Jones, the director celebrates the quiet he uncovers in a “New York City love letter.”

Thomasin McKenzie Is This Fall's Busiest Breakout Star

With three major films this season—David Michôd’s The King; Justin Kurzel’s True History of the Kelly Gang; and Taika Waititi’s TIFF prizewinner Jojo Rabbit, about a young Nazi and his imaginary friend Hitler—the New Zealander proves herself with a string of powerful and fascinating projects.

Natalia Dyer Finds Her Own Way

Three years into playing “badass” older sister Nancy Wheeler, the Stranger Things star takes stock of where she’s been and considers where she’s going as the sci-fi series continues its global domination.

Théodore Pellerin Is a True Believer

As Cody, a mid-level operator in a pyramid scheme in the dark new Showtime comedy On Becoming a God in Central Florida, the Québécois actor strikes a balance between desperation and vitality—all in his second language.

Kelvin Harrison Jr Tackles the Trope of Black Exceptionalism in 'Luce'

In Julius Onah’s bracing new film, the rising young actor investigates the burdens of identity and expectation as a former child soldier-turned-model student rejecting the system around him.

Viveik Kalra Wants to Make Himself Seen

As an aspiring writer newly enamored of Bruce Springsteen in an English working-class town in the Eighties, the young actor pushes forward in his quest to reframe the way minorities are portrayed onscreen in the new film Blinded by the Light.

Alice Englert On the Perils of Charming Snakes

After roles in Beautiful Creatures and Top of the Lake, the Australian actor makes a star turn in the new film Them That Follow, as the daughter of a pastor of a snake-handling sect in Appalachia who loses her religion.

Rhianne Barreto Is Worth Moving to Another Country For

After her American visa was denied, the English actor found herself in Canada making her feature début as the lead of Pippa Bianco’s striking new HBO film Share, as a teenager coming to terms with the boundaries of consent after she awakes from a night of heavy drinking.

Aldis Hodge Wants His Fiction to Change the Real World

With roles in Showtime’s new Boston cop drama City on a Hill and the forthcoming film Brian Banks as the eponymous real-life NFL player who spent years fighting a wrongful conviction of rape, the actor looks to stretch his talents in projects that tackle institutional racism in the real world from both inside and out.

Russell Tovey Is Terrified of the Future

The English actor soldiers through a bleak future in the new HBO series Years and Years, illuminating the refugee crisis as the moral center of a Manchester family buffeted by a distressing world that is just like our own—only more so.

Will Poulter Tackles the Real World On Screen

The English actor continues his run of projects tackling essential real-world issues—from racism and authority in Detroit and colonialism in The Revenant to bullying in his teenage début Son of Rambow—in Hereditary director Ari Aster’s new film Midsommar as a young man surging with toxic masculinity on a boys’ trip gone very wrong.

Maude Apatow Carves Her Own Path

As the quieter foil to Zendaya’s Rue on the striking new HBO teen drama Euphoria, the born-and-bred Angeleno continues to step out on her own as she pursues projects that increase representation and new voices onscreen.