Tangerine (Sean Baker – 2015) A-

I love these “surprise” movies (which after the fact I found out it was filmed on an iPhone! pretty cool). Every Christmas Eve I stay up very late and watch a random movie, usually and indie and possibly unknown to me. This has a bonus that it is also set in one day on Christmas Eve in L.A. It’s an energetic emotional and sometimes very funny film about a transgender prostitute who is on a mission to get to the bottom of who her pimp/boyfriend is cheating on her with. We also get a related and intertwining story of an Armenian cab driver and his family issues along the way. The way everyone performs and how the movie is shot, almost in a different Los Angeles that we have never seen before, is fantastic. It all makes sense and the final scenes are a logical and sweet payoff.