'Tangerine': EW review

Director Sean Baker (Starlet, Take Out) tells stories of the scrappy, messy, all-too-human people who are ignored by Hollywood—both the industry and the L.A. neighborhood that is the setting for his latest lewd, exuberant comedy. Tangerine follows a pair of transgender prostitutes (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez and Mya Taylor) amid the strip malls and doughnut shops of Santa Monica Boulevard on an action-packed Christmas Eve. Baker shot the film on an iPhone 5s, giving it a great liberated, lens-flared feel. And despite the ribald John Waters tone—including a sex act performed during a car wash—Tangerine is touching for its non-condescending stance toward working girls and the spirit of the sidewalk. A–

• 

  By Joe McGovern