film Fantastic Pile of Crap
Kate Mara as Sue Storm and Michael B. Jordan as Johnny Storm face off again.
JOSH TRANK’S SUPERHERO FLICK WILL HAVE YOU ROOTING FOR THE CREDITS Fantastic Four Directed by Josh Trank. Written by Jeremy Slater, Simon Kinberg and Josh Trank. Starring Miles Teller, Michael B. Jordan, Kate Mara and Jamie Bell. Now playing at multiple theaters.
Working Girls TANGERINE IS A NON-EXPLOITATIONAL STORY OF TRANSGENDER HOOKERS OUT FOR JUSTICE AND FRIENDSHIP Tangerine Directed by Sean Baker. Written by Sean Baker and Chris Bergoch. Starring Kitana Kiki Rodriguez, Mya Taylor, Karren Karagulian and James Ransome. Now playing at the Landmark Tivoli Theatre, 6350 Delmar Boulevard, University City. Call 314-727-7271 or visit www.landmarktheatres.com.
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hot on an iPhone 5s modified with a widescreen lens adapter, an $8 imagecontrol app and a Steadicam rig, Sean Baker’s Tangerine has become so closely identified with its unique means of production that the wild and abundant pleasures of its narrative and the inclusive, groundbreaking nature of its cast have received inadequate celebration. That’s to a degree understandable — Baker and co-cinematographer Radium Cheung certainly deserve their accolades for the film’s budget-dictated innovations and its 20
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to be using genius slave labor to construct his teleporter. He told Reed he was getting a full scholarship to a special school, but it appears feverish, color-saturated beauty — but it’s the freshness of Tangerine’s storytelling that truly holds our interest and elevates the work from the category of technical curiosity. A melancholy comedy — extremely funny from moment to moment but imbued with an overall sadness, its SoCal sunshine clouded by the constant threat of catastrophic heartbreak — Tangerine takes place over a single day, a not-very-merry Christmas Eve, in a distinctly unglamorous precinct of LA, with the story unfolding at such mundane, downscale locales as a doughnut shop, Laundromat, car wash, taxi-cab interior and hourly rate motel. Although the film is very much an ensemble, its central characters — and emotional core — are a contrasting pair of transgender sex workers, volatile Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and calming Alexandra (Mya Taylor), and scenes with them appropriately bookend Tangerine. Just released from a stretch in lockup, an outraged Sin-Dee discovers in the film’s opening minutes that boyfriend-cum-pimp Chester (the sleazily charismatic James Ransome of The Wire’s second season) has been dallying in her absence with another
AUGUST 12-18, 2015
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that Reed is working for Storm, alongside all Storm’s other “students,” and that Storm is working for some rather nefarious financiers
who do not have anyone’s best interests at heart. Reed is not studying at all, this place doesn’t look like a school, and no one appears
C O U R T E SY O F M AG N O L I S P I C T U R E S
here isn’t an authentic human motivation or emotion to be found in this 187,874th reboot of Fantastic Four, a tale of boy genius Reed Richards (Miles Teller), who, with the help of his pal Ben Grimm (Jamie Bell), builds a teleporter device in his garage and gets recruited by a mysterious organization to help them finish their teleporter device. Instead of appreciable motivation and character, we have an astute little kid callBY ing Reed “a dick,” which is M A R YA N N true but is meant to be cute. Or people saying things like, J O H A N S O N “It’s fun having you here,” when we have no idea what that could possibly refer to, having seen no fun nor even any interaction between the characters involved in this exchange. It’s as if all the human drama that creates characters we care about has been excised. The “here” is the scientific think tank where Dr. Franklin Storm (Reg E. Cathey) appears
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Mickey O’Hagan and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez are on a mission.