Tag: Tangerine

The top 10 dirtiest Christmas movies

Posted on by victorfraga

In a perfect world, Christmas is filled with some of the most jovial depictions of family, friends and community. But this is 2017, with grotesque creatures such as Donald Trump and BoJo calling the shots and presiding over our future! In this light, it is out with the Frank Capra’s It’s A Wonderful Life (1947) and in with some of the dirtiest Christmas related films to have ever graced celluloid.

Though not a direct overview of the dirtiest Christmas films to have graced 2017, such a soiled list instead looks at the films that play against conventions of the festive period, character stereotypes and outright devour Santa’s nice list, revering to the naughty one instead.

Christmas does not have to included mince pies, snow or presents. In Tangerine (also pictured above), a message of forgiveness and acceptance comes in the shape of a wig traded between two quarreling transsexual prostitutes in West Hollywood. Rejecting the casts of Christmas, Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut decomposes the meaning of family. Each time Tom Cruise’s Dr. William Harford returns home, his wife and child are asleep with the Christmas lights creating some atmospheric red lighting to deepen his lustful thoughts. Similarly, the streets of New York city are a vacuous space in which humanities basest desires come to the forefront.

In Elle, starring Isabelle Huppert (pictured at the top), Verhoeven chooses to lace the Christmas meal with sexual tensions, family feuds and dark comedy. Lastly, the likes of Gremlins and Krampus literally have their cake and eat it when approaching the notion of a calm and quiet Christmas. Instilling the holiday season with sheer horror and creatures that snarl and devour, Dante and Michael Dougherty create a stark juxtaposition to the traditional values of the season. Replacing the red wrapping paper is the red of blood.

Sit back, relax and enjoy these rebellious films to Christmas traditions and representations! Have yourself a dirty little Christmas!

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1. Tangerine (Sean Baker, 2015):

Before The Florida Project (released earlier this year), Sean Baker crafted a truly sumptuous Christmas film about two transgender prostitutes who search the mean streets of West Hollywood on Christmas Eve for Sin-Dee’s (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) pimp and boyfriend Chester (James Ransone). Suffused with foul language and the skirmishes of ethnic and sexual minorities, through it all a level of forgiveness and acceptance is discovered. The contrasts of a Christmas setting with the scantily glad characters is extended in the hip-hop dubstep score, serving to go against the grain of festive songs, and induce one into the world of Sin-Dee and Mya. Filmed on an iPhone with Filmic Pro app, it captures the rawness of human emotion in a fashion now characteristic of Baker’s filmic style. Instead of a Christmas tradition of Miracle on 34th Street, Tangerine should be your new annual festive watch!

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2. Eyes Wide Shut (Stanley Kubrick, 1999):

Kubrick’s last film famously involved the longest shooting period of any film EVER! Still, behind the arduous filming, Christmas is depicted as a time of paranoia, overwhelming urges to commit adultery and masochistic sex grounds in New York. Featuring one of Tom Cruise’s best performances and an erotic underbelly supported by Nicole Kidman that recalls Bunuel’s masterful Belle de Jour (1967), it’s certainly going to get toasty near the fire watching this stone cold dirty Christmas classic.

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3. Elle (Paul Verhoeven, 2017):

Paul Verhoeven’s Elle is a tale that reverts patriarchal notions of society, religion, and one would suggest Christmas, to Michèle Leblanc’s eventual revenge on her rapist. Casting a long shadow over those around her in a room, the gravitas to which Isabelle Huppert brings to the character infuses her with an emotional tapestry. The Dutch director is no strange to provocative filmmaking and this Christmas time why not enjoy the magnificent Isabelle Huppert as an early gift to yourself? Using the subject matter of family and the bourgeoisies in France, the Dutch director and iconic French actor combine to offer a deeply sardonic take on a Christmas meal that goes awfully wrong. The religious elements of the Christian tradition are similarly called into question over its narrative. Costumed by Nathalie Raoul, Huppert is at her finest Parisian chic. Who said it wasn’t the most wonderful time of year?!

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4. Gremlins (Joe Dante, 1984):

No dirty alternative Christmas film list would be complete without these pesky little creatures and their complete and utter destruction of a small American town (Kingston Falls). Accompanied by the literal destruction of a modern Christmas, Gremlins is as rebellious to the notion of consumerism as the little critters are to any human being. Joe Dante brings Dante’s Inferno to the festive season. A dirty classic in every sense of the word.

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5. The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960):

Featuring a drunk Christmas office party and the ramifications that feature when one drinks too much around someone who you hold a crush towards, Billy Wilder, Jack Lemon, Fred MacMurray and Shirley MacLaine star in this misery infused classic about how unfestive Christmas and life truly can be. With some of the finest dialogue in film, Wilder crafts a stunning piece of dark comedy.

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6. Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence (Nagisa Oshima, 1983):

After the legendary singer David Bowie sadly passed away this year, why not let his presence be known in your life again, not through his music, but through his performance in Nagisa Oshima. This is the perfect opportunity to relive the man himself, just like a ghost from Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. Representing the conflict between East and West, Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence, as Criterion writes ‘its a multilayered, brutal, at times erotic tale of culture clash, and one of Oshima’s greatest successes’.

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7. Krampus (Michael Dougherty, 2015):

The pick of the modern phenomenon that is an annual horror related Christmas film, 2015’s Krampus plays with the idea of wicked malevolent forces arriving to commandeer Santa’s favourite season. The Christmas spirit is replaced with death, fire and evil demons coming to ruin your presents and much cherished family.

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8. Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985):

Terry Gilliam and a dirty Christmas film you said, yes, you are correct! Occurring in a time and place alternative to ours, with an examination of bureaucratic regimes, Christmas shopping is represented by Gilliam as it really is: HELL!!!

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9. Jack Frost (Troy Miller, 1998):

A Snowman and Michael Keaton should, in theory, make for perfectly harmless viewing on a cold winters evening. Well, think again as in Jack Frost, Keaton plays Charlie Frost’s (Joseph Cross) deceased father who comes back from the dead and becomes a living snowman who attempts to make amends for his failures as a father. Besides this strange plot, the character design of the snowman is a far cry from the cute Snowman from The Snowman cartoon of 1982. Less walking in the air and more walking with a palpable sense of horror!

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10. The Snowman (Tomas Alfredson, 2017):

Every year there are always films which are considered absolute stinkers and none more than so wannabe Tomas Alfredson’s Nordic noir. Set in the depth of winter with a serial killer on the lose who cuts off the heads of women and then places them on snowmen, and who appears to have the artist brain of a four-year-old, this thriller deserves to be featured on this list simply due to its awful promotional campaign. Leaving your Christmas spirits very lukewarm, its dirtiness derives from the hilarity that ensures at its bad premise and strange acting.

The Florida Project

Posted on by victorfraga

One of the good aspects of Sean Baker’s work is that he considers his audience clever people. By clever, I don’t mean he wants us to solve a mystery. His films are not thrillers. You don’t need to pay attention to every detail in order to find out who’s the murderer. I am talking about another kind of intelligence and sensitivity.

The Florida Project is “a loving look at the innocence of childhood”, as announced in the film trailer. Everything the camera captures is from the point of view of three children, Moone (Brooklynn Prince, perhaps the new Drew Barrymore, who was also first cast for a movie at the age of 6); Jancey (Valeria Cotto) and Scotty (Christopher Rivera). That means that when those children are on screen, the camera mostly remains at their height. We mostly see a world through their eyes and lenses. We cannot see what solely to the “adult world”. When Brooklynn’s mother has sex in her room, we don’t see the man’s face.

The story takes place in a motel in Florida, just outside Disney World, during the school break during American Independence Day. So the film is a series of children’s holiday adventures. They spend their time playing pranks, which can annoy the audience too. Kids are noisy and naughty. They beg for free ice-cream, they do spitting competitions from the second floor of the motel, they set fire on an abandoned building, they cut off the power of the entire motel. Independence Day is particularly “magical” in Orlando. The Magic Kingdom and Epcot Center each have dedicated fireworks on July 4th. Disney spends from $41,000-$55,000 a night on fireworks. The whole set of adventures the kids take part in culminates in the last scene. The children finally celebrate their own independence.

The film has an astonishing photography. Likewise Tangerine (2015), colours are saturated. Instead of predominantly orange of the previous film, The Florida Project is mainly purple and green, just like the walls on Miami International Airport. With The Florida Project, Sean Baker consolidates his style, also evident in his short movie Snowbird, 2016 (which can be watched here) – these films do not have a plot. The narrative heavily relies on the work of non-actors, on their spontaneity and commitment to reality. Baker represents the lives of marginalised Americans. The director uses photography in order to tell a story. Mooney and Jacey want to get to the pot of gold at end of the rainbow. The colourful rainbow is a symbol of the journey the kids are about to start. They desire to get out of the margins of society. The photography is not only beautiful, but it is a meaningful part of the story.

Baker’s strongest characters are not men. In Tangerine, the main characters are two transsexuals. Here, they are children and single mothers, who bend over backwards in order to survive. Many cinema lovers are tired of the mass representation of men. We don’t want to see aggressive males prancing around. At the same time, we can’t banish men from movies. Baker nailed it. Here comes Willem Dafoe as you have never seen before. Dafoe does not play a tortured man as in Platoon (Oliver Stone, 1986); or a stereotypical villain as in Spider-Man (Sam Raimi, 2002). Here he is simply Bobby, the motel manager, and most importantly, an adorable father figure to all those children whose fathers left them behind.

On the other hand, The Florida Project lacks twists and surprises. By consolidating his style, Baker surrendered the deeply subversive streak of Tangerine. Here he plays safe and he doesn’t innovate.

The Florida Project showed at the 61st BFI London Film festival in October. It’s out in cinemas on Friday, November 10th. It’s out on all major VoD platforms in April 2018

This film is in our top 10 films of 2017.

The Florida Project

Posted on by victorfraga

The ultra-dirty Tangerine (2015) is one of our favourite Christmas movies of all times. It is a twisted fable of love and solidarity set in the outskirts of Los Angeles, and starred by transsexuals, hookers and immigrants. One of the most touching tributes to the marginalised people of Hollywood you will ever see. And also hilarious. Plus filmed with an iPhone.

The 46-year-old American filmmaker Sean Baker is now back, and his latest movie once again takes place in the outskirts of a very mainstream place. He has moved across the US from California to Florida. From the vicinity’s of cinema’s dream world of Hollywood to the dingy hotels of Orlando, just outside Disney’s Magic Kingdom. The director once again wants to portray the life of the outsiders living a stone’s throw from “the dream”, it seems.

The trailer of new movie, which features William Dafoe, markets it as “a movie destined to be remembered as one of the greatest films about childhood ever” and “a loving look at the innocence of childhood”. Sean will attempt to reconcile social exclusion with tenderness, with a funny and subversive streak. A puerile and yet critical look at American society. The child actors look very realistic, as do the settings. The judgmental look at those who haven’t experienced adult life yet feels like a gauge of American values. Likely another masterpiece, we would hazard a guess.

The Florida Project will premiere in the UK during the 61st BFI London Film Festival, which is taking place this October in the British capital. Stay tuned for our exclusive review, which will follow very soon.