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| Short Redhead Reel Reviews date from 1986 to present. This main page lists the five most recent film reviews. To view a complete list of all films reviewed this month, see Previous Reviews on the right. |
Thursday, January 23, 2025 |
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Blackwater Lane |
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PG-13 2025 |
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[Available Jan. 27 on various digital platforms.] After a private school teacher (Minka Kelly), who lives in a beautiful English countryside mansion and is close to her best friend (Maggie Grace) and a coworker (Alan Calton), passes by a driver (Sally Blouet) who is subsequently murdered during a fierce storm in Jeff Celentano's engaging, intense, dark, predictable, 107-minute psychological thriller based on B.A. Paris' novel, she begins to have strange, supernatural experiences that she tries to convince her husband (Dermot Mulroney), who tells her she has dementia, and a sympathetic detective (Natalie Simpson) are not in her mind.
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Dead Before They Wake |
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NR 2025 |
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[Available Jan. 7 in the USA and Jan. 27 in U.K. on various digital platforms.] After a skilled, ASL-speaking British nightclub bouncer (Nathan Shepka), who spends time with an English schooleacher (Grace Cordell) who moonlights as a hooker to help pay the rent and whose deaf father is in hospice care, is hired by a retired attorney (Sylvester McCoy) for £20 000 to find a deaf, distraught 14-year-old girl (Eden Campbell), he discovers she has been kidnapped by brutal sex traffickers (Patrick Bergin, Manjot Sumal, Karim Nasif, et al.) and put to work.
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Legend, A |
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NR 2025 |
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[Available Jan. 21 on DVD, Blu-ray™, and various digital platforms.] Wonderful cinematography, thrilling martial-arts choreography, and beautiful scenery, sets, and costumes dominate Stanley Tong's award-winning, entertaining, factually inspired, action-packed, fast-paced, convoluted, 129-minute thriller with action shifting repeatedly between the present day and 2,000 years ago in which the Han dynasty and a ruthless general (Aarif Rahman), who is obsessed with a gorgeous princess (Gulnezer Bextiyar), leads a brutal war against his enemy, and then a well-known, modern-day archaeologist (Jackie Chan) realizes that an ancient jade pendant, which he has discovered, is connected to his dreams and ends up going on an expedition with his research team (Lay Zhang, Peng Xiaoran, et al.) into a glacier and the ancient past.
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Life After |
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NR 2025 |
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[Screens Jan. 27 at 7:40 p.m. PT, 8:40 p.m. MT, and 10:40 p.m. as part of the Sundance Film Festival that runs Jan. 23 through Feb. 2 in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah; for more information, log on to https://festival.sundance.org.] Reid Davenport's compelling, educational, complex, eye-opening, controversial, insightful, profound, gut-wrenching, thought-provoking, 100-minute documentary in which the disabled filmmaker investigates what happened to quadriplegic Californian Elizabeth Bouvia who was in terrible pain, sought the "right to die," and was instrumental in the law that was finally passed in 2016 and consists of archival photographs and film clips and commentary by Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) assessor and provider Dr. Melissa Melnitzer, disabled employee Michal Kaliszan, care attendant Ann Gulliver, Canadian journalist Ash Kelly, disabled teenage student Jerika Bolen who wants to die, disability rights lawyer Carrie Ann Lucas, Elizabeth Bouvia's sisters Rebecca and Teresa Castner, Minister of Justice David Lamerti, Michael Hickson's wife Melissa Hickson, Toronto Metropolitan University professor emerita Catherine Frazer, right to die advocate Shanaaz Gokool, disability rights advocates (such as Sarah Jama, Krista Carr, and Megan Linton), Parliament member Arif Virani, Dying with Dignity Canada Helen Long, doctors Dr. Stephanie Green and Dr. Ramona Coelho, Riverside Hospital attorney Barbara Milliken, ACLU attorney Richard Scott, and Not Dead Yet activists Julie Farrar and Alex Thompson who oppose euthanasia.
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Sunray: Fallen Soldier |
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NR 2025 |
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[Opens Jan. 24 in theaters and available on various digital platforms.] James Clarke and Daniel Shepherd's gripping, action-packed, fast-paced, gritty, very violent, 115-minute film in which an angry, depressed, British soldier (Tip Cullen) goes after the remorseful, drug-dealing boyfriend (Daniel Davids), his high-powered father (Kevin Golding), and his associates (Doireann May White, et al.) with the help of skilled veteran soldiers (Tom Leigh, Luke Solomon, Will Bowden, and Steven Blades) to avenge the accidental heroin overdose of his first-time user daughter (Saskia Rose) for his sake and for her mother (Karlina Grace-Paseda).
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| See the Full List of Reviews from January |
©2025 by Wendy Schadewald
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