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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. |
Monday, December 15, 2025 |
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Dead to Rights |
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NR 2025 |
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[Screened Nov. 18 at 6:30 p.m. PST at the Culver Theater 9500 Culver Blvd., Culver City, CA 90232 during Asian World Film Festival that ran Nov.11-20; for more information, log on to https://www.asianworldfilmfest.org.] Shen Ao's powerful, awesome, raw, factually based, moving, spectacularly acted, disturbing, gut-wrenching, intense, extremely violent, 137-minute film reminiscent of Schindler's List, dominated by astounding cinematography and set between December 1937 and March 1938 during the WWII Nanjing Massacre in which a Chinese mail carrier A-Chang (Liu Haoran) in Nanjing posed as a photographer who could develop photographs for an Imperial Japanese Army photographer (Daichi Harashima) who was documenting the war crime atrocities of the brutal, cruel, horrific slaughter of more than 300,000 Chinese people while helping to protect a few Chinese (Wang Xiao, Yang Enyou, and Gao Ye) hiding beneath the photo studio.
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Tooth Fairy Tale, A |
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PG 2025 |
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[Available Dec. 8 on various digital platforms.] When a rebellious, skateboard-riding, teeth-collecting, teenage fairy (voiceover by Booboo Stewart), who has a hole in his wing and a ladybug pet, exchanges child's teeth for goblin gold and then falls for an inventive, daylight-allergic goblin engineer (voiceover by Larkin Bell) in Michael Johnson's entertaining, action-packed, family-friendly, humorous, well-paced, 90-minute animated film, an arachnid (voiceover by Jon Lovitz) targets them for food for his queen spider (voiceover by Fran Drescher) while a rebellious troll (voiceover by Nicolas J. Greco, et al.) and his minions try to protect and save them and their families.
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Spring After Spring |
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NR 2025 |
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[Screened Nov. 7 at the Vancouver Asian Film Festival and there will be a theatrical run timed to Lunar New Year in "2026 before launching on Knowledge Network.] Jon Chiang's insightful, upbeat, colorful, emotional, fascinating, informative, 89-minute documentary in which three Chinese Canadian sisters (Val 'Ms. Vee' Ho, Anabel Ho, and Lisa Ho) prepare to pay homage to their feisty mother Maria Mimie by continuing to dance to carry on her legacy and preparing the award-winning dance company to honor the tradition of dancing in the Annual Vancouver Chinatown Spring Festival Parade that she started in 1974.
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Beast of War |
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R 2025 |
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[Available Dec. 9 on DVD and Blu-ray™.] Kiah Roache-Turner's gripping, factually inspired, poignant, gritty, intense, gory, suspenseful, gut-wrenching, 87-minute thriller with striking cinematography and based on the sinking of the HMAS Armidale in which Australian soldiers (Mark Coles Smith, Joel Nankervis, Maximillian Johnson, Lee Tiger Halley, Sam Parsonson, Tristan McKinnon, Sam Delich, et al.) fight for survival on a makeshift raft in the Timor Sea after the Japanese sink their boat during WWII and then must struggle dealing with the escalating emotions, the cold, thirst, hunger, and great white sharks.
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Dust Bunny |
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R 2025 |
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[Opens Dec. 12 in theaters.] Awesome cinematography, sets, and special effects highlight Bryan Fuller's entertaining, imaginative, well-written, creative, 106-minute thriller in which a 10-year-old foster child (Sophie Sloan) steals $327.42 from the church's collection plate to hire her former hitman neighbor (Mads Mikkelsen) in New York City to kill the monster under her bed that ate her parents while assassins (Sigourney Weaver, David Dastmalchian, Rebecca Henderson, Nóra Trokán, Sheila Atim, et al.) close in.
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| See the Full List of Reviews from December |
©2025 by Wendy Schadewald
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