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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. |
Friday, December 2, 2022 |
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Design Is One: Lella & Massimo Vignelli |
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NR 2022 |
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[Played Dec. 1 as part of AARP’s Movies for Grownups and available on various VOD platforms.] Kathy Brew and Roberto Guerra’s educational, engaging, fascinating, in-depth, insightful, 86-minute, 2012 documentary in which influential, renowned, groundbreaking Italian designers and visual architect team of Massimo and Lella Vignelli discuss their unique vision and design process, branding, graphics, and typography in designing an eclectic variety of products, including furniture, glassware, dinnerware lighting fixtures, books, silverware, flatware, jewelry, watches, pitchers, logos, candle holders, vases, fashion, interior design, pamphlets, posters, and subway map, and consists of commentary by senior curator and author Paola Antonelli, designers (such as Jessica Helfand, Michael Donovan, Michael Bierut, and Milton Glaser), professor Virginia Smith, vice president Beatrice Vignelli, architects (such as Richard Meier, Hugh Jacobsen, and Peter Eisenman), Heller, Inc. owner Alan Heller, pastor Jared Stahler, Rochester Institute of Technology President William Wallace Destler, marketing consultant Jeffrey J. Osborne, restaurant owner Tony May, artist Sheila Hicks, art curator Barry Bergdoll, and publisher David Morton.
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Catfish Christmas |
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NR 2022 |
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[Available Dec. 1 on various VOD, major streaming, and cable platforms.] When a successful senior accountant (Leigh-Ann Rose) returns home to visit her parents (Tony Todd and Ella Joyce) during the Christmas holidays in Victoria Rowell’s low-key, down-to-Earth, realistic, intermittently funny, upbeat, 85-minute comedy, her pregnant sister (Charlotte Evelyn Williams) wins a dating auction to set her up on a date with an egotistical, superficial, womanizing football player (Anthony Riggins) and realizes she may have a more meaningful connection with a childhood friend turned bartender (Devin Laster) living across the street.
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Christmas with the Campbells |
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NR 2022 |
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[Opens Dec. 2 in theaters and available on AMC+.] After a photography-loving woman (Brittany Snow) finds herself alone during Christmastime after her mean?spirited, clueless jerk of a boyfriend (Alex Moffat) breaks up with her in New York City in Clare Niederpruem’s sugary, family-geared, Hallmark-esque, wit-dotted, predictable, 88-minute romantic comedy, she reluctantly accepts an invitation by his kindhearted parents (George Wendt and Julia Duffy) to join them for the holidays, and then her romantic life gets complicated when her apologetic ex-lover shows up and she has fallen for her ex-boyfriend’s charming cousin (Justin Long) who works for a travel agency.
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Clean Slate |
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NR 2022 |
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[Available Dec. 2 on various digital platforms.] While two lifelong friends (Cassidy Detmer and Joshua Litton) struggling with drug addiction and mental illness join a zero-tolerance drug recovery program at A Better Way Ministries for 18 months in Georgia in Jared Callahan’s heartbreaking, insightful, gut-wrenching, down-to-earth, 96-minute documentary, they produce commercials and graduation videos and struggle to make the short film On the Fence, which chronicles the anguish and strife they caused their families, after Cassidy relapses and is thrown out of the program.
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Good Guy with a Gun |
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NR 2022 |
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[Plays Dec. 2 as part of Dancing with Films at NYC’s Regal Union Square at 9:30 p.m.; for more information, log on to https://danceswithfilms.com/GOOD%20GUY%20WITH%20A%20GUN/.] After his father tries to help a robbery victim and is gunned down in Chicago in Josh Mossman’s gritty, coming-of-age, dark, well-acted, tense, multilayered, unpredictable, 109-minute film, an angry, rebellious, grieving, 17-year-old student (Beck Nolan) moves with his mechanically-inclined mother (Tiffany Bedwells), who is befriended by a kindhearted neighbor (Ian Barford), to rural Illinois for a new start and when he makes friends with another teenager (Jack Cain) and some hotheaded, gun-toting locals (Dan Waller, David Stobbe, et al.), he makes a series of poor, life-changing decisions as he tries to figure out where his life goes from here.
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| See the Full List of Reviews from December |
©2022 by Wendy Schadewald
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