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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. |
Tuesday, May 24, 2022 |
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Human Factors |
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NR 2022 |
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[Available May 24 via various digital platforms.] After a workaholic, homophobic German co-owner (Mark Waschke) of a successful advertising agency in Hamburg accepts a controversial political client who is campaigning for office without informing his creative director wife (Sabine Timoteo), who is close to her gay brother (Daniel Séjourné), and then they head to their Belgian vacation home along the coast with their rebellious, moody teenage daughter (Jule Hermann) and younger pet-rat-loving son (Wanja Valentin Kube) to get away from the stress in Ronny Trocker’s intriguing, well-acted, dark, nonlinear, 102-minute, 2021 psychological thriller with awesome cinematography, a frightening home invasion escalates the tension and triggers the dysfunctional dynamics within their marriage and family.
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Since I Been Down |
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NR 2022 |
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[Available May 24 on various VOD platforms.] Gilda Louise Sheppard’s award-winning, powerful, eye-opening, educational, insightful, in-depth, inspirational, 105-minute, 2020 documentary highlighted by striking cinematography that focuses on Washington state prisoners, including Kimonti Carter, Tony Wheat, Willie Nobles (Ginny Parham’s grandson), Andrea Altheimer, Demar Nelson, Andre Parker, Logan Gore, Marco Rodriguez, Michael Santos, and Jarrod Messer, who are using education and programs such as the Black Prisoners’ Caucus in an attempt to change and improve all aspects of their lives after some of them were inhumanely and unjustly sentenced as juveniles to life in prison without parole and consists of candid commentary by former detectives John Ringer and Barry McColeman, attorneys Bryan Hershman and Jeff Ellis, Hilltop Tacoma residents (such as Karen Ryan, Virgina Parham, Dominique Scott, and Tonya Wilson [released after 17 years in prison]), anti-racism organizer Karen Flowers, East Side Tacoma residents (such as Shannon Traylor, Billy Griffin, and Dre Walker), The Black Collective community group members Lyle Qusim and James Walton, former Tacoma mayor Harold Moss, Clallam Corrections Center superintendent Jeri Boe, and rape victim Ma’Shanna Davis who forgave her attacker.
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QUEST, THE: Nepal |
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NR 2022 |
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[Available May 24 on various digital and TVOD platforms.] Awesome cinematography dominates Alex Harz’s award-winning, enthralling, educational, fascinating, grueling, 70-minute, 2021 documentary in which filmmaker and explorer Alex Harz chronicles his enlightening journey to Kathmandu with tour guide and Nepalese historian Kumar Rupakheti who educates him on the history, culture, and sacred rivers and temples such as Pashupatinath in Nepal, makes the dangerous ascent to 29,032 ft. above sea level to the top of Mt. Everest, and consists of insightful commentary by Everest climbers (such as Gulnur Tumbat, Erlend Ness, Mingma Chiri Sherpa, and Gilberto Thoen), CTSS expedition owners Caroline and Michael Hamill, expedition manager Tshering Sarg Sherpa, Himex Expeditions founder Russell Brice, expedition operators Mike Hamill and Russell Brice, expedition leader Ryan Waters, trekking and mountain guides Tashi Sherpa and Ang Tshering Lama, SPCC director Tshering Sherpa, mountain guide and philanthropist Phunjo Lama Sherpa, Sherpa barista Pasang T. Sherpa, Puja monk Pasang Temba Sherpa, basecamp manager Lakpa Rita Sherpa, Tibetan Buddhist monk Lama Nawang Paljor, Everest journalist Caroline Pemberton, expedition Sirdar Riten Jangbu Sherpa, and holy man Hanuman Baba Hindu Sadhu.
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Ip Man: The Awakening |
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NR 2022 |
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[Available May 20 on HI-YAH!.] Awesome martial arts choreography dominates Li Xi Jie and Zhang Zhu Lin’s entertaining, captivating, action-packed, fast-paced, predictable, 77-minute film in which skilled, white-clad-wearing Wing Chun master (Tse Miu) inadvertently causes a turf war in Hong Kong in 1930, and after he is forced to fight a Baritsu-trained British boxing champion and then his close, rickshaw-pulling friend (Chen Guanying) and pretty sister (Zhao Yuxuan) are kidnapped, he goes after a greedy, ruthless human trafficker and crime lord (Sergio Deieso) who has been paying off the police to turn a blind eye.
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Mariner of the Mountains |
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NR 2022 |
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[Available May 23 via streaming on MUBI.] Karim Aïnouz narrates his fascinating, highly personal, self-serving, touching, 98-minute, 2021 documentary highlighted by great cinematography and archival photographs in which the 54-year-old Brazilian filmmaker chronicles his journey across the Mediterranean to Algiers and finally to Kabylia, Algeria, in the Atlas Mountains in January 2019 to the birthplace of his estranged, engineer father in an attempt to understand more about his parents (Iracema and Majid), who separated before he was born, and his childhood by visiting relatives and learning more about his father’s homeland.
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| See the Full List of Reviews from May |
©2022 by Wendy Schadewald
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