Review: Oscar-nominated Animated Shorts

Lou

7 minutes

This year’s entry from Pixar is a whimsical delight about a… creature? Spirit? … resides in the lost and found box at a school, working to return wayward items to the children who adore them. When a bully starts terrorizing the playground and stealing possessions, the creature -- comprised of lost jackets, shoes, books, and with two baseballs for eyes -- decides to extract a little revenge, and teach a lesson.

Score:

Dear Basketball

5 minutes

Here’s an unusual entry: Kobe Bryant wrote, produced and narrates this first-person ode to this first love, the game of basketball. With a musical score by John Williams and animated by Glen Keane, who also directs, it’s a surprisingly emotional testimony from a professional athlete about what he has given to sport, and what it has taken from him.

Score:

Garden Party

7 minutes

This hyper-realistic animated short follows the journey of a neon-green tree frog and a fat bullfrog through an unlikely landscape: a palatial mansion that has sat abandoned for some time, so the swimming pool has turned into a pond that nature has reclaimed. Not so much a coherent narrative as a showcase for amazing animation, with a gruesome twist. Inventive and macabre.

Score:

Negative Space

5 minutes

This dreamy stop-motion animated film examines a man’s relationship to his father as he mastered the art of packing a suitcase just right. I liked the surreal sojourn into an imaginary underwater realm where underwear and shirts swim like fishes. More of an idea than a complete movie, even a short one.

Score:

Revolting Rhymes

29 minutes

Roald Dahl’s books have been turned into a number of wonderful animated feature films, especially “James and the Giant Peach,” so here’s a short(ish) one. Wonderful voice work punctuates this fairy tale mashup of Snow White and Red Riding Hood, who in this telling are friends contesting with a trio of wolves, an evil stepmother and a greedy pig running the bank of Porkeley’s. Snow White steals the magic mirror so the dwarves (all ex-jockeys) can play the horses, while Red is more of a vigilante-style badass with a pistol tucked in her knickers.

Score:

Review: Oscar-nominated short films -- Documentary

4.1 Miles

(21 minutes)

The title of “4.1 Miles” refers to the distance across the Aegean Sea from the coast of Turkey to the Greek isle of Lesbos – a span that hundreds of thousands of refugees have had to traverse in recent years during upheaval in the Middle East. A film crew from the New York Times follows a single boat captain as they troll the waters each day, rescuing people desperate enough to board flimsy inflatable craft or even fling their bodies into the water. There are some very powerful moments, especially trying to revive unconscious children. But the documentary feels too much like raw footage – looking over shoulders, confused scenes of massed bodies – than a structured exploration. Such an important subject demands more editing discipline.

Extremis

(24 minutes)

This documentary from Netflix is a sobering look at end-of-life health care. We start off with an old woman in the ICU who cannot speak, but indicates with her hands that she wants her breathing tube removed, while the doctor explains this will mean her death. The film puts us up close and personal with the doctors, patients and their families facing these literally life-and-death decisions. How much choice should a person have to refuse medical care and end their own life? A stark exploration of a subject that every one of us will face at some point in our lives.

Joe’s Violin

(24 minutes)

This simple but affecting story concerns an old violin that binds two lives. Joseph Feingold is a Holocaust survivor from Warsaw who had to leave behind his playing while he spent years in a Siberian labor camp. He obtained another violin in 1947 – buying it in a displaced person’s camp for a carton of cigarettes -- but stopped playing a few years ago when advanced age made it too difficult. So he donates it to a New York City program for local music students, and it finds its way into the hands of Brianna, an ebullient girl who decides to prepare a special song just for her benefactor. The simple stories are often the best.

The White Helmets

(40 minutes)

The White Helmets are the unofficial brigade of Syrian volunteers who have made it their mission to rescue people during the incessant bombing that have plagued the war-torn country for the past few years. They’re the runs who run into burning buildings and dig through mountains of debris to extract a trapped child. These self-effacing heroes describe their lives in their own words, following three in particular: Khalid, Abu and Mohammad (who used to be a rebel fighter until he saw the destruction they rained upon innocent civilians). This on-the-ground account shows the bombs falling, the terrible destruction and the human grace that happens in the aftermath.

Watani My Homeland

(40 minutes)

This moving documentary looks at the Syrian refugee crisis from the level of a single family. The filmmakers follow them for several years, starting when the father, Abu Ali, is a fighter with the rebels. He and his wife fret about what his role plays in the lives of their three children: Hammoudi, Helen and Sara. “I have sacrificed my children for the revolution,” he says. A year later he is captured by ISIS, and the mother loses hope of ever seeing him again. They eventually become refugees who are placed in the German town of Goslar, and we watch them assimilate into that community, the schools and street life. When Sara first sees a helicopter fly overheard, she flees because she assumes it has come to drop bombs on them. An insightful exploration of a topic from a human level.

Review: Oscar-Nominated Short Films: Live Action

Henry
21 minutes
In this French-language drama/thriller, an elderly pianist is captured, drugged and forced to relive his experiences from World War II, when he met his beloved wife, and the years after. Is it all an illusion? A cruel medical experiment? Director Yan England’s lyrical meditation on aging and memory is somewhat predictable, but heartrending in its brutal truths. Gérard Poirier’s performance as Henry is terrific.
Score: 3 stars

Asad
16 minutes
This terrific little drama features a cast made up entirely of Somali refugees, in a portrait of their homeland that is both daunting and joyful. Asad (Harun Mohammed), a young boy who dreams of being a fisherman, is disgusted by his friends working for the pirates who harass commercial and private vessels. He prefers the company of Erasto (Ibrahim Moallim Hussein), a Hemingway-esque old man of the sea who offers advice on catching fish and more. Powerful, emotional and deeply authentic.
Score: 3.5 stars

Death Of A Shadow
20 minutes
Eerily beautiful, elegant and haunting, "Death Of A Shadow" is a Dutch-language fantasy that crosses borders of time, space and human feeling. Nathan Rijckx (Matthias Schoenaerts) is a young bespectacled man who wanders a European village with a strange device in his hands that resembles a camera. By peering through it, he can see people at their moment of death and capture their shadow. He labors at the behest of a shadowy figure who collects these disturbing replicas as art. It's a deal with the devil -- 10,000 days and 10,000 images, in exchange for his own life back. But then he meets a young nurse (Laura Verlinden) who makes him question his quest. Writer/director Tom Van Avermaet has given us a small, grim masterstroke.
Score: 3.5 stars

Curfew
19 minutes
Quirky and affecting, “Curfew” is about a day in the life of Richie, a young drug addict – which was also supposed to be the last day of his life. He had just opened his wrist with a razor blade when he gets a call from his estranged sister (Kim Allen), begging him to watch her daughter Sophia (a precocious Fatima Ptacek) for the day. He agrees, leading to wonderfully strange excursion as the morose uncle trades jabs and then more genuine exchanges with his spunky niece. Written, directed and starring Shawn Christensen, a born storyteller.
Score: 3.5 stars

Buzkashi Boys
30 minutes
Ahmad (Jawanmard Paiz) and Rafi (Fawad Mohammadi) are two Afghani boys who are best friends despite being polar opposites. Rafi is the loyal son of a traditional blacksmith, toiling away making ax handles from dawn to dusk. Ahmad is a bastard Kabul street urchin, surviving on scams, an outsized personality and petty theft to get by. They’re united in their love for buzkashi, an ancient sport similar to polo, but played with a dead goat instead of a ball. Both dream of finding their own destinies. But then a tragedy destabilizes their young lives. A fine piece of observational drama.
Score: 3 stars

Review: "Oscar-Nominted Short Films: Animation"

Maggie Simpson in “The Longest Daycare”
5 minutes
In this cheeky short from the creators of TV’s “The Simpsons,” baby Maggie is deposited at the Orwellian “Ayn Rand School for Tots.” Denied the elevated bliss of the Gifted class, she is relegated to the mundane hell of “Nothing Special” education, where she rescues a butterfly from a bully. Wordless, lyrical and surprisingly touching.
Score: 3 stars out of four

Adam and Dog
15 minutes
Minkyu Lee’s take on Adam and Eve’s fall from grace is seen through the eyes of a scrappy little dog. The largely hand-drawn animation is simple and elegant in depicting a prehistoric jungle paradise where Adam and the dog scamp and play. When Eve arrives and their banishment follows, it is the dog alone of the animal world who follows them out of Paradise. A subtle salute to man’s (and woman’s) best friend.
Score: 3 stars

Paperman
6 minutes
This delightful black-and-white romantic fantasia from Pixar depicts a young office drone trying to attract the attention of the winsome gal in the next building. They met briefly on the train platform, resulting in the film’s only splash of color. His efforts leads to a magical flight of paper airplanes that point the way to their (un)likely destination. A beautiful little cinematic gem featuring the ultimate Meet Cute.
Score: 3.5 stars

Head Over Heels
10 minutes
The stop-motion animation is a bit crude, especially when compared to contemporary feature films like “ParaNorman.” But writer/director Timothy Reckart’s little metaphorical paean to love and aging is cute and sweet. An old married couple live upside-down from each other – literally. Their house is divided into M.C. Escher-like configurations, with the floor for her and the ceiling for him (or the other way around, depending on how you look at it). But then something goes bump to turn their lives around.
Score: 2.5 stars

Fresh Guacamole
2 minutes
How much fun can you pack into 101 seconds of film? Plenty, as this clever, experimental piece directed by Adam Pesapane shows. A knife-wielding chef cuts open non-food objects – light bulbs, baseballs, even a grenade – to make a very unique bowl of guac. The hyper-realistic animation is astonishing.
Score: 3 stars