Live Action
Perhaps it’s a sign of the times, that drumbeat of anxiety pulsing through the live action segment of this year’s Oscar nominated short films. Proximity to Valentine’s Day notwithstanding, this stress-filled collection boasts nary a spark of romance nor a scintilla of comedy. There’s cruelty, injustice and existential angst aplenty, though — a thematic through line that suggests any filmmaker seeking a statuette had better wake up and smell the oppression.
Luckily, a nasty scent doesn’t have to mean ugly visuals. In “Anuja,” a very pretty picture with a disarmingly perky vibe, a 9-year-old garment-factory worker (Sajda Pathan) must make a risky, life-altering choice. Produced in cooperation with a nonprofit that supports street children (of whom the charming Pathan is one), Adam J. Graves’s movie feels a touch pandering, less raw and organic and more like a carefully manufactured gift to softhearted audiences.
By contrast, “The Last Ranger” — which also centers on a child confronting adult barbarity — is a gorgeous and grounded observation of a real-life attack on an endangered South African rhinoceros. Told through the friendship between a curious young girl (Liyabona Mroqoza) and a courageous park ranger (Makhaola Ndebele), this unsettlingly serene film, beautifully directed by Cindy Lee, shapes the complexities of wildlife conservation into a story that’s both touching and tragic.
Tragedy of a different sort awaits in “I’m Not A Robot” as a spiraling music producer (a spectacular Ellen Parren) is barred from accessing her computer files after failing successive Captcha tests. Sharp, shiny and original, this increasingly alarming movie, deftly written and directed by Victoria Warmerdam, raises weighty issues — including the right to die and what it means to be human — with energy and empathy.
Humanity is in short supply in “A Lien,” an achingly timely immigration drama from the filmmaking brothers David and Sam Cutler-Kreutz. Set in a Manhattan government building where a young couple (Victoria Ratermanis and William Martinez) have arrived with their small daughter for a green card interview, the film brilliantly conveys our powerlessness in the face of an impenetrable and terrifying bureaucracy. Unfolding in agitated close-ups and a stressful, naturalistic sound design, “A Lien” will raise your blood pressure, whatever your legal status.
Infinitely more subtle, yet every bit as disquieting, “The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent” places us on a Bosnian passenger train that’s been boarded by armed paramilitaries. As they demand identity cards and begin loading passengers onto trucks, the movie focuses its tension on a single compartment where three men will make life-or-death decisions. In barely a dozen minutes, the Croatian director Nebojsa Slijepcevic (referencing an infamous 1993 massacre of innocent civilians) examines the cost of speaking up and, perhaps more important, the soul-destroying consequence of staying silent. — JEANNETTE CATSOULIS
Animation
From bubble-gum-sweet to straight-up disturbing, this year’s batch of Oscar-nominated animated shorts showcase radically different vibes with one major-downer of a unifying factor: Its characters feel powerless, scared and insecure.
And, perhaps not so coincidentally, most of the shorts are about boys and men.
“Beautiful Men,” by the Belgian director Nicolas Keppens, is a Charlie Kaufman-esque dark comedy about three balding middle-aged brothers. The blue-gray color palette — and a ghostly blanket of fog — accents the film’s existential deadpan as the trio head to Istanbul for hair transplant surgery. In eerily sterile hotel rooms and bathrooms, we see the brothers bickering and stewing in their loneliness. An expressive stop-motion animation style (specifically the fine details in the men’s physical and facial movements) brings out a tender emotional dimension.
The young protagonist in the French, 2-D animation “Yuck!” also struggles to bare his desires. While on a family camping trip, he falls in with a group of kids who think kissing is gross. They jeer whenever they stumble upon an affectionate couple, whose lips light up in glittery, glowing pink. Directed by Loïc Espuche, this deceptively simple coming-of-age film is about adolescent groupthink, shame, and physical affection — though the flat, intentionally primitive animation style also makes it the least visually impressive among the nominees.
By contrast, “Magic Candies,” by the director Daisuke Nishio (of “Dragon Ball Z” fame), is perhaps the most aesthetically spectacular. This fantastical computer-animated short places intricate, clay-like characters against fluttering, realistic backdrops. It’s a feast for the eyes, even if the story — about a lonely boy who eats mysterious candies that empower him to communicate with others (including pets and inanimate objects) — isn’t all that compelling or original.
“Wander to Wonder” is, for my money, the wild-card pick — though best not to show the kids. Directed by Nina Gantz, this nightmare fairy tale mixes stop-motion animation, puppetry and bits of live action to tell the story of three miniature people, the stars of an ’80s kids series that vaguely resembles “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.” Though the creator of the series has died, these aging, troll-like humans — whom we see, unsettlingly, in the nude or in decrepit costumes — live on, seemingly trapped on the set of their show. Sunny flashbacks to their glory days create an eerie contrast that questions the value of nostalgia.
Finally, the worst-behaved man appears in “In the Shadow of the Cypress,” by the Iranian directors Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani. With elegantly minimalistic 2-D animation in sandy, warm tones, the short follows a former sea captain who lives alone with his daughter. A symbolic fable about the noxious ripple effects of war and trauma, the movie features unexpected bursts of jazzlike abstraction and a surprisingly moving payoff — making it perhaps the most balanced contender in a field of films with distinct virtues. — BEATRICE LOAYZA
Documentary
If the academy is looking to reward the documentary short that makes the most audacious use of form, the winner should be “Incident,” from the experimental nonfiction filmmaker Bill Morrison (“Dawson City: Frozen Time”). Working from footage captured by surveillance and body cameras, Morrison reconstructs the scene of the fatal shooting of a barber, Harith Augustus, by a Chicago police officer in 2018.
This half-hour short lasts roughly the time of the events it covers, and although Morrison doesn’t present each step in strict chronological order, he uses split screen to show simultaneity: After the shooting, while Augustus’s body lies eerily still in the street and protesters gather, some of the officers involved frenziedly race elsewhere and speak about the shooting as if they had no choice. Who are you going to believe: them, or the images you just saw? “Incident” is an outside-the-box use of public material that demonstrates cinema’s capacity to be a forensic tool.
You could construct a feature from the two nominees that deal, quite differently, with the death penalty. In Smriti Mundhra’s “I Am Ready, Warden,” a condemned man, John Henry Ramirez, a former Marine who stabbed a convenience store worker to death in 2004, awaits his execution in Texas with remorse and apparent calm. Aaron Castro, the victim’s son, believes firmly that Ramirez’s death will bring him closure. The most powerful moments of this dirge-like film immediately follow the execution. Castro’s views seem to grow more complicated as he confronts the reality that the man who had such a terrible impact on his life is gone. “John Henry Ramirez is dead,” he says. “Do you know how weird that sounds?”
Kim A. Snyder’s “Death by Numbers” is written by Samantha Fuentes, a survivor of the school shooting in Parkland, Fla., in 2018. It follows the sentencing trial of the gunman, Nikolas Cruz, proceedings at which Fuentes was subpoenaed to testify. After Cruz is spared the death penalty, Fuentes reads an extraordinary statement to him in the courtroom. It’s impossible not to be moved by Fuentes’s reflections, although Snyder’s slick aesthetics, such as incorporating snippets of the classic avant-garde film “Meshes of the Afternoon” for atmosphere feel inappropriate.
In this grim lineup, Oscar voters might easily gravitate toward “The Only Girl in the Orchestra,” a crowd-pleasing profile of the double bassist Orin O’Brien by Molly O’Brien, her niece. In 1966, Orin, the daughter of the old-time Hollywood stars George O’Brien and Marguerite Churchill, became the first woman to be named a permanent member of the New York Philharmonic. Despite coming across as a wonderful wit and a consummate artist, she professes an aversion to the spotlight, even if she can’t help but command it. Her desire to be a supporting player extends to her choice of instrument: “You’re the floor under everybody that would collapse if it wasn’t secure,” she tells young bass students near the end.
Less world-historic in music history are the events in Ema Ryan Yamazaki’s “Instruments of a Beating Heart,” a way-too-nice Times Op-Doc about a young student in Tokyo who wins an audition to play the cymbal in a performance of “Ode to Joy” for incoming first graders. — BEN KENIGSBERG
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