Animated Shorts

 

• The Three Sisters

This adorable short about three sisters living on an island in adjacent little apartments was an actual delight. When a big, burly sailor comes to rent a room, one sister moves in with the other, and all three move in on him… one at a time.

• Forevergreen

A sweet short about a little bear who is adopted by a large tree in the forest. He is fed, shaded, and well cared for in a nicer update to The Giving Tree. But when he is exposed to processed foods, he risks everything he has to chase after more and his consumption results in disaster and tragedy. But the world has a habit of healing itself over time and this little says more in a few minutes than most movies say when they are full length.

• The Girl Who Cried Pearls

This one had a very good story with very creepy animation. It is a tale told by an old wealthy man about his impoverished and lonely childhood living in an abandoned and broken-down apartment next door to an abused child. Her sorrow has a twist that ultimately allows him to leverage the outsized greed and willingness to swindle a poor child. Like all good fables, this one has a great twist where all who are good prosper and all who are evil do not.

• Butterfly

An incredible story about a true athletic hero and survivor of the Holocaust and his story of growing up swimming, only to be greeted by the deepest kind of Jew hatred. There is triumph of the human spirit and the glimmer of hope when the athlete is ushered back into society by his loyal and steadfast friends. The animation and the story were heartbreaking and uplifting all at the same time.

• Retirement Plan

Someday, when I have time, I’ll… how many times do we think these things in our lives? We will travel, read, and enjoy our lives. In this little uplifting short, we see the outcome of actually doing all of the things that are dreamed about and when done properly, one can be ushered to a quiet, fulfilled, and peaceful death. (but don’t forget to live a little now!)

Animated Shorts

The shorts this year were a bit erratic - some great, some weird, and at least one that i still don't know what it was about. Every year with the shorts, there is one category that is all over the place in terms of quality, and this year, that honor goes to the animated shorts. 

Beautiful Men
Nicolas Keppens and Brecht Van Elslande

Three brothers go to Turkey for hair transplants on a particularly foggy weekend. One of the brothers is hiding a secret - while he thought he had booked transplants for all of them, he accidentally only booked one. Over time, we see that each carries different kinds of personal insecurities, but beneath it all, they care for each other deeply.

In the Shadow of the Cypress
Shirin Sohani and Hossein Molayemi

Ok, so here's what I've got for you - a husband and wife are living by the sea and he is living with tremendous PTSD from the war, and is occasionally violent with his wife. Soon, a whale beaches itself, and the wife is obsessed with saving it, and while the husband is also trying to help, he is confronting his own demons. That's about all I can tell you - I have no idea what this movie was. (sorry)

Magic Candies
Daisuke Nishio and Takashi Washio

Poor Dong Dong never gets asked to play but he has a rich inner life. He buys a set of candies with patterns that appear to be familiar, and when he eats them, he goes on the wildest drug trips ever in a children's short. The sofa comes alive, his grandmother returns to him as bubble gum and with each new conversation, he learns a little bit more about empathy, especially for the father who loves him very much.

Wander to Wonder

Nina Gantz and Stienette Bosklopper

Speaking of crazy ass drug trips, Mary, Billybud, and Fumbleton are tiny people on a children's show who one might assume are CGI, but are in fact real. They starred with a full sized human person, who we discover is dead, leaving them to figure out how to feed themselves. (And the big fire scene was a little "too soon" for my taste.) This one was a little creepy and very weird, but also very clever, just not the best of the lot.

Yuck!
Loïc Espuche and Juliette Marquet

Kissing! Who would ever want to do that? YUCK! But when a little French boy meets a pretty cute little French girl, the act may become irresistible. The problem is, in this world, when you are ready and willing to kiss, those little lips light up in Barbie pink telling the world how you're feeling. This poor boy, shunned by his friends, discovers that eventually, everyone wants a bit of lip lock and he is not alone.

Animated Shorts - 5 nominees

LETTER TO A PIG: Tal Kantor and Amit R. Gicelter

Here's an incredibly challenging film about a Holocaust survivor who comes to tell a classroom of young Israeli kids about his harrowing escape from the Nazis, and a pig who functionally saved his life by distracting soldiers searching the sty. While he is talking, some teens can't pay attention, but one girl in particular slips into a dream/nightmare imagining herself in his shoes.  It is hard to compete with anything Holocaust at the Oscars, and so this one is certainly a contender for the win.

NINETY-FIVE SENSES: Jerusha Hess and Jared Hess

95 senses manages to be both light hearted and serious following an inmate on death row who is about to be executed reviewing all the ways that the senses can make an impact on one's life.  It's a sad tale but it has a very light tone.  That's pretty masterful.

OUR UNIFORM: Yegane Moghaddam

Here a filmmaker reflects on what it was like to be raised in Iran and how the clothes the girls wear impact their identity and growth. And when she moves to the United States, her world opens just by being able to express her own style and preferences with her wardrobe.

PACHYDERME:Stéphanie Clément and Marc Rius 

This film is an incredibly subtle recounting of her childhood when she visits her grandparents each summer for 10 days. She shares her routines and her peculiar experiences with her grandfather. Over time, we begin to understand that the weight on her heart is related to childhood abuse.

WAR IS OVER! INSPIRED BY THE MUSIC OF JOHN & YOKO: Dave Mullins and Brad Booker

This clever little film shows soldiers on either side of a conflict who play chess by carrier pigeon.  In this fantasy, just playing together develops a sense of humanity of the "other" and creates a friendship where they just saw enemies before. If this one wins and the acceptance speeches call for a ceasefire in Gaza, I'll lose my damn mind. Let's bring the hostages home NOW.

Animated Shorts - 5 nominations

 

The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse

Best Animated Short Film
Matthew Freud
Charlie Mackesy

A small boy is traveling the meadows and Forrests and he is lost. Along the way, he meets a sweet mole who befriends him and they decide to travel together. Soon, a fox joins their entourage as does a beautiful horse, and their friendship propels them all the way to a town where the boy hopes to find a home. A little cheesy but a nice little film especially for kids.

The Flying Sailor

Best Animated Short Film
Amanda Forbis
Wendy Tilby

This was a bit of a snooze. It portrayed the true story of a sailor who was thrown into the air after an explosion at the wharf and he then flew 2 kilometers until he landed and actually lived. That sounds like an exciting story, but it was literally an entire movie of a body just flying through the air.

Ice Merchants

Best Animated Short Film
João Gonzalez
Bruno Caetano

If you're afraid of heights, this is not the story for you. A man and his young son live in the heights of a crazy high mountain, they make ice, and then skydive down to the town to sell it. Eventually, they come back by motorcycle and have a pulley system to get them back up to their home in the clouds. When an avalanche threatens their lives, they make the best of it. Weirdly heavy for what begins as a cute film.

My Year of Dicks

Best Animated Short Film
Sara Gunnarsdóttir
Pamela Ribon

My Year of Dicks follows the quest of one 15 year old girl to lose her virginity and the boys she tries to do it with. A funny story of friendship and sex and it's nice to have the occasional funny one among all of these Oscars films.

An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe It

Best Animated Short Film
Lachlan Pendragon

Here's your typical office worker and telemarketer who begins to notice some strange things at work. People's mouths fall off, they don't have lower body halves, and he doesn't actually know what's going on. We see that he is being filmed and sometimes we see a huge human hand reaching in to manipulate the on-screen happenings.  A fun film with a cute punchline (that I won't spoil!).

Animated Shorts

Just a word about all of the animated shorts this year.  I didn't really love any of them!  While the Live Action shorts were universally great, I thought these were universally mediocre. 

 

AFFAIRS OF THE ART

Joanna Quinn and Les Mills

Beryl is totally obsessed with art and drawing.  She traps her husband into her crazy ideas and schemes to make more art.  That's it, that's the film.

BESTIA

Hugo Covarrubias and Tevo Díaz

Bestia follows the lead character who is part of the Chilean military/police during the period of their history where they would capture suspects and torture and kill them.  It captures what someone in this role might do during the day, during the times when she is not engaged in human rights violations, and I gotta tell ya, it's super creepy.

BOXBALLET

Anton Dyakov

Boxballet follows a ballerina and a boxer who develop a sweet relationship and ultimately affect how the other views the world.

ROBIN ROBIN

Dan Ojari and Mikey Please

A baby robin is discovered by a family of mice who adopt her.  They spend their time pilfering food from unsuspecting home (as you would imagine a family of mice might), and they try to teach the little robin how to behave like a mouse.  She becomes obsessed with stealing a star off of a high Christmas tree in a home.  This was the most delightful of the films, and was a fun little bit of whimsy.

THE WINDSHIELD WIPER

Alberto Mielgo and Leo Sanchez

This short film uses a montage of people, scenes, and scenarios to answer the philosophical question, "What is love?' and I don't know, it was moderately innovative and interesting, I guess.

Just not a big fan of this year's Animated short films.  Nothing from Disney nor Pixar... does that sort of capture the quirkiness of the nominees?

Animated Short Films - 1 nomination each

Here are the nominees for animated short.

 

Yes People

From Iceland, Yes People captures one day with people from one apartment building.  They are shoveling snow, off to work, drinking at home, teaching music lessons by day, and frolicking (or not) by night.  The device, of course, is that the only thing that anyone ever says is "yes" with all of its tones and connotations.  It's quite a funny little film.

Watch the film here.

Opera

I hardly know how to describe this film.  Having watched the film, I almost don't even know what happened in it so I did a little research and reading on it, and the story I read reflects that in the giant pyramid of life from day to night, we humans repeat the same behaviors over and over including racism, terrorism, religion, and war.  That explained the film a bit, but my take away on why it was nominated is that there isn't a part of the giant pyramid image that doesn't have lots of tiny images constantly moving.  When a film needs to be researched understand the story, it doesn't really get my vote.  My guess is that the remarkable part of the film is the extraordinary attention to detail in every tiny part of the screen.

Watch the trailer here.

If Anything Happens I Love You

Parents living in the wake of losing their child in a school shooting is at the heart of this emotional and difficult film.  The title is taken from the last text sent by this family's child (a text that I seem to recall hearing was taken from real events in the Margery Stoneman Douglass High School shooting), and it has parents painfully remembering the carefree and wonderful life they lived as a family before a school shooting took her life.  All I could think throughout the film was that I fully expect someone to call this animated child a crisis actor.  If I were a voter, this would be my choice to win.

See the trailer here and the film on Netflix.

Genius Loci

This is another film for which I had to do a little research, and I'll tell you, what I read didn't line up at all with what I thought was happening when I saw the movie.  It centers are Reine and one night in which she suffers chaotic hallucinations, all pulling her in different directions on the path to self discovery.  I thought these hallucinations represented her struggle with mental health issues, but apparently, I was wrong.  See what you think!

See the film here.

Burrow

Poor little rabbit, he just wants to build himself a nice place to live with all of the normal spaces like his disco/bathroom.  As he burrows down into the ground, he keeps encountering other animals who have set up shop for themselves.  As he works harder and harder to find his space, he learns that what he needs is his space, but also his own very special community.

See the trailer here and the film on Disney+.

Live Action and Animated Shorts!

*Sorry Oscars babies, this is another very combined blog post.  Let me know if you like this solution, or if you think multiple posts in one day would be better.  And help me lobby the Academy to stop making the interim period so short!

ANIMATED SHORTS

A daughter and her father have never really found a way to be close and communicate with each other, and the sadness of that divide permeates as his life is winding down.  This wasn't my favorite, but the animation captured the emotion so beautifully, it was very impressive.

My favorite and the likely winner of the bunch, Hair Love finds a dad ill equipped to style his daughter's gorgeous hair, but a #girldad never gives up.  With a bit of help from YouTube and a big scoop of "can do," nothing will keep this father daughter team from making his daughter gorgeous before they go to visit her ailing mom in the hospital.  Many prognosticators are calling it for Hair Love (and I'm one of them!)

A skittish kitty makes friends with a pitbull who is being kept for an underground fighting ring.  He is sweet and abused.  Oy, this one was so hard to watch!  I can't imagine how anyone can do this to these dogs.  But worry not, the kitty knows how to be strong when he needs to, and this unlikely friendship will mean more to both than they ever could predict.

The heartbreaking but beautiful depiction of memory loss, the animation portrays every stroke, every drop of "paint" that goes into making a life, and how hollow people become when the sufferer can no longer fully remember the people in his life.  

A deceptively charming short about the cruelty of China's one child policy and forced abortion.  One man reenvisions his life had he had the sister sibling that his mother was forced to terminate.

LIVE ACTION SHORTS

Brotherhood is the very disturbing story of a boy returning home to his family.  He went to join ISIS in Syria against his family's wishes, and the father in particular is not tolerant of his son's murderous past, nor of his extreme Muslim views.  The son even arrives home with a fully burqa covered very young wife.  The father acts before he knows the rest of the story.

The discovery of pounds of cocaine in the desert by two young brothers prompts the older brother to spy a money-making opportunity.  The younger of the two thinks they have found laundry detergent, and the older one does nothing to change that perception.  But when the savvy brother attempts to make a sale to the local criminals, he discovers that his younger brother has other plans for the product.

A movie that's starts out funny and titillating - a couple with a direct view of their young neighbors' apartment, they find themselves obsessing over their lives filled with sex, parties, dancing, and fun.  They even buy binoculars as they fantasize about the grass-is-always-greener lifestyle of counterparts who don't have children and responsibilities.  As they watch, they discover that the grass is not always greener, and sometimes, the most important thing, is actual human connection.

This short is based on the true story of young teenage orphans held in a detention center in Guatemala.  They are children functionally being kept in cages for their life circumstances - and the girls are regularly raped, beaten, and treated to the worst of living conditions.  After a staged protest that draws the attention of the country, they try to escape but are caught and returned to their locked in lives.  When a fire is set inside the locked room, the guard at the door ignores what is happening and all 41 girls die in the fire.  There is a lesson here about callous disregard for human life.

This thrilling, edge of your seat, short follows a young woman who tells her rapist (who she knows) that she needs to call her sister.  She really calls the police and the operator on the other end of the line must decipher that the woman is in trouble, and figure out where the woman is so that she can send help.  This one is tense and epitomizes what can only be done in a short film.  It was excellent.

Animated Shorts - all nominees

Animated Short - Alison Snowden and David Fine

Animals struggling with their inner demons in a support group in this adorable and hilarious animated short.  When a large ape with anger issues joins, the dog therapist must find a way for him to share his big ape feelings without destroying the office and killing the other members of the group.

Animated Short - Domee Shi and Becky Neiman-Cobb

It is hard to let your child grow up and move out of the house.  Sometimes, you need to make a little Chinese dumpling baby with whom you can make new memories, share activities, and relive what it was like to raise a child.  But when even the dumpling grows up and wants his own life, sometimes you have to eat the ones you love to keep them with you.  This was the only one of the animated shorts that I had seen before, and it was so cute that I remembered it these many months later.

Animated Short - Louise Bagnall and Nuria González Blanco

Dementia is such a cruel disease.  This beautiful little short follows a woman into her memories before she struggled to know the people around her.  The touching moments when she remembers her adult daughter make all the difference in her life.

Animated Short - Andrew Chesworth and Bobby Pontillas

My favorite of the Animated shorts, One Small Step follows a little girl's dream to go to the moon, and her father's unyielding support.  Together, they dreamed, they flew, the imagined.  When her dream to join the space program is rejected, her father never loses hope.  And when he sadly passes away, she works harder than ever to make their dream her reality.  Girl power!

Animated Short - Trevor Jimenez

It's hard to be the child of divorced parents.  When going back and forth from mom's house to dad's and back again, the child must adjust as his parents move on with their lives, find new partners and paths, and he must find his place in each of the spaces.  Of the five, I found this film the least engaging.

Animated Shorts - 5 nominees

Dear Basketball, Glen Keane and Kobe Bryant

Dear Basketball is the animated of Kobe Bryant's incredibly touching tribute to the 

profession he dreamed about as a child which changed his life beyond measure.  

Shut up, I'm not crying, you're crying.  I think this is possibly the winner of the category.

Garden Party, Victor Caire and Gabriel Grapperon
The animation in this short is incredible!  The funny tale of frogs who have taken over a lush mansion where something has clearly gone wrong with a surprise ending!  The animation is stunning.

Lou, Dave Mullins and Dana Murray
This film is the most adorable of the bunch.  The creature charged with guarding the contents of the lost and found, teaches a school bully the lesson that it is better to share and give than it is to take. 

Negative Space, Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata
This hilarious little film bonds a son and father over their mutual love of packing, and using every nook and cranny of space when storing items in luggage.  Making the most of space turns into a lifelong obsession, one that lasts beyond the grave.

Revolting Rhymes, Jakob Schuh and Jan Lachauer
Revolting Rhymes is the retelling of fairy tales, interweaving characters from assorted stories into a single narrative, through the lens of the Big Bad Wolf's uncle.  Based on a story by Roald Dahl, this film is a clever little bugger with a more modern take on old themes.

Dear Basketball (entire film) on YouTube:

Garden Party Trailer:

Lou (entire film) on YouTube:

Negative Space trailer:

Revolting Rhymes trailer:

Animated Short Films - 1 nomination each

Blind Vaysha

This short film plays as a legend from an ancient culture.  It is about a girl whose left eye only sees the past and whose right eye only sees the future.  She can be looking directly at a person and see him as a child and as an elderly man.  She can look at a landscape and see the dawn of time and post armageddon.  She can look at the horizon and see the sunrise and the sunset.  There is no predicting the expanse of time between her two eyes.  Sadly, she can never see what's right in front of her.

Borrowed Time

This is a beautiful little film recounting the life of a sheriff who returns to the scene of a sad moment in his life, when he and his mentor were in a harrowing crisis and a tragic mistake haunts him forever. In a moment of deep regret and emotion, he questions whether he can continue with life, and an unexpected gift from his mentor plays an important role in helping him to choose life or death.

Pear Cider and Cigarettes

Pear Cider and Cigarettes appears to be the animated version of a real life story.  It is the tale of two best friends - one who has taken a more traditional path (Robert), and one who lived his life on the edge with no danger too frightening to tackle (Techno).  After a short lifetime of hard living and alcohol and drug abuse, Techno finds himself in China trying to get a new liver, and eventually Robert must come find him, get him through the surgery, and bring him home to Canada.  It is the first time I've seen an animated vagina in an animated short.  This one's not for kids!

Pearl

Watching a father and daughter musician travel the country in a beat up car turns out to be one of the sweetest films of the year.  We see them both grow up, buy a house, find ambition, and we see the daughter strike out on her own to achieve her musical dreams.  The backdrop of the film is an incredibly poignant soundtrack.  This is a lovely, emotional film.

Piper

It's hard to grow up and face your fears!  This adorable movie captures the transition of a little piper from being fed by his mother to having to forge for himself against a scary and tumultuous ocean. Little piper so desperately wants to avoid growing up, but his mom knows that to thrive, he must face his fears and learn to feed himself.  Aided by a little hermit crab, the piper finds a way to make it on his own.

*Some of these links below appear to be the full short film!