It is once again time to gear up for the biggest night in cinema, the 96th Academy Awards. With our Super Bowl on the horizon, it also means it’s time to turn attention to the yearly Oscar pool and find ways you can gain a leg up on those you are competing against. One of the best ways to do this is to have a finger on the pulse of the shorts categories. These are easy to miss, often because the categories as a whole are overlooked or considered an afterthought. Despite this notion from many film lovers, the shorts that receive nominations year after year are consistently engaging and effective at telling all kinds of stories. These shorts display an incredible range of talents, push the boundaries of animation, and put up-and-coming directors on the map. The collection put together this year is just as rich, and is well worth seeking out. Each year ShortsTV sets these films up to be shown in theaters in a wildly unique and singular experience that has each category’s films play back to back. You could knock out one section in one fell swoop! Be sure to check out ShortsTV to find a theater near you that is showing these movies.
Maximum participation in watching as many of the nominated films is always highly encouraged, but we’ve got you covered on all of this year’s nominees so you can be engaged with these awards and make an educated decision in your predictions for Sunday night.
Animation
Kicking our analysis off with the Animation selections, this year’s nominees feature five completely different animation styles that celebrate the scale and range that animated film provides. The first short we’ll dive into is Our Uniform, which follows an Iranian woman reflecting on her time as a schoolgirl and the way her culture influenced the way she grew up. This is represented primarily through a combination of stop-motion drawings that depict the uniform the girls were required to wear at school, a hijab paired with a militaristic-looking suit worn each day. The themes that come up in this one are incredibly relevant to our time, but the execution of the story doesn’t quite pack a big enough punch that pushes it to the top of the list for Academy voters. The conceit of Stéphanie Clément’s Pachyderm is similar in that the story comes from the memories of a girl, this time as she recalls an extended stay with her grandparents in which her grandfather proves to be a foreboding, monstrous figure. The animation here is beautiful, but there’s not much else here to get it close to bringing home a trophy.
The most lighthearted of the nominees is assuredly Ninety-Five Senses, narrated by the always delightful Tim Blake Nelson. This film’s narrative weaves elaborate descriptions of the five senses with the tale of an older man in prison about to have his last meal. It balances the seriousness of our narrator’s situation and the celebration of experiencing life through the senses masterfully, and yet this is likely the downfall of its awards chances. It’s not dark or intense enough to feel crucial, but also doesn’t derive a lot of feel-good emotions that may sway voters like we have seen in the past.
Seemingly, our two front runners stand in stark contrast to one another in terms of tone and animation style. War is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and Yoko, animated using Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, is set in a WWI era war between anonymous countries where soldiers from opposing sides are playing a game of chess against one another whilst communicating their moves via carrier pigeon. Candidly, it looks like an extended Fortnite advertisement and its only real power is the names of John Lennon and Yoko Ono slapped on the title and the inclusion of their song “Happy Xmas (War is Over)” at the tail end. In the other corner stands the intense, brooding Letter to a Pig, which follows a young schoolgirl as she daydreams (admittedly more of a daymare, if you will) during a presentation from a Holocaust survivor who is reading a letter to the pig that once saved his life. The commitment to the theme of trauma that is passed to future generations earns its spot near the front of this race.
Prediction: This is a tough one to call, and if we had it our way we’d be voting for Letter to a Pig which is far and away the most successful in this arena. However, sometimes the name recognition of people like John Lennon and Yoko Ono is enough to propel a below average film past its competition, and that seems like it will be the case here. Against our hopes and dreams, our official prediction is War is Over.
Live Action
Moving on to the Live Action category, we’ll start with Netflix’s The After, where a rideshare driver is overcome with emotion and grief as he remembers the loss of his family due to violent crime. The story is simple and straightforward, and the performance from lead David Oyelowo is impressive, but none of the pieces fit together to make any kind of emotional payoff at the end. This seems to be the least successful of the live action nominees this year, and pales in comparison to the powerful character study Invincible. Léokim Beaumier-Lépine delivers a powerhouse of a performance as Marc in this true story about a young boy in a juvenile prison who yearns to be free. This film works much better as the smaller, character driven narrative but is likely too small a story to be handed a statue come Sunday.
Next up is the other Netflix offering in this category, Wes Anderson’s The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. The most prominent in a collection of Anderson’s adaptations of Roald Dahl’s short stories, Henry Sugar features appearances from Benedict Cumberbatch, Dev Patel, and Ralph Fiennes as well as mind-blowing production and set design. Watching this film for the transitions to different sets and scenes is borderline hypnotic and flows in classic Anderson fashion. Moving to Knight of Fortune, a tale about two men who meet by happenstance in a restroom as they comfort each other over the loss of their wives, we find ourselves faced with another film that works well with balancing lighthearted humor with very real grief and pain. Rounding out this category is Red, White and Blue, which follows a single mom as she scrapes together enough cash to travel to a state that allows abortions. Of all the nominees here, this film touches on one of the most hot button issues in our country today and delivers its message incredibly effectively.
Prediction: Ultimately, the power of Netflix behind a Wes Anderson project is likely to prevail here. Henry Sugar is outright undeniable and is our pick for what we think is the most wrapped up race of the shorts. If anything were to sneak up here it would have to be Red, White and Blue considering its cultural relevance and how well it works in comparison to the other three.
Documentary
At last, we come to the final category of shorts. This, like Animation, is a pretty tight race. First up is The Barber of Little Rock which shows the impact that a community driven banking system has had on the people and town of Little Rock, Arkansas. The execution and ideas found here are compelling and thought provoking, yet there’s something missing that could kick it to the next level. Island in Between likewise has nothing wrong with it, yet lacks the substance or power to push it higher on a lot of people’s lists. Island was directed by and features S. Leo Chiang, a native of Taiwan who has returned in recent years and is fascinated by the island of Kinmen which sits much closer to the mainland of China than it does the rest of Taiwan. Perhaps the most fun and entertaining watch across all shorts categories is Sean Wang’s Nai Nai & Wài Pó and follows two of his aging grandmothers who have become best friends and live together in their old age.
The last two films here that most people are debating between as they make their predictions have some incredible similarities that make it interesting to see pitted against one another. The ABCs of Book Banning and The Last Repair Shop both spotlight the plight of young students in America and have interviews with dozens of kids that will tug on your heartstrings. The former is about the book banning epidemic that is sweeping public school systems across the country, and even has kids read excerpts from some of the books and question why they would possibly be banned. Repair Shop is about an instrument repair shop in Los Angeles that mends instruments for students for free. The county provides thousands of free instruments to kids that otherwise wouldn’t have the opportunity to otherwise, and the shop makes sure those instruments have a long life and can impact many students over the years.
Prediction: Knowing the academy might not have a chance to make an issue-based decision in the other shorts categories, it’s hard for us to pick against The ABCs of Book Banning for this award, although it does appear to be closer than some may think. The Last Repair Shop is quite the uplifting story, and it’s hard to predict how many voters are pulled in that way when something works as well as this. We’ll stick with The ABCs of Book Banning in this category as it seems like the safer play at this point.
To learn more about the participating theaters and how to purchase tickets to catch these films yourself, please visit www.shorts.tv/theoscarshorts.
Proud owner of two movie passes. Met Harrison Ford at a local diner once. Based in Raleigh, NC.