I like the animation style, but this felt long for a 15 minute short. I did learn about remittance men and how this particular man (travelling from England to Albert in the early 1900s) could be compared to a comet. I also tend to forget that Canada has its own cowboy culture similar to the US.
Oscar Nomination: Best Short Film, Animated
I hadn’t really gone into this expecting much, but it wasn’t so long ago that I first watched Truth or Dare and I’m a sucker for a good Where Are They Now? story. The film offered much more than I would have expected. I found the brotherhood shared by the dancers even to this day to be inspiring. The documentary doesn’t shy from showing both the good and bad that these men experienced before and after their work with Madonna. Many of the stories shared were a good supplement to the various stories set during the 1980s AIDS crisis that I’ve been reading recently. It was powerful seeing many of the men detailing the struggle of when and how to be out with regards to their sexuality or diagnosis.
So often short films want to highlight an important issue but tend to do so in such a heavy handed way that they lose a lot of their emotional impact. That is the case with Debris. It is sad and relevant, but maybe another five minutes spent actually developing the characters of the workers and they would feel like actual people instead of pawns to get the story told.
I’ve been intrigued by this since it won its Oscar. I’m glad I was able to catch it when I briefly had HBO access. Following the experiences of workers at the Veterans Crisis Line, it can be a depressing and intense watch, but these people are heroes every day they answer those phones. If the United States is going to be sending its people to fight all over the world, we need to be better to our soldiers when they come back and offer more support to those trying to help them.
Oscar Win: Best Documentary, Short Subject
The story of Pinocchio is a a bit sad and creepy, a lonely old men using his skills to create a companion child. Why there are two new versions being released in as many years is beyond me. This adaptation, while dark, is a rather engaging one. Roberto Benigni brings a long-suffering, haggardness to his take on Geppetto. The effects to create a world with self-moving wooden puppets, fairies, and assorted magic is fanciful and impressive.
Oscar nominations: Best Achievement in Costume Design; Best Achievement in Makeup and Hairstyling
Somehow the descriptions of Yorgos Lanthimos’s films still aren’t capable of conveying the batshit crazy ride they are set to lead the viewer on. In Alps, Angeliki Papoulia, a Lanthimos regular, is a nurse recruited to join Alps, a group that hires themselves out as living stand-ins for people with recently departed loved ones. All of that might be somewhat of a spoiler as it begins fairly cryptically, but it doesn’t go far in explaining the actual experience of watching the film.
There is a bit of this short film about a group of Kenyans who refuse to turn over their fellow Christian passengers to the terrorists that hijack their bus that feels Oscar baity, but it is hard to not be affected by the story knowing that it is based on the actual 2015 Mandera bus attack. For a short film, it builds the tension of the event quite well and not being aware of the outcome of the true story, I was unsure until the climax how things would turn out.
Oscar Nomination: Best Live Action Short Film
Honorable Mentions: Abducted in Plain Sight, The Beguiled, Columbus, The Death of Stalin, The Disaster Artist, Dunkirk, Icarus, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, The Lego Batman Movie, Loving Vincent
Honorable Mentions: 102 Not Out, Bad Times at the El Royale, Bird Box, Burning, Creed II, Damsel, Ocean’s 8, Searching, Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero, A Simple Favor, Vice