Oscar shorts among most satisfying films to watch
The short-film categories are the poor cousins of the Academy Awards, but they can also be some of the most satisfying entries. This year’s crop of nominees includes some stellar performances in the live-action category, and fine artistry in the animated shorts.
Three of the live-action shorts are based on true stories. For DeKalb Elementary (20 minutes), writer/ director Reed Van Dyk drew from a 911 recording made when a stranger entered a school with a gun. Bo Mitchell and Tarra Riggs shine as the gunman and the receptionist who tries to talk him down. It could well be the winner on Oscar night.
My Nephew Emmett (Kevin Wil- son Jr., 20 minutes), is set in 1955 Mississippi and tells the story of Emmett Till, whose death became one of the defining moments of the Civil Rights era, though on that August night it was merely the cowardly murder of a 14-year-old boy. And Watu Wote: All of Us (Katja Benrath, 22 minutes), tells of a 2015 attack on a bus in Kenya, in which Christians were shielded from the Muslim attackers, by their fellow Muslim passengers.
The Silent Child (Chris Overton, 20 minutes), is basically a public-service announcement calling for better treatment of deaf children in hearing schools, but it’s a real heartbreaker. And on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum is The 11 O’Clock (Derin Seale, 13 minutes), a Pythonesque comedy from Australia in which a psychiatrist is treating a man who thinks he’s a psychiatrist.
In the animated category, the technical front-runner is Garden Party (7 minutes), directed by a collective of French directors who go by the name Illogic. Gorgeously shot and photorealistic, it shows a group of amphibians enjoying a mysteriously abandoned house. (The reason for its abandonment is revealed briefly, but may be a shock for some kids.)
The others are all very child-friendly. In Dear Basketball (Glen Keane, 5 minutes), Kobe Bryant says goodbye to the sport that defined him. Lou
(Dave Mullins, 6 minutes), played in cinemas before Cars 3, and depicts a lost-and-found box with a mind of its own.
Negative Space (Ru Kuwahata, Max Porter, 5 minutes), is a sweet rumination by a man on his dad’s suitcase-packing prowess. And Revolting Rhymes (Jan Lachauer, Jakob Schuh, Bin-Han To, 30 min- utes), is a hilarious modern fairy tale; slightly dark, but then again it is based on the book by Roald Dahl.
Not only are the shorts fun to watch; they can be harbingers of future Oscar greatness. Recall that Martin McDonagh, nominated this year for writing and producing Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, is already an Oscar winner for his 2006 live-action short Six Shooter. And Pixar, whose latest feature-length Oscar nominee is the recent Co co, has long been a mainstay in the animated category, ever since 1986’s Luxo Jr. became the first computer-animated short to be nominated for the prize.