By: Henry J. Fromage –
Another year, another whiff at trying to secure screeners for the Oscar-nominated short films (ShortsTV is stingy), but I did my damndest and caught the vast majority.
Animated Short Films:
159. The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and the Horse (Apple)
Apple has a horse (and a mole, and a fox, and a boy…) in the race with this storybook British tale about a boy who befriends some very British animals (voiced by Tom Hollander, Gabriel Byrne, and Idris Elba) and learns life lessons from them and all that. It’s all quite lovely with hand-drawn animation to match, but also pretty much what you’d expect from this sort of thing. Three Beers.
160. The Flying Sailor (the New Yorker/Youtube)
This short recreated the 1917 Halifax Explosion, in which a boat collision resulted in the largest man-made explosion to date, flattening all structures in a half-mile radius, with 1,782 people ultimately losing their lives. One strange true tale among all the devastation is how one sailor was propelled through the air, with all of this clothes ripping off, and landing, somehow, alive. Here there’s a bit of artful exaggeration, but there’s a strange beauty to it all. Two Beers.
161. Ice Merchants (the New Yorker/Youtube)
Death-defying falls prove to be a strange theme this year, as this short imagines a father and son who are, yes, ice merchants, which entails living high up on a glacier wall and skydiving down to the nearby town to sell their wares. The animation here is understated but evocative, and while you shouldn’t spend to much time thinking about how exactly the economics of this is supposed to work, it leads up to a bittersweet climax. Two Beers.
162. My Year of Dicks (Vimeo)
This short is Pamela Ribon’s recounting of the summer she was 15 and determined to lose her virginity, but to the right guy. Her year of dicks is more the second connotation of the title, as she unsurprisingly discovers along the way that most teenage boys are, well, dicks. This ends up being a more romantic short than the outré title and premise would lead you to expect, but it’s a sensitively and amusingly delivered story nonetheless. Two Beers.
163. An Ostrich Told Me the World is Fake and I Think I Believe It
This one is pretty much as bizarre as the promise held in a title as A + as this one is (while deserving on its own merits, you have to expect that title played a not insignificant role in it getting nominated). It goes meta fast as our stop-motion office drone protagonist spins out into an existential crisis when he finds out, well, that his world is fake (thanks, of course, to an ostrich). Clever, and impressive in its technical execution. Two Beers.
Live Action Short Films
164. Le Pupille (Disney +)
Cannes stalwart Alice Rohrwacher directs this WWII-era set story of a girl’s orphanage and the Christmas cake that threatens to upset the strict social order imposed by the nuns who run it. There’s a bit of Wes Anderson in the period detail and meticulously constructed mis en scene, plus a spunky denouement that wraps things up nicely. Two Beers.
165. Night Ride (the New Yorker/Youtube)
This Nordic short was the big award-winner at Tribeca, and it’s easy to see why. A woman accidentally commandeers a trolly, then just keeps on driving it since what else is she going to do? When some assholes start to harass a passenger, she has a decision to make. Another nice humane film about interpersonal connections. Three Beers.
166. An Irish Goodbye (BBC iPLayer)
An update- if in doubt, see if you can convince a host nation you live there and then stream it. This is the obligatory feel-good contender of the year (although the whole slate is less dour than usual), as a couple of brothers run down a bucket list left by their dearly departed Ma. Sweet but a tad broad. Two Beers.
167. Ivalu (Amazon)
An update, I snuck this Greenland-set short in at the buzzer when Amazon offered it to rent independent of the ShortsTV hegemony. It’s a dark and dour story about a young girl looking for her barely older sister across the bleak yet beautiful landscapes surrounding her small community, with a disturbing ending tied in to the plight of all the missing & murdered indigenous woman across the globe. Two Beers.
xxx. The Red Suitcase
Ever since Shorts TV took over distributing the Oscar-nominated shorts, press access has gotten a lot more stingy. Why wouldn’t you release the Oscar-nominated shorts before the Oscar ceremony they feature in? Boo. ?? Beers.
Documentary Shorts
168. The Elephant Whisperers (Netflix)
This adorable short on Netflix is about a couple in Tamil Nadu, India, whose job is to rehabilitate elephants, and in particular care for a couple of baby ones and raise them to the point they can be reintegrated into the wild. Spending time with these lovely people would already be enough, but all of the elephant footage shows how emotive and intelligent these creatures are. just beautiful. Two Beers.
169. The Martha Mitchell Effect (Netflix)
“The Martha Mitchell Effect” is a medical term now, which occurs when a medical professional labels a patient’s accurate perception of real events as delusional. This short, also from Netflix, delves into who the real Martha Mitchell was, wife to a prominent member of Richard Nixon’s Cabinet, but never afraid to speak her mind, in ways that at first boosted the administration’s messaging, but soon came to be a liability to them when she wouldn’t let the truth get in the way of politics. An extraordinary woman who saw the writing on the wall for Nixon earlier than most anyone, and who refused to be deterred by those around her who tried to convince her otherwise. Two Beers.
170. Haulout (the New Yorker/Youtube)
This documentary short is about as straightforward as they come, but when your subject is a thousands-strong gathering of walruses and the Russian scientist who lives in a small shack surrounded by them, not much additional razzle-dazzle is needed. It’s not all Planet Earth, though, because the reason they’re gathering in such numbers is climate change, and the aftermath isn’t exactly Disney channel. Two Beers.
171. Stranger at the Gate (the New Yorker/Youtube)
Mac McKinney had it all planned out. This veteran with a broken family and broken psyche was going to bomb his local Indiana mosque, but first he wanted to scope it out. What he found there wasn’t what he expected- compassion, openness, and even acceptance. A true life story of repentance and change. Two Beers.
xxx. How Do You Measure a Year
I managed to catch all of the documentary shorts since the category has been monopolized by streaming as of late- except for this one. ?? Beers.
