The 2015 Oscar-Nominated Live-Action Short Films, In Order
Here’s a look at the live-action shorts nominated for an Oscar in 2015. (Here’s a look at the animated shorts category, too.) Most of these are really good! I SAID MOST. Here they are from best and winningest to… least best.
La Lampe Au Beurre De Yak. So often, short films feel like compressed features; this is a rare chance to take advantage of the short format. It’s worth reading about in more detail. Really lovely; it may repel voters because it doesn’t use actors, isn’t about someone overcoming a crisis, all that crap. THIS IS GREAT and I felt like I was seeing something new and kinda magical. This is what should win. But what is more likely to win is…
Parvaneh. This is a classical format: an immigrant girl in a distant land gets in trouble. In this case, she is from Afghanistan, and meets a privileged Swiss girl. And they become friends! It’s actually really good. Perfectly done, interesting without being gross. Into it. Nice job. (Warning, this trailer is kind of dumb, but accurate.)
Aya. You know when you’re watching a foreign film and you’re like, “Wow I just don’t know enough about the culture here to tell if this is an allegory or a metaphorical indictment or if this is just weird?” That’s this. Basically a wacky intimacy-obsessed Israeli woman accidentally impersonates a driver and picks up this hot frosty Dane at an airport on accident and not quite kidnaps him but… then they talk and drive on their way to Jerusalem. IS IT AN ALLEGORY? I HAVE NO IDEA. It really might not be! I laughed, I was mystified, I enjoyed.
Boogaloo and Graham. A sweet film set in Belfast about two kids whose dad gives them chickens? It seems like one of those kernels of memoir that gets overly ironed into a Short Film Format. It’s good though! And it has lots of filthy talking children. Weird fact: they subtitled the children??? Who are speaking English??? I mean, it’s 2015, we’ve sat through two seasons of “The Fall,” we can handle a hard Belfast accent.
The Phone Call. This stars actual names (Jim Broadbent!) which means it’s dangerously easy to vote for it if you were too lazy to watch these movies. This is FUCKING TERRIBLE. I’m going to spoil it for you! It’s about a nice mousy lady (the wonderful SALLY HAWKINS!!!) who works at a crisis hotline and Jim Broadbent calls her because he’s killing himself (his wife died, he can’t go on), and then HE DOES KILL HIMSELF, which is represented by an ambulance showing up at his house but then his DEAD WIFE walking in his front door to meet him, and they’re REUNITED IN DEATH, and his sacrifice of life means so much to the crisis hotline worker that she finally asks out the nebbishy dude who works in the same office, even though he has a filthy oil slick of a wig attacking his head. WHAT THE EVERLOVING FUCK. This was the worst movie I’ve ever seen. Sorry, I know this film was someone’s blood, sweat and tears — Matt Kirkby’s, in fact. But I HATED it, it was offensive, facile, stupid and senseless. What’s he up to now?
Since I finished editing “The Phone Call” I have been locked away in a cabin in Wales writing. I now have two finished screenplays, one thriller called “Call-Girl.” It makes “Fifty Shades” look like “Mary Poppins.” Imagine Tararantino doing “Basic Instinct”! And also a biopic called “Hair of the Dog” set in the ’80s, a true story about an ex-con who sets his sights on winning Crufts, the biggest dog show in the world. It’s “Shawshank Redemption” meets “Best in Show”! It’s more of a funny drama, it’s got a “Little Miss Sunshine” feel to it.
Sounds like the next Tony Kaye, doesn’t he. Go ahead, give him an Oscar, Hollywood. You’ll get what you get.