Short your investment: Release dates and streaming access make it a challenge to see every movie nominated for a best picture Academy Award this year. But serious Oscar pool competitors know the short film category is a more easily achievable viewing list. Enter Violet Crown’s Oscar Shorts series, part of the theater’s RSVP Cinema program. The shorts will show on the big screen in three categories: animated, live action, and documentary. The films in each group are offered back-to-back, so viewers can gain an edge while enjoying the authentic movie experience we’ve all been missing.
Through 4/15, Prices and times vary. Violet Crown Cinema, 200 W. Main St., Downtown Mall. charlottesville. violetcrown.com.
Sound of Metal, starring Riz Ahmed, is nominated for six Oscars, including best picture, best actor, and best sound.
This year continues to be anything but typical, and yet the march to the 93rd annual Academy Awards ceremony, moved to April 25, feels familiar. While far fewer films played in theaters over the past 12 months, we still have many cinematic achievements to celebrate, and a must-see movie list is a welcome distraction from the doldrums of late winter.
This time around, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences selected eight films for best-picture consideration. In the 1930s and ’40s, eight to 12 films were nominated for what was then called the outstanding film of the year. The most nominations was in 1934 with 12 choices in a year that saw the release of It Happened One Night, Cleopatra, The Thin Man, and Imitation of Life. The possible nominees list was honed down to five in 1944, and it stayed that way for 65 years.
In 2009, the Oscars’ governing body increased the number of possible best-picture nominations from five to 10. That begs the question: Why aren’t 10 films nominated each year?
While sweeping historical films are always considered best picture Oscar fodder, this year the smaller personal dramas have a strong showing. Two of these, The Father and Nomadland, share a few similarities—a minimal number of speaking parts, and each film takes on aging in different ways.
The Father portrays a man coping with dementia, and both lead actor Anthony Hopkins and supporting actress Olivia Colman are nominated for their performances in the unsettling film. Frances McDormand is nominated for her starring role in Nomadland. In terms of setting and atmosphere, the films could not be more different. The Father is claustrophobic by design, and Nomadland is without walls, literally.
A third film with nominations for leading actress and best picture is Promising Young Woman. This one takes an unflinching look at misogyny and rape culture, but with a Lisa Frank color palette, and wit so sharp it could cut a man. It is a scathing disassembly of the good guy trope, and easily the most controversial film among the nominations. Director Emerald Fennell is also up for an award, making her and Nomadland director Chloé Zhao only the sixth and seventh women to be put forward as best director in the history of the Academy Awards.
Judas and the Black Messiah and The Trial of the Chicago 7 are historical dramas, and both stories, set in late 1960s Chicago, capture the palpable tension of the time. While Trial features an ensemble cast of men portraying the true events during the trial for anti-Vietnam War activists during the 1968 Democratic National Convention, Judas follows the betrayal of Black Panthers leader Fred Hampton.
Sound of Metal is a crushing film starring Riz Ahmed as a punk-metal drummer who suddenly loses his hearing. Incredible performances and immersive sound design help bring the audience closer to the drummer’s struggles. Supporting actor Paul Raci was also nominated, and is considered to be the odds-on favorite.
Though not intended as a palate cleanser, Minari sort of functions as one in this field. The charming film about a young Korean family in pursuit of the American dream is not without traumas—the family struggles with just about everything, but their perseverance and the film’s gorgeous cinematography combine to instill hope.
Perhaps the most classically “Oscar” film on this year’s list is David Fincher’s Mank. Not only does it star previous Oscar winner Gary Oldman, the movie itself is about the making of the Oscar-winning Citizen Kane. Oldman is Herman J. Mankiewicz, the screenwriter for Kane, who struggles with meeting his deadline, pleasing Orson Welles, and combatting alcoholism. It may be a self-indulgent exercise to make a movie about making a movie, but this is a brilliant film that gives us insight into the politics of Tinseltown and its players during the golden age of cinema.
The Academy Awards are, of course, self-indulgent, self-congratulatory, and navel-gazing. But, for better or worse, the awards determine who in Hollywood gets money, power, and attention for their next project. Art and film can nudge national and global cultural trends, putting award winners in a position to guide that conversation, and it’s in this role that the Academy Awards are not purely frivolous.
See the Oscar-nominated short films at Violet Crown Cinema on the Downtown Mall.
Short film blocks are often the highlight of any film festival, but when the Academy Awards come around, audiences are less familiar with them than with other categories. Here’s a rundown of this year’s nominees.
Animated Short
It would be easy to crown Pixar’s delightful Bao the early favorite on pedigree and name recognition alone, but it has some solid competition. Bao follows an unexpected relationship between a mother and a sentient dumpling she created; delighted by its company, she is also saddened by how quickly it grows up and asserts its independence. It’s an effective metaphor in a sleekly produced package.
Three out of the remaining four nominees also examine parent-child relationships. Late Afternoon shows an older woman whose memories are triggered as her adult daughter packs her old belongings. It’s perhaps the best cry you’ll have with any film nominated this year. One Small Step, about a young woman who aspires to be an astronaut and the father who supports her dreams and fixes her shoes, is cathartic for anyone who wished they had more time with a loved one. Weekends depicts a young boy’s point of view of the difficulty each family member has after a divorce. It’s funny, honest, visually inventive, and packed with powerful images.
The worst of the bunch is Animal Behaviour, about a group therapy session for animals. The mantis can’t keep a partner, the pig overeats, and the gorilla has trouble with anger management. They are also drawn with human-looking butts, which is apparently another joke.
Live-Action Short
It’s troubling that three of the five live-action shorts are about child death or endangerment. It’s possible the entries stood out at the festivals where they premiered, but choosing them back-to-back in the same category is puzzling. Of the three, Madre is the strongest, almost a single take of a mother in Spain who is called by her son after he is abandoned on an unknown beach. Watching a story like this unfold in real time, as the characters come to understand the stakes, is very effective drama, as can be seen in another nominee, Fauve. This follows two teenage boys who explore a quarry unsupervised, playing a game to see how many times they can trick each other. It seems to be a truly personal film for its director, and the performances are excellent.
The most troubling nominee is Detainment, about the real-life murder of 2-year-old James Bulger in Liverpool by two young boys in 1993. Bulger’s family has objected to the film’s nomination, and though it’s well-made with good performances from child actors, it adds nothing new to the conversation.
Two films about prejudice are very different, but equally satisfying to those of us hopeful but frustrated with the state of the world. Marguerite, from Canada, depicts an elderly woman who reflects on her own life after learning that her caretaker is in a same-sex marriage, confessing that she never acted on her love for a friend when she was younger because “times were different.” Skin, meanwhile, shows the retribution taken on an American neo-Nazi who launches a brutal attack on a black man in a parking lot after the Nazi’s son laughed at a toy he was holding. To say what happens would minimize the impact, but a feature-length version is reportedly in the works, so stay tuned.
Documentary Short
Feature-length documentaries often take years of research. The advantage of a short-form documentary is its immediacy, showing what is going on in the world as we speak. Lifeboat follows rescue crews tasked with retrieving people who risk their lives crossing the Mediterranean from Africa to Europe, then letting the migrants themselves tell their stories. PERIOD. END OF SENTENCE. examines the taboo of menstruation in India from the point of view of a pad manufacturer that, in order to sell its product, must combat rampant misinformation.
A Night at the Garden is an assembly of footage from when the German American Bund, a Nazi organization, sold out Madison Square Garden for a rally. The towering image of George Washington surrounded by swastikas as Fritz Julius Kuhn shouts frighteningly familiar rhetoric will surely haunt anyone concerned about the rise of the far right.
End Game explores our relationship with death in a medical context, speaking with professionals in hospice and palliative care, as well as their patients and families. Despite its subject matter the film has a strong current of positivity, and shows why a relationship with death is so crucial to embracing what makes us human. Black Sheep—one of the best and most confessional in this category—features a man who grew up as the child of African immigrants in the U.K., reflecting on family and societal pressures, and how they led him to whiten his skin, wear blue contacts and seek the friendship of the racists who once tormented him. He tells his story with many mixed emotions, and the way he puts us in his shoes is truly gripping.
