Review: Looking at the short films — animated, live-action and documentary — nominated for Academy Awards

One of the worst byproducts of Hollywood’s tight grip on our movie imaginations is that the short film — a story told in less than 40 minutes — is largely dismissed by the great moviegoing public.

It wasn’t always this way, particularly with the animated cartoons that once preceded the feature film. That was also a time when you knew what studio made the movie by which characters showed up in the cartoon before it — Tom & Jerry meant MGM, Popeye meant Paramount, and Bugs Bunny and his Looney Toons cohort meant Warner Bros.

The Academy Awards allow us to bring short films back into the conversation, with the three categories devoted to them: Animated, live-action and documentary. Shorts International has made it easier in recent years, by compiling the shorts into theatrical programs — two of which are opening this week at the Broadway Centre Cinemas, and the third (documentary) opening the following week.

I’m ranking each of the nominees, in order of personal preference. These aren’t the movies I think will win the Oscar in these categories. These are listed by how much I liked them.

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Animated short films

1. “An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It,” directed by Lachlan Pendragon • This meta stop-motion gem shows Neil, a cubicle drone who comes to the upsetting realization that he’s a figure in a stop-motion cartoon. Brilliant and a little spooky.

2. “The Ice Merchants,” directed by João Gonzalez • A father and son live in a house hanging on the side of a cliff, making ice and selling it to the townsfolk below. A dialogue-free story about family and grief, ending with the most heartbreaking single image I’ve seen on film in a long time.

3. “My Year of Dicks,” directed by Sara Gunnarsdóttir, written by Pamela Ribon • Ribon’s memoir of trying to lose her virginity in 1991 forms the basis for an episodic digest of bad boyfriends, with each vignette beautifully told in a different animation style.

4. “The Flying Sailor,” directed by Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby • A surreal little gem from Canada, based on the true story of an explosion in Halifax harbor in 1917 — and how a sailor flew two kilometers and survived.

5. “The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse,” directed by Charlie Mackesy • The technique here is gorgeous, melding seemingly hand-drawn animation to computerized backdrops. But the story of a lost boy and the animals who befriend him (voiced by Tom Hollander, Idris Elba and Gabriel Byrne) features stilted writing and forced moralizing. Because of that, I’m afraid it’s going to win.

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Live-action short films

1. “The Red Suitcase,” directed by Cyrus Neshvad • A 16-year-old Iranian girl arrives at the Luxembourg airport, terrified of meeting the man her father has arranged for her to marry. Themes of female liberation play out with the propulsion of a good thriller.

2. “Le Pupille,” directed by Alice Rohrwacher • The Italian director (“Happy as Lazaro”) tells a charming story of little girls in a Catholic boarding school at the start of World War II, confounding the Mother Superior (played by the director’s sister, Alba Rohrwacher) with their habit of acting like children. Funny, observant and utterly charming — and the likely Oscar winner.

3. “Night Ride (Nattrikken),” directed by Erik Tweiten • A little person (Sigrid Kandal Husjord), tired of waiting for her tram to leave the station, hops in the driver’s seat and speed down the track — until the next station, when she picks up some passengers who present a moral dilemma. A smart and thoughtful story about transphobia, a topic that’s too much on everyone’s mind these days.

4. “Ivalu,” directed by Andres Waller • An Indigenous girl (Mile Heilmann Kreutzmann) in a village in Greenland goes looking for her missing sister, aided by a raven who may be prophetic or a prankster. A nice mix of topical seriousness and magical realism.

5. “An Irish Goodbye,” directed by Tom Berkeley and Ross White • When their mother dies, two Northern Irish brothers — one living in London, the other stayed home — argue about what to do next, including completing the wishes on Mum’s bucket list. A little too whimsical and precious for its own good.

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Documentary shorts

1. “Stranger at the Gate,” directed by Joshua Seftel • An ex-Marine with PTSD and a chip on his shoulder decides he’s going to blow up the Islamic center in his town of Muncie, Indiana. Then he goes inside to meet the people he wants to kill. This documentary plays like a thriller, and ends someplace you would never expect.

2. “Haulout,” directed by Maxim Arbugaev and Evgenia Arbugaeva • The filmmakers, who are siblings, get remarkably up close and personal with a marine biologist who goes to the same cabin in the Siberian Arctic to greet the annual walrus migration — but each year, things keep getting worse in one area. Spartan narration and stark cinematography convey the desolation of the place, made worse by climate change.

3. “How Do You Measure a Year?,” directed by Jay Rosenblatt • The director, who was nominated in this category last year for his examination of his middle-school days in “When We Were Bullies.”works off a simple premise: Every year, from age 2 to 18, Rosenblatt filmed his daughter, Ella, to ask the same series of questions. We watch Ella grow from a bored toddler to a thoughtful, mature adult — one who, in spite of arguments, really loves her dad.

4. “The Martha Mitchell Effect,” directed by Anne Alvergue • A profile of Martha Mitchell, the outspoken wife of Richard Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, and her startling commentary about the Watergate break-in. Jam-packed with information, and a slew of audio interviews, but anyone with any knowledge of the ’70s will feel under informed.

5. “The Elephant Whisperers,” directed by Kartiki Gonsalves • The movie follows Bomman and Bellie, a South Indian couple cares for a young baby elephant— in a thoughtful but predictable movie.

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Oscar-nominated animated short films

★★★1/2

Oscar-nominated live-action short films

★★★

Oscar-nominated documentary short films

★★★1/2

Opening Friday, February 17 (animated and live-action), and February 24 (documentary), at the Broadway Centre Cinemas (Salt Lake City), and March 10 at the Century 16 (South Salt Lake), Century Union Heights 16 (Sandy), Cinemark 24 at Jordan Landing (West Jordan) and Cinemark 16 (Provo). Not rated, but the animated shorts are probably rated PG-13 for depictions of sexuality and nudity; the live-action shorts are probably PG-13 for language in at least one film; and the documentary shorts are probably PG-13 for language. Running time: 93 minutes for animated shorts, 112 minutes for live-action shorts, and 163 minutes for the documentary shorts; four of the live-action shorts and two of the documentary shorts are in languages other than English, with subtitles.