Countdown to the Oscars: Best Live Action Short

Welcome to this year’s edition of Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars, where we will break down each of the 23 categories, analyze the films, and make some guesses at their awards prospects.

Best Live Action Short

The nominees are:

The After

Invincible

Knight of Fortune

Red, White, and Blue

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

The After

Produced by and starring David Oyelowo, this acclaimed short follows family man Dayo (Oyelowo) in the aftermath of a mass murder that claimed the lives of his wife and daughter. Oyelowo gives a stirring performance, and it’s easy to see why, on paper, the material would attract a star of his caliber. Unfortunately, the film kind of fizzles out right at the moment where it feels like it could begin to take off.

In his grief, Dayo quits his high-powered job and takes up driving for a rideshare company. He listens to people’s lives and observes, sometimes happily, sometimes with sadness, until one day a family gets in his car: a mother, a father, and a daughter who looks remarkably similar to his own deceased child. It has all the makings of an interesting climax, but filmmaker Misan Harriman doesn’t quite know how to land the plane. All else aside, Oyelowo is excellent in the leading role, and Harriman certainly has the chops to make a great film next time around.

Invincible

Inspired by a true story, this highly lauded Canadian film tells of Marc-Antoine, a troubled kid who has been sentenced to a period of time at a youth detention center. We never learn exactly what his transgression was, but it doesn’t matter. The point of the film is to show how incarceration can wear on the souls of those imprisoned.

We see that Marc-Antoine, portrayed wonderfully by young actor Léokim Beaumier-Lépine, is smart and sensitive. He writes poetry. He gets along well with his little sister. His family loves him, even if his parents are perhaps a bit exasperated by him. But, the walls of the detention center close in around him, forcing him to believe he has only one way out of all of this: escape, in whatever form that takes.

Knight of Fortune

This is a lovely little film about love, loss, and moving on, told in a darkly humorous style that Danish filmmakers just seem to have a way with. Karl (Leif Andrée) is at the morgue to say his final goodbyes to his deceased wife, but he can’t quite bring himself to do it. He meets another man at the morgue who is there for the same purpose. They bond. Lies are told. Antics ensue. And, it’s all tremendously funny and heartwarming.

The film is written and directed by Lasse Lyskjær Noer and produced by the Danish short film master Kim Magnusson. Magnusson, who is not on the list of nominees for this film, has seven previous nominations in this category and two wins, for 1999’s Election Night and 2013’s gorgeous Helium. Knight of Fortune does not quite reach those heights, but it is an excellent effort nonetheless.

Red, White, and Blue

For me, this is far and away the best film of the bunch. Nazrin Choudhury’s short is a superbly executed thriller with amazing performances and a gut punch of a twist that will stick with you long after you see it. Brittany Snow, star of X and the Pitch Perfect film series, plays a single mom in Missouri dealing with an unwanted pregnancy. With her preteen daughter in tow, she scrapes together the little money she can and sets out across state lines to procure an abortion.

The message of the film is clear, concise, and urgent. The anti-abortion laws that are spreading across certain pockets of this country are putting people’s lives at risk, turning necessary healthcare into a harrowing fight for survival. Red, White, and Blue plays less as a warning and more like reportage of the world we have wrought, either through stunning indifference or active ignorance.

The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

This film played last during the nominated shorts program that played in theaters. As the screening I attended let out, a woman in the back of the theater made a comment to the effect of: Thank god this movie played because the rest were trash and this was art. Meanwhile, I sat there for 39 interminable minutes and marveled at the fact that people sit through whole feature-length movies in this style and claim to enjoy them. To each their own, I suppose.

Backed by the power of Netflix, Wes Anderson crams virtually every word of the Roald Dahl short story on which this is based into the mouths of his actors as they move about the director’s precious dioramas. I walked out of The French Dispatch when it played in theaters, and if this had been one second longer, I might have considered that course of action here, too. Benedict Cumberbatch is fine in this, as is Dev Patel. Even given that, I despised every twee little moment of this movie. But, to each their own.

The final analysis

It’s usually a good idea to point to the short with the most star power when attempting to pick the victor in this category. And, hey, look, there’s one with Cumberbatch, Patel, Ben Kingsley, and Ralph Fiennes, all working for a big-name director at the one company known for getting short films in front of voters better than any other.

It’s a shame because in a year with a deck that was less stacked, the excellent Red, White, and Blue would have a real shot at the win, but it is almost certainly not to be. It seems that everything has aligned for Anderson, working on his eighth Academy Award nomination, to win his first Oscar.

Will win: The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar

Should win: Red, White, and Blue

Should have been here: The Anne Frank Gift Shop

A note about my favorite snub: It may occasionally be a tad on the nose and just a bit too preachy, but Mickey Rapkin’s The Anne Frank Gift Shop sure knows its way around a dark joke. Equal parts lament about the lack of Holocaust education in schools and satire of influencer culture, this black comedy has the style, wit, and performances to stand out among a sea of shorts. Rapkin will be someone to watch in this space.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Director

Alejandro González Iñárritu is nominated for Best Director for Birdman.

Each day as we make our way to the Academy Awards ceremony Feb. 22, Last Cinema Standing will take an in-depth look at each of the categories, sorting out the highs, the lows, and everything in between. Check back right here for analysis, predictions, and gripes as we inch toward the Dolby Theater and that world-famous red carpet.

Best Director

The nominees are:

Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman

Richard Linklater for Boyhood

Bennett Miller for Foxcatcher

Wes Anderson for The Grand Budapest Hotel

Morten Tyldum for The Imitation Game

We could run down the list of great directors who have never won this award – as so many who like to gripe about what the Oscars mean tend to do – but no award recognition, or lack thereof, will change the historical or cultural perspective of anyone. A great director is a great director, Academy Award winner or not, but boy, it sure is fun when our favorites win this award. That is the thing that most people who complain about the Academy miss. As Sasha Stone puts it so succinctly over at Awards Daily: “The Oscars don’t mean anything, except when they do.”

I would amend that to say that while they may or may not mean something to those of us who watch the game, the Oscars always mean something to the people who win them – perhaps excluding the rare person who refuses the award. For any one of these five nominated directors, an Oscar has the power to change the trajectory of his career. Maybe his next project will be easier to finance. Maybe he will have more creative leeway to make the kind of film he wants. Whatever the desired effect, an Oscar is a great way to open doors in the industry.

This is the first time since 2007 that none of the nominated directors has previously won the award and the first time since 2002 that none is a previous winner in any category. That is not to say these folks have never been to the dance. They just have never been voted king. Anderson is a six-time Academy Award nominee, and Iñárritu and Linklater have five nominations apiece. This is Miller’s second nomination for Best Director, while Tyldum is the lone first-timer in the group. One of these men, however, will be a first-time winner, and no matter who it is, it will be exciting to see what doors he chooses to open next.

Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman – Speaking in a general sense, Iñárritu is the best director in this group, by which I mean his career, taken as a whole, is the most impressive of the nominated filmmakers. He has made just five feature films, but each one could be considered a modern masterpiece. His loosely connected communication breakdown trilogy – consisting of Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel – constitutes one of the sterling achievements of 21st century cinema.

Now, we have Birdman, about a communication breakdown on a global scale as seen through the eyes of a washed up actor just trying to put on a play. Leaving aside for a moment the considerable technical prowess of the film, one of Iñárritu’s gifts has always been to bring out the best, most raw and wrenching performances from his actors. Birdman lives and dies on the success or failure of its talented ensemble, but under the guidance of Iñárritu, none of the actors ever steps wrong. Each performance is finely calibrated to the tone of Iñárritu’s pitch-black satire, and nothing ever feels out of place.

About that technical prowess, though, there is nothing else like Birdman. This is a film set almost entirely backstage at a Broadway theater, and it is built on intimate conversations and quiet moments of reflection. So, why does Birdman feel like one of the biggest movies of the year? This is a small scale production that would not be out of place in a lineup with the kind of superhero films it satirizes. The epic camerawork, the grand art direction, the stunning sound design – it all comes together in a film that feels massive, even as it embraces its smallness. This may be Iñárritu’s finest hour – so far.

Richard Linklater for Boyhood – Because Linklater is a daring filmmaker who has never been afraid to try different genres and different styles, there is an interesting split among his fans. Some prefer him in populist entertainer mode with such movies as Dazed and Confused, School of Rock, and his Bad News Bears remake. Others prefer his more formally daring experimental films such as A Scanner Darkly and Waking Life. While still others would rather he focus on more talky, low-key dramas such as the Before trilogy. Boyhood finally is the film that could unite all the three groups.

It is an immensely relatable coming-of-age story full of pop hits and memorable performances; the 12-year filming process constitutes one of the most daring filmmaking experiments in recent memory; and while never boring, most of the three-hour runtime is made up of characters simply living their lives. If we cannot quite call Boyhood a perfect movie, it is most certainly a perfect Linklater film.

Most of the Boyhood campaign has focused on the 12-year aspect of the filmmaking – a feat that is integral to understanding the achievement of the movie – but that is a disservice to the deeply human tale Linklater commits to telling. These are not exceptional people leading exceptional lives. They are not inventors or heroes or history makers. They are real, and maintaining the passion and commitment to tell the story of a group of real people over a dozen years may be Linklater’s most wonderful trick of all.

Bennett Miller for Foxcatcher – With just three feature films to his credit, Miller has quietly developed into one of the best American directors of his generation. From Capote to Moneyball and now Foxcatcher, Miller has found a way to bring the honest emotions of a chamber drama to the extraordinary stories of murders, cultural icons, and sports stars. By refusing to sensationalize any of his characters or situations, Miller has been able to take highly specific tales of power and struggle and turn them into universally relevant allegories.

Tales of millionaire murderers are about as sensational as it gets in our culture, and the story John du Pont has all the trappings of an over-the-top melodrama. It features drugs, money, violence, and mental illness. Add to that the government contractors and Olympic athletes that come in and out of the story, and the whole thing starts to strain credulity. Miller, however, refuses to play into any of that. He rejects the notion that the sensational must be told sensationally and instead offers up a dark, brooding tale of ambition, power, and corruption.

Wes Anderson for The Grand Budapest Hotel – Well, it finally happened. Anderson got the Oscar nomination his fans have been clamoring for. Though the auteur has several nominations for writing to his name – and one for Best Animated Feature – this is the one his fans have been waiting for. I cannot share their excitement. Had this recognition come in 2012 for Moonrise Kingdom, I maybe could have mustered some enthusiasm, but not for this one.

It is inarguable that Anderson is a stylist of the highest order. The auteur theorists of the 1960s would love him, advocating as they did for the authorial role of the director. There is no mistaking an Anderson film for a film by anyone else, and he is to be applauded for developing such a unique signature style, but pardon me for not being as taken with his whimsical fantasies and childlike dream worlds as it seems much of the rest of the cinephile community is.

Does The Grand Budapest Hotel hint at darker themes? Sure, but a hint sometimes just is not enough. Maybe Anderson will become a grownup filmmaker at some point in his career, but it has not happened yet. The Grand Budapest Hotel is unique. There is no denying that, but unique does not equal great. For me, greatness continues to elude Anderson, but maybe I am just a curmudgeon.

Morten Tyldum for The Imitation Game – It is a little surprising to me that Tyldum is nominated with this group. The Grand Budapest Hotel may not have worked for me, but I can appreciate the directorial stamp Anderson has on it. On the other hand, The Imitation Game is so thoroughly unmemorable that it would be difficult to dissect any part of the production for either positive or negative critique. It is mediocre at its very core.

Tyldum’s direction is serviceable much of the time, distracting some of the time, and just generally underwhelming all of the time. A lot of this film’s problems begin with the script, but a stronger director could have found ways to accentuate what worked on the page and fix what did not. Instead, the screenplay’s worst tendencies – repetitiveness, a lack of forward momentum, and an overreliance on flashbacks to fill in character gaps – are played up as though the point is to take world-changing events and suck the energy and intrigue completely from them.

The final analysis

This seems like more of a toss-up than it should. Iñárritu won the Directors Guild award, his film has been an industry juggernaut, and for my money, Birdman is the best film from any of the nominated directors. In any other year, I would predict Iñárritu and never look back, but this has been a strange year. As much as Birdman has steamrolled through the industry awards, Boyhood has collected nearly every critics and non-industry award it has been up for – the Golden Globe, the British Academy of Film and Television award, the Broadcast Film Critics, etc.

The last two years have seen a rare split between the Best Director and Best Picture categories, and many are predicting a similar split this year, but I just do not see it. If Birdman really is going to win Best Picture as the statistics suggest it will, I do not see any way Iñárritu’s flashy, innovative, and spellbinding direction does not get awarded. By the same token, if the Academy wants to call Boyhood the best film of the year, how could it not reward the remarkable dedication of Linklater? The numbers tell us Birdman will win, but my gut tells me Boyhood, and if I am wrong, well, I think I can live with it.

Will win: Richard Linklater for Boyhood

Should win: Alejandro González Iñárritu for Birdman

Wish she had been here: Ava DuVernay for Selma

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Original Screenplay

Jake Gyllenhaal and Renee Russo star in writer-director Dan Gilroy's Oscar-nominated Nightcrawler.

Each day as we make our way to the Academy Awards ceremony Feb. 22, Last Cinema Standing will take an in-depth look at each of the categories, sorting out the highs, the lows, and everything in between. Check back right here for analysis, predictions, and gripes as we inch toward the Dolby Theater and that world-famous red carpet.

Best Original Screenplay

The nominees are:

Birdman, written by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Alexeander Dinelaris, Armando Bo, and Nicolás Giacobone

Boyhood, written by Richard Linklater

Foxcatcher, written by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman

The Grand Budapest Hotel, written by Wes Anderson and Hugo Guinness

Nightcrawler, written by Dan Gilroy

Some of my favorite nominations each year come in the Original Screenplay category. While the whole Academy might not embrace the strangeness of some of the year’s most out-there films, the writers’ branch has no such difficulty. It sometimes takes a writer to recognize the challenge of writing, and if you want a quick rundown of the best films in any given year, a look through the Best Original Screenplay nominees will give you a pretty good starting point.

Just in the last decade, some of the great films that could not find traction in Best Picture but snuck in as screenplay nominees include Match Point, In Bruges, Margin Call, and The Savages. This is the category that made Oscar winners of films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Chinatown, and Citizen Kane. Original Screenplay is home to the kind of outside-the-box thinking that would serve the rest of the Academy well.

Still, when it comes to the win, the whole Academy votes, and they are as susceptible as always to their preconceived notions and general tendencies. Best Picture nominees tend to dominate. In fact, the last film to win without a corresponding Best Picture nomination was the aforementioned Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in 2004. If it is a possible winner, so much the better. This year, three of the five nominees are also nominated in Best Picture, and two are likely battling it out for the win.

Birdman – This is the best script of the year, hands down. Nothing else is as insightful, cutting, and damn entertaining as the Hollywood takedown written by a talented group of veritable outsiders, Iñárritu, Dinelaris, Bo, and Giacobone. Though dialogue-heavy, the film moves at the speed of light as characters go in and out of rooms, go on and come off stage, and twist and turn through a film that is light on plot but big on themes of art and artistry, love, respect, and truth.

It is a lot to cover in a two-hour film, but Birdman never feels overstuffed. The best part is that it is about self-serious characters, which means that anytime the script starts to dip into self-congratulatory reverie, someone is there to point out how full of shit it all is. While many words have been written about the meta-textual meaning of Michael Keaton, a former Batman, playing an aging actor who played Birdman, a Batman-like superhero, that is not even the most interesting meta-angle of the story.

The script serves as its own commentary on itself, and somehow, the writers find a way to have their cake and eat it, too. Riggan Thompson (Keaton) is seen as a joke, and everyone treats him that way, but he weathers the critiques in the pursuit of accomplishing something real and true. The script, while giving voice to its own detractors, takes Thompson seriously, and though it satirizes and pokes fun at the whole world of self-aggrandizing art and artists, it is as serious a consideration of its themes as you are ever likely to find.

The Grand Budapest Hotel – Anderson and Guinness’ story is a frothy confection, not unlike one of their characters’ famous baked goods. It is a jaunty ride through a fantastical world that is tackling the same problems as ours. Anderson has always specialized in fantasies, but this is the first time the fantasy has hinted at real-world issues such as war and fascism. While Anderson has never shied away from grief in his films, it always feels coated in something sweet. Here, Anderson and Guinness allow the pain to melt away some of the sugar, and the film is better for it.

M. Gustave (Ralph Fiennes) is another in a long line of eccentric male protagonists in Anderson films, following in the footsteps of the Steve Zissou (Bill Murray in The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou), Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman in Rushmore), and Royal Tenenbaum (Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums), among others. They are all men out of time in one regard or another, and they all stretch the boundaries of audience credulity. Fiennes brings to the role a degree of humanity that is rarely on the page in Anderson films, and if Anderson and Guinness win their first Oscars, it will be in part because Fiennes was able to elevate a good script into something more meaningful.

Boyhood – Linklater has been nominated for this award twice, and this is the closest he has come to winning. If Boyhood were more of an awards juggernaut – like The Hurt Locker or The King’s Speech – he would have a decent shot at taking home this prize, but he might have a better chance in the Picture or Director categories this year. That is less a reflection on Linklater’s script than on how competitive a year this is.

One thing I think that has always hurt Linklater in the screenplay category is how improvisational his films feel. Linklater’s best films are always highly naturalistic and intensely humanistic, featuring the kinds of characters we might run into in our everyday lives. They feel so real that their conversations seem off the cuff, as though they are just living out normal interactions and Linklater happened to point a camera at them and start filming.

That degree of naturalism does not come easily, and Linklater has spent decades developing his craft, delivering with Boyhood perhaps his most humanist take on what it is like to be part of an American family. Every moment, every interaction is scripted and comes from years of dedication. It takes an incredible amount of hard work to make something look this effortless, and few are as good at it as Linklater.

Nightcrawler – I wish this film had caught on more with voters. I truly do. It is a meat-and-potatoes thriller that at the same time serves as a brutal satire of the modern news media. It showed strength with the various crafts guilds and looked like it might be headed to a spot in the Best Picture lineup, but come nomination morning, it found itself shutout everywhere but here. The recognition is well deserved as Gilroy’s script is a marvel, exposing the seediness of a world that cannot help but be attracted to that which should be repulsive.

Louis Bloom (Jake Gyllenhaal) is the embodiment of the worst habits that society encourages and embraces but taken to their logical extreme. Nothing and no one matters if it gets in the way of what he wants. Bloom is to the self-actualization set what Gordon Gekko was to yuppies. He is the villain. We should hate him, but there is a part of us – and not a small part – that wishes we had the guts to be just like him. Gilroy deserves a prize just for shining a light on the darkness buried inside us.

Foxcatcher – This is one of the stranger nominees this year, since movies based on true stories more often than not come from scripts based on books written about those stories. In fact, it was a strange year in general with a number of films based on true events made from original screenplays, including this, Selma, and Mr. Turner. At the same time, Futterman and Frye’s script has a distinctly literary feel to it, mixing the lurid detail of a true-crime novel with the stateliness of a chamber drama – like In Cold Blood by way of Ethan Frome.

The influences makes sense when you remember that two-time Oscar nominee Futterman was previously recognized for his work on director Bennett Miller’s Capote, all about the writing of In Cold Blood. The story of how John du Pont came to be a murderer is the basis for Futterman and Frye’s own true-crime tale. While milking every ounce of suspense and intrigue out of the story, they present the facts as coldly as possible within the icy and unsettling world Miller creates. It is a gamble that pays off beautifully.

The final analysis

This comes down to Birdman vs. The Grand Budapest Hotel, two comedies that are as different from one another as they could possibly be. The Academy, as a whole, likes to feel good, and Anderson’s romp is clearly the feel-good picture of the two. Some of this depends on whether Birdman sweeps or if the Academy spreads the love. If Birdman has the momentum, it will take this. Otherwise, The Grand Budapest Hotel is in the lead, particularly after winning the Writers Guild award last night, though Birdman was ineligible with the guild. Still, my bet is that Anderson wins his first Oscar, recognition that will bring no end of delight to his many supporters.

Will win: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Should win: Birdman

Wish it had been here: Frank