Countdown to the Oscars: Best Original Song

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 Original Song

The nominees are:

“It Never Went Away” from American Symphony

“I’m Just Ken” from Barbie

“What Was I Made For?” from Barbie

“The Fire Inside” from Flamin’ Hot

“Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)” from Killers of the Flower Moon

“It Never Went Away”

One of things I love about this project every year is the discovery of fascinating tidbits of information I would have never known otherwise. Case in point: the wildly successful career of Dan Wilson, who co-wrote this song with documentary subject Jon Batiste. Wilson previously won the Grammy for song of the year as a co-writer of The Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice.” He also won album of the year for producing Adele’s 21. But, most of us probably know him best as the writer of “Closing Time,” from his days with his band Semisonic. 

This is a classic “credits song for a documentary” nomination, and the song is pretty good, though not among the best of either artist’s work. Still, for a ‘90s kid who loves rock music, it’s pretty damn cool that the “Closing Time” guy has an Oscar nomination now. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here, indeed.

“I’m Just Ken”

Greta Gerwig really pulled out all the stops in putting together the music team for Barbie, which is not quite a musical but sure is inspired by a lot of musicals. We’ll get to “What Was I Made For?” in a second, but first, let’s marvel at the work of nominated song writing duo Mark Ronson and Andrew Wyatt, who previously won this award as co-writers with Lady Gaga and Anthony Rossoando on “Shallow,” from A Star Is Born.

Personally, I’m stoked Ryan Gosling has confirmed he will perform this song on the Academy Awards stage. I predict it will be one of the showstopping moments of the night, much like “Naatu Naatu” was last year. This is actually my preferred winner this year. As beautiful as the Billie Eilish performance is on the other nominated Barbie song, the execution of “I’m Just Ken” is narratively crucial. A huge section of the movie falls flat if this song isn’t perfect. Luckily, it is.

“What Was I Made For?”

But, even with that said, I understand how Eilish and co-writer Finneas O’Connell have taken the lead in this category with their heartfelt ballad. It is a well-constructed song that the duo has been promoting the hell out of – I thought their performance at the Grammys was particularly engaging. The song also has pride of place in the film, playing over the emotional climax of the story as Barbie finally makes a choice about her future. Eilish and O’Connell walk a fine line with a composition that is appropriately melancholic without ever tipping into the maudlin. It really is impressive stuff.

“The Fire Inside”

If the music branch can’t be bothered to do anything different, neither can I. Here is, word for word, exactly what I wrote last year:

“This is the Diane Warren song this year. Here is, word for word, exactly what I wrote about her nomination last year:

“At a certain point, one really has to feel for the Music Branch – not me, I don’t have any sympathy for a branch that so consistently gets this category wrong. But, members really, really love Diane Warren, and they seem positively desperate to get her an Oscar. This is the fifth consecutive year in which Warren has received a nomination and seventh out of the previous eight. She has 12 total nominations and no wins. She probably could have won for “I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing” from Armageddon or “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” from Mannequin, but she didn’t. So, here we are in an endless cycle of nominating not very good work every year just to try to get her over that hill.

“This brings us to ‘Somehow You Do,’ which not only is not very good, but it is actually quite bad. More than that, it is part of a pretty bad movie. Ironically, the song’s lack of subtlety is kind of a perfect fit for the generically somber addiction drama that is Four Good Days. Once again, Warren will be a bridesmaid, and even if I can muster no sympathy for the Music Branch, I do feel a little bad for Warren having to get dressed up every damn year just to lose an award.

“Let me update the numbers for you: This is six consecutive years, eight out of nine, and 13 total nominations with no competitive wins. She does have an Oscar now, as this very year she was the recipient of an honorary award. That did not satisfy her peers, who are demanding she be voted queen for a day at the big show. It ain’t gonna happen. I haven’t watched Tell It Like a Woman. I probably won’t. But, I listened to this song, and once again, it was quite bad. There’s probably nothing to be done about this situation, so perhaps the Academy would be best off just reserving a couple seats for Warren every year.”

Every year this happens, this section is just going to keep getting longer. Once more, an update on the numbers: Seven years in a row now. Nine of the past 10. 14 nominations and no competitive wins. It ain’t gonna happen this year either. At least Flamin’ Hot is pretty watchable, which can’t be said for many of the films she’s been nominated for recently. Anyway, whatever.

“Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People)”

Indigenous musician Scott George is the first Osage performer ever nominated in this category. Translated from the Osage language, George says the lyrics to the song mean: “Stand up, be tall, and be proud. We’re still here.” It’s a powerful message that Scorsese uses over the final images of the film, an Osage drum circle that represents exactly that: a community of people who suffered unimaginable tragedy but who are still here, standing tall. 

The final analysis

This is primarily a Barbie fight, and it’s actually surprising that the third big song from the movie – Ronson and Dua Lipa’s “Dance the Night” – did not manage to nab a nomination, as well. I guess they just had to find a place for Warren. 

I find that a good way to jump to the front of the line when a movie has multiple song nominations is to be the big ballad. The fun song gets nominated, but the ballad wins. I’m looking at a trio of Disney contenders from the early ‘90s that prove this point rather well: “Beauty and the Beast” won the award over the also nominated “Be Our Guest” and “Belle”; for Aladdin, “A Whole New World” beat “Friend Like Me”; and for The Lion King, “Can You Feel the Love Tonight” beat both “Circle of Life” and “Hakuna Matata.”

Now, in every one of those cases, I prefer the fun song. Give me “Be Our Guest,” “Friend Like Me,” and “Hakuna Matata” all day, every day. And while we’re at it, throw in “I’m Just Ken.” Alas, it pays to be the ballad. Eilish and O’Connell won this award two years ago for their James Bond song, “No Time to Die,” and look well on their way to another victory.

It will be a history-making win for Eilish, who at 22 years old will become the youngest two-time winner in Academy Awards history. Her 26-year-old older brother O’Connell will be the second-youngest two-time winner. Both will push ahead of Louise Rainer, who had earned her second Best Actress trophy by the age of 28. 

And, just for the sake of providing more fun trivia, when Eilish won this award two years ago at the age of 20, she became the second-youngest Original Song winner ever. She was roughly three months older than Markéta Irglová was when she won this category for “Falling Slowly” from Once in 2008 (for the films of 2007), four days before her 20th birthday.

Will win: “What Was I Made For?” from Barbie

Should win: “I’m Just Ken” from Barbie

Should have been here: “Live That Way Forever” from The Iron Claw

A note about my favorite snub: Sean Durkin’s excellent wrestling biopic came out a little too late in the year to pick up steam with the Academy, which is a shame given it could have done well in a number of categories with just a little more momentum. The actors have received the lion’s share of the attention around “snubs,” but I want to take a second to highlight Richard Lee Parry and Laurel Sprengelmeyer’s  rock anthem “Live That Way Forever.” It’s a lovely composition that Durkin integrates into the film in ways that are both narratively and thematically satisfying. More of this, please.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Animated Feature

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 Animated Feature

The nominees are:

The Boy and the Heron

Elemental

Nimona

Robot Dreams

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Last year, we talked about a potential changing of the guard in an Animated Feature category that has long been dominated by Disney and Pixar. Netflix was finally able to break the near stranglehold those two giants of animation have had on the category, taking Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio all the way to the win. But, still, let’s take a look at the last 11 years of winners by studio:

2012 - Pixar

2013 - Disney

2014 - Disney

2015 - Pixar

2016 - Disney

2017 - Pixar

2018 - Sony

2019 - Pixar

2020 - Pixar

2021 - Disney

2022 - Netflix

Obviously, one year does not a trend make. But two? Now, that would be a story. There is no Disney nominee this year. Pixar is back in the running with Elemental, and Netflix has returned to defend its crown with Nimona.

But, what’s that little blip in 2018? It’s Sony, the only studio to prevent Pixar and Disney from an unbroken 10-year streak of dominance. And, wouldn’t you know it, Sony is at it again with a sequel to the very film that took home that Oscar. If Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse can follow up on Netflix’s win last year, then maybe we can really start talking about that changing of the guard as more than just theoretical.

The Boy and the Heron

If this is legendary director Hayao Miyazaki’s swan song, then he has pulled out all the stops. The opening sequence, depicting a hospital fire and the surrounding chaos, is one of most beautifully executed scenes of the year, animated or live action. That said, there is an element of Miyazaki bingo to this film, right down to the gaggle of old grannies, the prominence of the natural world, and the protagonist’s journey to a strange, unknown land. By the end, it feels as if Miyazaki is reaching for something quite profound. I’m not sure he gets there, but maybe he’s simply reaching beyond me.

Elemental

Take this however you want, but I would call Elemental mid-tier Pixar. Now, Pixar is one of the great American movie studios of all time, so its middle tier can stand alongside just about anybody else’s top tier. And, undoubtedly, worse Pixar movies than this have won this very prize.

This Romeo and Juliet story of a fire person and a water person (it’s a city of elements, you see) falling in love is sweet and lovely to look at and has some interesting ideas about being the child of immigrants. Still, there is an emotional richness lacking here that can be found in abundance in the studio’s best work. I am, perhaps, being a little too harsh – especially since I enjoyed this movie – but such are the perils of setting the bar so high.

Nimona

From what I can tell, this film makes a lot of people feel very good and very seen. That’s great. Everyone deserves to see themselves at the movies. I celebrate that fully. It didn’t work for me. It’s great to see gay love stories on screen. We need more of them. But, this movie is at once too complicated and too simple for its own good. 

It follows a commoner who becomes a knight and falls in love with another knight before he is framed for regicide and goes into hiding, where he meets a little girl who is excited by the prospect of villainy because she is secretly a shapeshifter who has been outcast from society. Confused yet? That’s not the half of it.

There’s a nice message in here, but the plot mechanics are working overtime to keep the audience involved when a deeper connection to the characters would have worked just as well. I also found the animation itself unpleasant to look at, but I’m sure there’s an animation expert out there who can tell me why I’m wrong.

Robot Dreams

When I tell you the two films I cried the hardest at this year were this and All of Us Strangers, you will understand that this is a five-hanky tearjerker. This wordless tale of a dog and his robot companion touches on themes of loneliness, isolation, love, loss, and grief, all while reclaiming Earth, Wind, and Fire’s “September” as the out-and-out banger it so clearly is.

I attended an advance screening of this film where director Pablo Berger spoke and answered questions afterward. One audience member stood up and said that he had been through a devastating breakup recently and that this movie healed him. It seemed as though Berger may have heard similar things at other screenings. It’s not hyperbole. It’s a truly powerful little story, and if not for a certain superhero, this would absolutely be competing for best in show in this category.

Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

And, what do you know? Here’s a certain superhero now. Into the Spider-Verse, the Oscar-winning first film in this series, was a phenomenon that took everyone by surprise. We’d rarely seen animation like that. The complexity of the storytelling was unparalleled. The diversity of the cast was commendable. It was a true work of art, which meant expectations for this followup would hover somewhere around the top of the stratosphere. How could any sequel live up that kind of reputation?

Well, Across the Spider-Verse not only lives up to it but surpasses it in nearly every respect. The storytelling is even more complex. The cast of characters is even deeper. And, the animation is some of the finest computer-generated imagery ever produced. It is a triumph. If there is one flaw, it is that this is half a movie, doing quite a bit of table setting for the chapter to come, but it is possible to overlook that flaw when the rest of the work is so transcendent.

The final analysis

Some voters may feel compelled to recognize Miyazaki for his final film. It’s also his biggest domestic hit by a country mile, and that’s not nothing. Still, it seems unlikely that anything is going to take down Spidey. Sony has a cultural force on its hands with these movies, and not even the combined forces of Miyazaki, Pixar, and Netflix, not to mention a robot with a dream, are going to stand in the way.

Will win: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Should win: Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse

Should have been here: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

A note about my favorite snub: Director Jeff Rowe’s Mutant Mayhem is so much fun. I’m not saying it’s high art, though the animation style is tremendous, but it has the gonzo energy of a Lord and Miller production like The LEGO Movie or The Mitchells vs. the Machines. All popular entertainment should be this exciting and strange.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Animated 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 Animated Short

The nominees are:

Letter to a Pig

Ninety-Five Senses

Our Uniform

Pachyderme

WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko

Letter to a Pig

This is a fascinating film rendered in an absolutely stunning hand-drawn animation style. It started to lose me toward the back half as a dream logic took over the narrative and everything tipped into overly oblique abstraction, but that hardly takes away from the power of the overall story. Tal Kantor’s short centers on a Holocaust survivor telling his story to a classroom of preteens and the various reactions of the kids. It’s about as unique a take on generational trauma as you are likely to see, and though its message felt muddled, there is merit in the feelings this film evokes.

Ninety-Five Senses

Here’s a sentence I could never have predicted I would write: From Jared and Jerusha Hess, the husband-and-wife duo behind Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre, we have a short animated film about capital punishment. That’s probably an unfairly glib way to put it. Ninety-FIve Senses is charming and witty in the way of much of their previous work and builds its power through the slow reveal of its true narrative intent. Using different animation styles to represent each of the five senses, as reflected on by an inmate awaiting a death sentence, this is a smart, impressive little short from two of the last people I would have expected.

Our Uniform

Based purely on animation style, this film was the most interesting of the bunch, using the fabric of clothing as a medium to tell the story of Iranian schoolgirls forced to dress in the most restrictive uniforms imaginable. There is perhaps too much restraint shown by director Yegane Moghaddam in the storytelling, but her point is well made. The film walks a fine line in attempting not to criticize a cultural and religious practice while also arguing that freedom of choice should be a part of any healthy society.

Pachyderme

A heartbreaking tale of child abuse and buried trauma, Stéphanie Clément’s short is the most powerful film of the bunch and the most gorgeous. Blending 2D and 3D animation, Clément crafts a disquieting atmosphere that leaves the viewer with a constant sense of unease. The images are beautiful, but in their framing and presentation, we sense that something is not right here. The story is impressionistic and dreamlike, in the way that childhood memories often are, and by the end, Clément has given us the tools to imagine a pain that borders on the unimaginable.

WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko

I’m not typing out all of that every time. Boy, this film sure does have its heart in the right place. It’s also tremendously hokey, and if I’m being perfectly frank, I found the animation hideous. A lot of very talented people got behind this project to help push it over the finish line.

Peter Jackson, who seems to have a second career as champion of all things Beatles, produced and offered up the services of his Wētā FX to create the animation and visual effects. Director Dave Mullins is a former Pixar guy, who was previously nominated in this category for the clever Lou. Sean Ono Lennon co-wrote the script with Mullins and served as executive producer along with Yoko Ono. Hell, 15-time Academy Award nominee Thomas Newman did the score.

All of these brilliant artists came together to say, definitively, “War is bad. Peace is good.” I agree, but I didn’t need this movie to tell me that.

The final analysis

The category feels pretty wide open this year. Our Uniform is probably running in last place, through no fault of its own. Pachyderme may be too bleak to win over a plurality of voters. I could absolutely see any of the other three taking this award. WAR IS OVER! is probably the safe pick, given the pedigree of the people involved. It would be a mistake to sleep on Ninety-Five Senses as a potential spoiler here, given that film’s sneaky emotional resonance, but at the end of the day, Peter Jackson has employed a lot of people in this town. Sometimes, that’s all it takes.

Will win: WAR IS OVER! Inspired by the Music of John & Yoko

Should win: Pachyderme

Should have been here: Wild Summon

A note about my favorite snub: What if salmon were people, this film dares to ask. The answer to that question results in a short that is part nature documentary and part body horror. Directors Karni Arieli and Saul Freed blend live action footage of rivers and streams in Iceland with computer-animated human-fish things to demonstrate the harmful effects of overfishing and pollution on the natural world. It’s incredibly effective and not just a little freaky.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best International Feature

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 International Feature

The nominees are:

Io Capitano

Perfect Days

Society of the Snow

The Teachers’ Lounge

The Zone of Interest

There are two things I want to note before we dive into the nominees here.

First, though a wonderful crop of films, this group of nominees is heavy on European filmmakers, with Italy, Spain, Germany, and the United Kingdom all represented. Even the Japanese nominee, Perfect Days, is directed by German legend Wim Wenders. We can acknowledge that all of these films are great while also acknowledging that the world is a big place and that an international award should look beyond a single continent.

Second, despite that heavy emphasis on European films, you will notice France is not represented here. How can that be, you ask? Isn’t one of the most well regarded films of the year French? Didn’t it win the Palme d’Or? Isn’t it nominated for Best Picture, Director, Actress, Original Screenplay, and Editing – five of the most significant awards – at this very ceremony? All of those things are true about Justine Triet’s masterful Anatomy of a Fall, and yet, it is not nominated among the best international feature films of the year.

Why? Because in its infinite wisdom, the French nominating committee submitted to the Academy as the nation’s representative Tran Anh Hùng’s The Taste of Things. This is not the fault of Hùng’s film, which is lovely and has been unfairly maligned as the “film that knocked out Anatomy of a Fall.” It is the fault of a system that insists a nation have only one representative. The best is the best, and artificially limiting your awards to a single entry per country does not lend them any more credibility.

So, yeah, Anatomy of a Fall should probably be here, but it isn’t. Let’s take a look at what is.

Io Capitano

I might end up using the word “harrowing” a lot to describe this particular set of nominees. I’ll try to run to my thesaurus when I have a moment, but there’s really not a better term to describe this story of two Senegalese teenagers who set out on their own to emigrate to Italy. The journey to their goal is methodical and painstaking, and as we watch them, we are awed by their spirit but infuriated by the structures in place that force people to risk their lives in pursuit of something better.

Remarkably, despite widespread critical acclaim throughout his career, director Matteo Garrone had never previously had a film nominated in this category at the Academy Awards. Garrone has a facility for taking epic stories, like this or his gangster picture Gomorrah, and turning them into human stories with stakes that feel earned because we care so deeply about the characters at their centers.

Perfect Days

German-born Wim Wenders has one of the most fascinating directorial careers around. He has bounced back and forth between fiction and documentary, features and shorts. He has directed music videos for U2 and the Talking Heads. He made back-to-back masterpieces in the ‘80s with Paris, Texas and Wings of Desire. He has been at the forefront of demonstrating how 3D technology can be incorporated into documentary filmmaking. He’s done it all. So, of course he’ll be at the Academy Awards this year representing Japan. Why wouldn’t he be?

Perfect Days, which won the best actor award at Cannes last year for its lead, Kōji Yakusho, is a quiet, meditative movie about appreciating the little things in life and understanding that beauty is all around us. Yakusho plays a Tokyo toilet cleaner who treats his job with respect and dignity, smiles at strangers, takes pictures of the trees, and generally goes about his day in a seemingly zen-like state of acceptance about the ways of the world. Through the film’s elliptical nature and deliberate pacing, Wenders lulls the audience into a similarly zen-like state. It’s the kind of movie that makes you look at the sky differently when you leave the theater, and that’s a rare quality.

Society of the Snow

And, we’re back to the word “harrowing.” How could we not be? Director J.A. Bayona’s film tells the true story of the Uruguayan rugby team whose plane crashed in the Andes mountains. Anyone who has seen the U.S. take on this story, 1993’s Alive, knows the basics, but I guarantee you have never seen it told like this. Bayona expertly takes you into the headspace of the survivors, ensuring that you, the viewer, experience the loneliness and desperation of every moment.

There are sequences in this film that beggar belief, including an avalanche that is perhaps the most frightening scene of the year. After the misfire of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, it’s great to see Bayona in this mode, pulling triple duty for the first time as writer, director, and producer of Society of the Snow. The film dominated the Goya Awards (the Spanish film industry Oscars) and was a massive hit on Netflix. Hopefully, this success will launch Bayona into the next phase of a wonderful career.

The Teachers’ Lounge

What a taut, disturbing thriller this is. School as a microcosm of society has been done before and done well, but rarely to such devastating effect. Director İlker Çatak’s film is a tale of how the best intentions can easily go awry when we are trapped in systems that leave no room for humanity or empathy. It is about how small actions can have widespread consequences and how, once set in motion, a chain of events can become impossible to stop.

Leonie Benesch, whom you may recognize from her role as a sinister adolescent in Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon, is stellar as a teacher dealing with pressures from her students, her administration, and her peers after she sets off a firestorm by accusing a fellow staff member of serial theft. Every moment of this film is filled with tension, and we recognize that one wrong move could lead to a dire ending for all involved. For a film that is mostly people sitting in rooms and talking, The Teachers’ Lounge is absolutely riveting. It’s one of the great discoveries, for me, of this Oscars season.

The Zone of Interest

In the history of the Academy Awards, just three films representing the United Kingdom have been nominated in this category and none this century. Of course, this film is in German about a German family and set in Germany. For good measure, it was also filmed there with a fully German cast. Still, London-born director Jonathan Glazer is one of the great modern UK directors, so here we are. The category is called International Feature, and this is about as international as they come.

The Zone of Interest is a masterwork, one of the finest films ever made on the psychology of the people who carried out one of the greatest atrocities in human history. It is also a prescient warning about the world we inhabit. There is evil out there, and it will not be so easy to recognize because it will look like this: business as usual. This kind of casual cruelty did not die with Hitler and his acolytes. When we say, “Never again,” it should not be merely a slogan but an active promise that we will not allow this again. The conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as elsewhere around the world, are testing us on this promise right now. We should strive not to fail that test.

The final analysis

In four of the past five years, the winner of this award has also been a nominee for Best Picture. In the only year that was not true, none of the nominees was noted in the top category. No film has ever been nominated for both International Feature (formerly Foreign Language Film) and Best Picture and failed to win the international category.

Had Anatomy of the Fall made it into the lineup this year, that would have set up a truly fascinating showdown. Alas, The Zone of Interest is your lone torchbearer, meaning this bit of Academy history is almost certain to remain unchanged. For a spoiler possibility, look to Society of the Snow, which got a huge boost in fans from its lasting success on Netflix, but until we get an exception to prove the rule, we’re just going to have to go by the rule as it stands. Glazer deservedly should have this all sewn up.

Will win: The Zone of Interest

Should win: The Zone of Interest

Should have been here: Anatomy of a Fall

A note about my favorite snub: What more can one say about Justine Triet’s masterpiece? It placed No. 3 on my Top 10 Films of the Year list, one spot ahead of The Zone of Interest. It’s a perfect crime procedural with so much more on its mind than who did what to whom and how. It’s the kind of film that doesn’t come along very often and represents the kind of work we should recognize and appreciate when it crosses our paths.

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.