Last night I watched all five of the live-action (as opposed to animated) short films that are nominated for the Oscar this year. These are fictional stories; there is a separate category for documentary shorts.
I'll list the five films in order of how much I liked them, from least to most:
* Il Supplente (The Substitute) - Bizarre Italian creation in which teenagers are encouraged to torment each other and pretend to be rabid goats. A head-scratcher.
* Tanghi Argentini - Light-as-a-feather story starring Wallace Shawn's tubby, sagging brother as a Belgian accountant-ish person who sets himself up with an internet blind date, then must furiously study the tango.
* Le Mozart des Pickpockets (The Mozart of Pickpockets) - Two bumbling petty thieves adopt a deaf-mute 8-year-old who enjoys slithering across the greasy, sticky floors of theaters to raid the purses of unsuspecting moviegoers. A tired premise, perhaps, but all three actors impress with an abundance of charm.
* The Tonto Woman - Scripted by Elmore Leonard. The storyline is predictable and a bit dull, but British actress Charlotte Asprey is unforgettable as an Old West woman dealing with physical and emotional scars.
* Om Natten (At Night) - The longest and most serious of the nominated films, this portrait of three college-aged women with terminal cancer kept me on the verge of tears for most of its 39-minute running time. Danish writer-director Christian E. Christiansen creates an intimate setting in which to explore the terror of facing premature death. The eerie, bluish-white hospital lighting intensifies both the inevitability and the utter wrongness of what is happening to these beautiful, young people.
My prediction for Oscar night: Les Mozart des Pickpockets will steal the prize.
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