The Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films of 2015

[StevePulaski]

The Nominees:
NOTE: I'm reviewing the Oscar nominated shorts from the sixty-nine minute special available to view on Amazon Instant Video for a small fee. Please note that while "Feast," the Oscar winning short from Disney, is reviewed in this thread, it is not included in the sixty-nine minute special, and that four other "highly commended" shorts were added in by Shorts HD, the company behind the commercial release of this special, were included to make the presentation substantial. Enjoy.

Me and My Moulton (2014)
Directed by: Torill Kove

The quirky, peaceful family in Me and My Moulton.

Rating: ★★½

Me and My Moulton concerns a family made up of three young girls, one the oldest, one the middle, and one the youngest, dually noted by the youngest, and their parents, who are bound in a happy, brightly-colored neighborhood. They hunger to be like the children of their neighborhood, each one of them owning a bicycle and embracing the spring weather, while they do not own a bicycle. Their request to their parents is answered after their father tells them to wait a week or so for their new bicycle, which is being shipped all the way from Europe. In the meantime, we watch as the girls learn to get along with quibbling, to which they are given a monetary reward by their grandmother, who believes that a unified family is the strength of everything.

Me and My Moulton has some quirky hilarity to it, like the fact that the girls live with a family of modernist artists and sit on three-legged chairs for dinner and keep falling off, but the narration coming from the youngest prevents any kind of opportunity for the other sisters to get their say. As a result, their humanization is nonexistent, and we're left with a short that is a bit too uneven in its portrayal of gratefulness and a strong, central family bond. Nonetheless, as is a common theme with the Oscar nominated animated short films, there is a lovely animated style here that resembles that of a Flash cartoon in the best possible way.

Directed by: Torill Kove.

The Bigger Picture (2014)
Directed by: Daisy Jacobs and Christopher Hees

The two uniquely-animated characters in The Bigger Picture.

Rating: ★★★
"I thought about sex every moment of my life until I was forty; now all I think about is death." - The Bigger Picture.

The Bigger Picture concerns a pair of forty-year-old men, who are coming to terms with their mother's illness, as she's about to be committed to a nursing home. The one brother struggles to care for his mother with little to no help from his other sibling, which leads to an expected discrepancy. Having just see this kind of siblings discrepancy play out amongst my family with the death of my grandmother in December, this short immediately hits close to home territory, and the fact it uses animation that looks as if it's pulled from those gigantic, decorative paintings that hang on the walls of homes in libraries and the homes of senior citizens' for added decor is wonderful and truly unique. The subversive animation style is unlike anything I've seen before, and the way that directors Daisy Jacobs and Christopher Hees find ways to manipulate their own style, one way specifically using live-action water during shower sequences, make for a short film that takes its eight minutes and wises utilizes every last bit. The fact that the short concerns the inevitable idea of watching your parents age is only all the more soul-crushing put to such unique and often grim animation.

Directed by: Daisy Jacobs and Christopher Hees.

A Single Life (2014)
Directed by: Joris Oprins

The little girl at the center of A Single Life.

Rating: ★★½

A Single Live, the Netherlands' contribution to the Oscars this year, is the shortest Oscar nominated short film, clocking in at two minutes and length, and unfortunately, that's just a little bit too small to get this short film off the ground. Animated with a pleasant mix of what looks to be stop motion animation and computer animation, the short concerns a woman who finds her record player has the ability to transport her to different moments in her life, all the way from her infancy to her older years. By the time one figures out how this mystery works, the short is already over, and while it features a unique premise, its concision makes for an experience that's slightly forgettable.

Directed by: Joris Oprins.

The Dam Keeper (2014)
Directed by: Robert Kondo and Daisuke Tsutsumi

Fox in the short film The Dam Keeper.

Rating: ★★★

The Dam Keeper is the richest, most plot-driven short of this year's animated batch of Oscar shorts. Captured in animation that resembles the illustrations of a storybook you grew up reading as a child, The Dam Keeper concerns a pig who controls the dam of his town. The dam's job is to block out the darkness from casting an ugly, dreary shadow onto the neighborhood, and the pig's now deceased father taught him the ways to fight off the darkness. At school, however, darkness hovers over the pig like a dark cloud, as he's bullied profusely, one day, befriending a fox who loves to sketch and shows him liberation through means of animation.

It's as if the writing/directing of Robert Kondo and Daisuke Tsutsumi had past experiences with bullies as children and used animation as a tactic to set their mind free, making The Dam Keeper a short that could potentially bear a very heavy personal meaning. It also shows the way that while the physical darkness can be fought in this particular world that, like in the natural world, feelings of sadness and alienation unfortunately cannot, and through tender, affectionate writing and animation does The Dam Keeper helps us realize that, crafting a beautiful story and a wonderfully easy-on-the-eyes animation style.

Directed by: Robert Kondo and Daisuke Tsutsumi.

Feast (2014)
Directed by: Patrick Osborne and Kristina Reed

Rating: ★★★½

Feast was shown in theaters before Disney's Big Hero 6, and serves as a nice vehicle for the fun-loving mayhem that takes place in that particular film. This short is a heartwarmer from start to finish, concerning an owner and his dog who bound over the foods they eat and the company they share while eating. This kind of connection to anyone who owns a pet is a familiar one, and it's a beautiful representation of a man/dog relationship. As expected, Disney hits the appropriate notes here, playing to ones emotions, childlike sense of whimsy, and cuteness factor in having a fun-loving dog chow down on whatever is placed in front of him. Despite all these clear and evident tactics, the short amazingly works and serves as the Best Animated Short winner for good, albeit simplistic, reasons.

Directed by: Patrick Osborne and Kristina Reed.

"Highly Commended:"

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Sweet Cocoon (2014)
Directed by: Matéo Bernard, Mathias Bruget, Jonathan Duret, Manon Marco and Quentin Puiraveau

The heavyset caterpillar in Sweet Cocoon.

Rating: ★★

Kicking off the "highly commended" selection of short films in the Oscar nominated animated short films special of 2015 is the most mediocre film off of this particular lot and the entire lot in general. Sweet Cocoon is a terribly basic and uninspired short film about a caterpillar desperately trying to fit in a cocoon that is too big for him. The caterpillar is assisted by two additional insects to no such avail. The only thing that amounts here is tedium, as the same one-note joke is played out quite heavily, despite only being six minutes long and the monotony becomes overbearing far quicker than it should. Apparently, Sweet Cocoon used the same graphics engine/rendering software as Pixar, as the style mirrors that of A Bug's Life with its rubbery texture, but that certainly can't help terribly basic storytelling for a short that just trudges along for six minutes before falling with a louder than thud than an obese caterpillar.

Directed by: Matéo Bernard, Mathias Bruget, Jonathan Duret, Manon Marco and Quentin Puiraveau.

Footprints (2014)
Directed by: Bill Plympton

Rating: ★★

The latest entry in animator Bill Plympton's checkered line of surrealist short films is Footprints, which concerns an old man searching for a mysterious monster amongst his village. For four minutes, a humble sense of dread builds up as the old man tries to track down a mysterious figure that has been disturbing the peace of his neighborhood for a while now. Plympton's visual style is pleasantly surreal, but the sense of mystery and dread here is remarkably little, and given there's no dialog nor any real immersive atmosphere, Footprints falls far short of its goal to captivate. The style here is attractive enough, but just remarking on that alone as a positive makes this short an empty candy wrapper as a whole.

Directed by: Bill Plympton.

Duet (2014)
Directed by: Glen Keane

Two spry youngsters meet in the animated short Duet.

Rating: ★★½

Glen Keane's Duet works for the most part thanks to its kinetic energy and everything in it to move and operate with a graceful fluidity, almost effectively making this short dreamlike. Produced as part of Google's Spotlight Stories, the short consists of two young characters, a boy and a girl, who enjoy dancing and allowing themselves to be lost in the motions of their body, with their world consisting of white outlines representing characters, objects, and locations all encompassed in a midnight blue palette. The whimsical factor in Duet is quite high, and at four minutes, there's little to note other than it's a serviceable short that at least manages to halfway mesmerize thanks to its ability to always have something constantly moving and a static, single-color background.

Directed by: Glen Keane.

Bus Story (2014)
Directed by: Tali

Fatty the bus driver in Bus Story.

Rating: ★★★

The concluding short for the Oscar nominated animated short film special and the respective "highly commended" segment is, by far, the strongest of the latter; Bus Story tells the story of Fatty, a woman who has always dreamed of being a bus driver and is tested incomparably with her latest gig. Her boss, nicknamed Killer, gives her a boss with a faulty clutch and little training on the neighborhood's rough terrain, especially in the winter time. Fatty is also somewhat disillusioned by those she's taxiing around, as many of them are quiet or ungrateful children. Nonetheless, she remains positive and grateful of her new gig and decides to keep at it, even if certain occurrences, many of which are slightly dark in context to the short, don't go in her favor.

Bus Story has reiterated a point I've long made to my friends, which is that driving a bus is a pretty thankless job, especially a bus full of schoolage kids. Rarely do the kids say "thank you" to the selfless driver, only offer criticism when he/she fails to show up exactly on time or early, and constant chatter and noise on the bus makes it difficult for the driver to concentrate on the road. Combine that with all the stress that one accident or false move can make it so you never get behind the wheel of a bus for the rest of your life and it's an underrated, stressful job. Bus Story shows that through light-hearted, occasionally dark humor and a fun animation style. It's a thoroughly pleasant endeavor that gets by on the charisma and persistence of its naive character, and makes it so we enjoy the time we spend with her and also learn of her struggle.

Directed by: Tali.