Frat Boy At the Movies: Oscar Shorts Live Action 2016
on February 22, 2016 at 12:02 am
Looking for something different to see in the theaters, I noticed they were showing the shorts. Sounded good. Didn’t know what to expect.
Turns out, it was only 4 movies. Guess they’re not that short. Plus the beginning of the movie indicated it “Live Action” and then “Foreign Movies”, which to me implied there would be some non-live action and American films. Then the last one was American, so that was confusing.
The movies also seemed to show best to worst. There were all decent, but the first movie was very good. It was called Ava Maria and it took place in Palestine. A couple and one of their mothers (all Jewish) break down at a Palestinian nunnery on Shabbat. The nuns have taken a vow of silence and it’s funny to watch the characters deal with each other’s religious restrictions. The movie had a lot of detail and humanity.
Next was the likely Oscar winner, a story about a bike and the friendship of two boys, which all takes place in Serbia/Kosovo during the war. Very sad. Then there was a British film about a stutterer trying to meet a girl. Finally, the American film was about a translator on her first day in Afghanistan. Surprisingly, this last short was the longest, but was the least ambitious. It felt like an episode of M*A*S*H* crammed with way too much melodrama.
Overall, I was kind of hoping for shorter, funnier films. I like the first two a lot, but the second two seemed to have a lot of fat that could’ve been trimmed. This is more of a rental for film buffs or look for the shorts on The Short Movie Channel. Whoever has that.
I give Oscar Shorts Live Action 2016, 6 out of 10 keggers.
