Category: Oscars

Life Overtakes Me 8/10 Short documentaries like this I always enjoy, despite the rather depressing subject matter, due to the fact that I learn something along the way that I previously was unaware of. Resignation Syndrome, a rather new diagnosed illness, is the center of this short documentary and the heart breaking consequences that ripple … Continue reading Bonus: 2020 Oscar Nominated Short Films – Documentary

Hair Love 6/10 “Hair Love” has some things going for it. An emotional ending, beautifully rendered animation and using an absence of dialogue very effectively. However, the story itself is too overly simple and unengaging that I felt no connection to it whatsoever. The short film is literally a girl trying to do her hair … Continue reading Bonus: 2020 Oscar Nominated Short Films – Animation

A Sister 7/10 The shortest of all the live action shorts, “A Sister” excels over the rest in terms of building tension. After a minute of confusion, we finally grasp the situation at hand and are thrust to the edge of our seats. The acting communicates the danger going on and I enjoyed that we … Continue reading Bonus: 2020 Oscar Nominated Short Films – Live Action

Bao 6.5/10 Easily the most well-known of the nominated shorts here due to it coming from Pixar and playing before “The Incredibles 2”, “Bao” does have some well-crafted animation, emotional elements and a beautiful score that we have come to expect from Pixar. Also being able to tell a story without dialogue is impressive but … Continue reading Bonus: 2019 Oscar Nominated Animation Shorts

Black Sheep 6.5/10 I found this to be the most well made out of all of these documentary shorts. Cutting back and forth between our main talking head for the documentary portion and then to dramatic reenactments worked really well and the editing was cleverly done with some of the overlapping dialogue. The big problem … Continue reading Bonus: 2019 Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts

Madre 7/10 The best part of “Madre” is how the director can take such a small, contained story in essentially one location and make it extremely gripping and suspenseful using only dialogue to achieve this goal. Very well acted and tense but my biggest complaint comes at the end. Not only do we not get … Continue reading Bonus: 2019 Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts