This being the run-up time to the Academy Awards, we're up to here with information and hype for the nominees. But we don't hear much about the films contending for short-subject honors, and we have only a brief opportunity to see them. Ten films are nominated, five with live actors and five that are animated. However, St. Louis movie buffs get a break–at the Tivoli, beginning today, all 10 nominees will be screened as a single show.
For some reason, most of them are bleak and rather painful, tragic, nasty. Not pleasant, which probably reflects the mood of the world. We'll look at them in random order, starting with live action. All are good, some a little better than others.
KAVI–A film shot by students and faculty at USC, this one looks at child slavery, in India, where Kavi and his parents make bricks. Sagar Salunke is Kavi, trapped in long, arduous work to become another generation of indentured servants, sweated laborers. Most of the children know their place, as it were, but Kavi wants to know why other children go to school and play cricket. He soon learns. Gregg Helvey wrote a strong story, and got good performances from his India-based cast.
THE DOOR– A terribly bleak little story, dedicated to a real person whose child died in the aftermath of Chenobyl, filmed in Kiev by Irish filmmaker Juanita Wilson, who wrote and directed. In a movie that is dark and filled with unrelieved grief, we see a man break into an abandoned housing project and take a door. Later, we begin to understand the symbolism behind his action, and we grieve with him.
MIRACLE FISH–An Australian film, written and directed by Luke Doolan and starring a little boy named Karl Beattie, who shows pain, and an over-riding sense of wonder in a lovely performance. Bullied at school, he finds solace in its infirmary, falls asleep and wakes up after everyone has left. He wanders the school, investigating this and that, finding a cut-out paper fish. He then finds trouble, and Doolan builds tension in a gripping manner.
THE NEW TENANTS–Vincent D'Onofrio, from "Law and Order: Criminal Intent," shows up in this Danish tale of drugs, duplicity and ignorance, written by Anders Thomas Jensen and directed by Joachim Back. A couple of slackers rent an apartment in a run-down, nearly barren housing development. When a neighbor asks to borrow a cup of flour, one of the men remembers seeing a package of white stuff in a kitchen cabinet and gives it to her. When a drug dealer comes looking for his package, attitudes change. Rapidly.
INSTEAD OF ABRACADABRA–A Swedish film, written and directed by Patrik Eklund, this black, bizarre comedy revolves around a young man still living at home and trying to become a magician, resisting his father's efforts to convince him that another line of work would be less dangerous and more profitable. When he fixates on an attractive single neighbor
and offers to perform for her son's birthday party, we know trouble is in the air, and as the old saying goes, it's downhill from there. The title? This guy wants a substitute for "abracabra," and uses "chimay," but his magic works as if he has over-indulged on the Belgian beer whose name he has selected.
The animated films, displaying skillful use of various types of art, also have an underlying air of things not going quite right. Pessimism rules.
GRANNY O'GRIMM'S SLEEPING BEAUTY–An Irish entry, directed by Nicky Phelan, written and performed by Kathleen O'Rourke, deals with a slightly different twist on the traditional tale, and features a witch in a walker.
LOGORAMA–My favorite in this division was this French tale, set in Los Angeles, that mocked billboards, corporate logos,commercials, freeways and a long list of advertising symbols from the Michelin Man to Ronald McDonald and the old song, "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire (I just want to start a flame in your heart.)"
THE LADY AND THE REAPER–The Grim Reaper and the Old Lady do battle in a Spanish film, with a doctor helping the latter and coming across as a major sex symbol. And as the battle rages, we hear Vera Lynn and the 1939 World War II song, "We'll meet again," also used in Stanley Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the Bomb," which puts Javier Garcia's film somewhere between farce and tragedy.
A MATTER OF LOAF AND DEATH–Wallace and Gromit, English favorites created by Nick Park and Bob Baker, strew bad puns in a story perhaps inspired by "Someone Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe." Wallace is a baker who falls for the Bake-O-Lite Queen. She wants to eliminate her rivals. Wallace falls for her, so Gromit takes over.
FRENCH ROAST–A Parisian enters a cafe, orders coffee, then realizes he left his wallet at home. How to solve the problem? The drawing, and Fabrice Joubert's direction, are successful on several levels, but the French film is only fitfully entertaining.
Opens today at the Tivoli.
–Joe