Monthly Archives: February 2014

2014 Oscar Nominated Shorts — Live Action: Why so serious?

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“2014 Oscar Nominated Shorts — Live Action” opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. Not rated, 1:35, two and a half stars out of four.

Where the animation shorts category at the Academy Awards seems to allow in sorts of candidates, the live-action shorts category always seemed like a bit of a racket. It seems like filmmakers have figured out that the Academy voters love self-serious melodramas, ideally about a child in peril or third-world strife (a third-world child in peril — cha-ching!) I know there are tons of interesting and innovative short films being made out there — I just wish I could see more of them in the Academy Final Five every year.

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2014 Oscar Nominated Shorts — Animated: Drawing together witches and robot dogs

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The “2014 Oscar Nominated Shorts — Animated” collection opens Friday at Sundance Cinemas. Not rated, 85 minutes, three and a half stars out of four.

Animated features in 2013 tend to look about the same — computer-animated, big stars, in 3D wherever possible. But flying below the radar, the animators of short films tend to have a little more leeway to try some different techniques — like drawing! — and the result in this year’s batch of Oscar-nominated animated shorts is a delightful collection that varies in style as much as theme.

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Instant Gratification: “The Croods” and four other good movies to watch on Netflix Instant

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The start of a new month meant the release of a bunch of new titles on Netflix Instant, many of them classics. But our pick of the week is a recent animated hit that was one of the most pleasant surprises of 2013.

Pick of the week: “The Croods“ — This animated film about a cavemen family hunting for a new home looked terrible from the trailers, but it’s actually a very funny film that’s surprisingly insightful about the relationship between fathers and daughters. Beautiful animation, strong voice work from Nicolas Cage and Emma Stone and, best of all, an animated teenage girl who actually has the body type of an actual teenage girl.

Western of the week: “The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly” — Sergio Leone’s sprawling tale of three outlaws, ranging from an antihero to a cold-blooded villain, on the trail of a fortune in gold mixes iconic Leone action with an epic sweep and a surprisingly potent antiwar theme.

Comedy of the week: “Airplane!“ — The UW-Madison’s own Zucker, Zucker and Abraham crib shamelessly from “Zero Hour” to make the quintessential parody film, often imitated, never equaled, always quoted.

Thriller of the week: “Patriot Games” — With the wan Jack Ryan reboot “Patriot Games” in theaters, it’s a good time to revisit Harrison Ford’s first outing as the CIA analyst, fighting IRA terrorists threatening his family.

Drama of the week: “Broken” — A precocious girl watches the neighbors on her quiet cul-de-sac hurtle towards violent confrontation in this British drama starring Tim Roth and Cillian Murphy.

Philip Seymour Hoffman could give us everything, or nothing

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This isn’t one of those articles where I pretend that I had some personal connection or insight into Philip Seymour Hoffman, who died Sunday of a heroin overdose in a tragedy that has saddened and mystified so many. His death, alone in a bathroom with a needle in his arm, doesn’t seem to square with either the brilliant artist we know from movies and the stage, or the jovial-sounding father who could be seen biking his kids to public school in Greenwich Village.

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Sundance screening room returns with Oscar shorts, “The Great Beauty,” “The Armstrong Lie”

Lance Armstrong

It’s been a long winter’s nap for the Sundance Cinemas Screening Room schedule, which devotes a screen at the west side cinema to independent, foreign and documentary films. The series typically takes a late-autumn break so Sundance can have the big Oscar contenders pumping on all six screens.

But with the Oscar nominees all set and everything pretty much out, it’s time for the series to fire up again. Fittingly, it starts this Friday, Feb. 7 with screenings of all the Oscar nominated short films — live action, animated and short documentaries. It’s a rare and welcome chance to see short film programming at Sundance — I’ll have reviews later this week, but the animated films are especially good this year.

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