All 15 of the Oscar-nominated short films, reviewed

The nominated Oscar shorts travel successful 3 categories — and a batch of subjects, styles and temperaments. It’s further impervious that an grant dictated by magnitude needn’t beryllium bound by thing else.

In the live-action category, a mixed container of approaches — immoderate inspired by classical lit — are burnished by inspired performances. Lee Knight’s “A Friend of Dorothy” whitethorn beryllium a tad connected the chemoreceptor astir the taste and affectional interaction of a lonely London widow connected a closeted teenaged boy. But leads Miriam Margolyes and Alistair Nwachukwu practically shimmer with wit and warmth. “Jane Austen’s Period Drama,” a loving tweak of the writer’s oeuvre from Steve Pinder and Julia Aks (who besides stars), is fundamentally a one-joke calling paper to marque diagnostic comedies and it should bash the job. Its formed is precisely the sprightly ensemble needed to onshore its what-if laughs.

Two others conscionable miss the people successful presumption of bringing their tensions to almighty resolutions yet payment from who the camera adores. Meyer Levinson-Blount’s “Butcher’s Stain,” centered connected a flimsy accusation against a affable Palestinian butcher successful an Israeli market, undercuts its gripping communicative with lackadaisical filmmaking and an unnecessary subplot, but pb Omar Sameer is commanding. The black-and-white aboriginal daze “Two People Exchanging Saliva,” directed by Natalie Musteata and Alexandre Singh, is an uneven Euro-art bath of unrealized intimacy and casual unit — kissing is punishable by death, slapping is currency — but is fixed exquisite tautness by the elegant, unrequited swooniness of stars Zar Amir and Luana Bajrami.

A country from “Jane Austen’s Period Drama,” nominated successful the live-action abbreviated category.

(Roadside Attractions)

Then there’s my favorite, Sam A. Davis’ apt victor “The Singers,” from Ivan Turgenev’s abbreviated story, which pays disconnected handsomely successful bites of soulful warbling that concisely crook a barroom’s den of anesthesia into a temple of feeling.

Most of this year’s documentary nominees woody with the grimmest of tragedies, arsenic successful “All the Empty Rooms” and “Children No More: Were and Are Gone,” which code the remembrance of children brutally killed. The erstwhile film, from Joshua Seftel, follows CBS analogous Steve Hartman and lensman Lou Bopp connected an effort task into the bedrooms of kids gunned down successful schoolhouse shootings, their backstage worlds heartbreakingly preserved by their families. The second short, directed by Hilla Medalia, witnesses Tel Aviv’s soundless vigils for Gaza’s children, protests marked by posters with beaming faces, and sometimes met with unfastened scorn. These are dutiful, sobering acts of mourning — Seftel’s is the probable awardee. You whitethorn privation they were much than that, however, considering the issues (guns, war, governmental intransigence) that created the devastation.

Combat is what drove award-winning photojournalist Brent Renaud, killed successful Ukraine successful 2022. But his member Craig’s memorializing of him, “Armed Only With a Camera,” is oddly uninvolving, much an excerpted flipbook of Brent’s far-flung assignments than a meaningful representation of excelling astatine a unsafe job. A much affecting real-world dispatch (and my pick, if I could vote) is “The Devil Is Busy,” directed by Christalyn Hampton and dual nominee Geeta Gandbhir, besides up for the diagnostic “The Perfect Neighbor.” It observes a time successful the cognition of a cautiously guarded, female-run Georgia termination session arsenic if it were a recently medieval world’s past accidental healthcare outpost, getting by connected grit, compassion and prayer. You surely won’t hide information caput Tracii, the clinic’s heavyhearted knight and guide.

A country from “Perfectly a Strangeness,” nominated successful the documentary abbreviated category.

(Roadside Attractions)

Your chaser is Alison McAlpine’s appealing, aptly titled “Perfectly a Strangeness,” sans humans, but starring 3 donkeys successful an unnamed godforsaken happening upon a clump of hilltop observatories. The whir of subject meets the wonderment of quality and this charming, gorgeously changeable ode to find (both connected Earth and retired there) makes 1 anticipation the question representation academy sees acceptable to admit much imaginative nonfiction works going forward.

Animation, of course, thrives connected the thrill of conjured worlds, similar the 1 successful Konstantin Bronzit’s wordless (but not soundless) godforsaken land farce “The Three Sisters.” It owes thing to Chekhov — though determination are seagulls — but overmuch to a classically Russian consciousness of wit and a Chaplinesque ingenuity. Elsewhere, you tin ticker the overly cute Christian homily “Forevergreen,” from Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears, astir a nurturing tree, a restless carnivore and the unsafe allure of murphy chips. The connection gets muddled but this eco-conscious travel is charming.

It’s pugnacious to foretell a victor erstwhile the entrants are this strong, but John Kelly’s “Retirement Plan” feasts connected wry relatability, arsenic Domhnall Gleeson narrates a paunchy middle-aged man’s ambitious post-career goals, portion the cascade of deadpan funny, thickly-lined and mundanely hued images accent a much poignant, finite reality. In its all-too-human presumption of life, this is, entertainingly, immoderate the other of a cloying graduation code is.

A country from “Retirement Plan,” nominated successful the animated abbreviated category.

(Roadside Attractions)

The spindly aged-doll puppetry successful the stop-motion gem “The Girl Who Cried Pearls” marks a sly fable of need, greed and destiny, centered connected a affluent grandfather’s Dickensian fashioning of his poverty-stricken puerility successful aboriginal 19th period Montreal. Filmmakers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski find an enchanting equilibrium betwixt storybook allure and big trickery. Maybe this 1 steals it?

Whichever the case, the animation that moved maine the astir is “Butterfly,” from Florence Miailhe, imagining the last, memory-laden aquatics of Jewish French-Algerian jock Alfred Nakache, who competed successful the Olympics earlier and aft the Holocaust. In the cocooning fluidity of an ocean-borne day, rendered with thick-brushed painterliness and splashes of sound, we question crossed flashes of community, injustice, achievement, emotion and despair. The visual, thematic constant, though, is h2o arsenic a haven and a poetic beingness unit that feeds renewal.