At the Movies

Get a jump start on your Oscar pool: See all the animated, live-action &documentary nominees

For those of you who are passionately committed to the art of cinema -- and, yeah, for those of you who want to make more informed guesses in your office Oscar pool – Alamo Drafthouse and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houstone have joined forces to showcase all shorts nominated in the animated, live-action and documentary categories of the 83rd Academy Awards.

That’s right – almost all of those groups that wind up serving as tie-breakers when more than one member of your betting pool aces all the upper-tier categories. Now if we could just get somebody to screen all the Foreign Language and Documentary features, we’d be ready to crush our co-workers.

And, of course, satisfy our rarefied appetites as serious cineastes.

The shorts have been divided into three programs – Live Action (101 minutes), Animation (85 minutes) and Documentary (194 minutes) – that will screen at various times Friday through Feb. 18 at the Alamo Drafthouse Mason Park.

At the Alamo Drafthouse West Oaks, however, it’ll be just a one-day-only event on Friday: Animation Program, 12:30 and 10 p.m.; Documentary Program, 2:45 p.m.; and Live Action Program, 7:10 p.m.

Over at MFAH, the schedule looks like this: Animation Program, 5 and 9 p.m. Friday, 8 p.m. Saturday, 9 p.m. Feb. 18 and 1 p.m .Feb. 19; Live Action Program, 7 p.m. Friday, 1 and 6 p.m. Saturday and 9 p.m .Feb. 19; Documentary Program, 1 p.m. Feb. 20.

Here’s a handy-dandy guide to what’s on tap:

ANIMATION PROGRAM

Day & Night (USA/6 MIN) Director/Writer: Teddy Newton
Producer: Kevin Rehar

When Day, a sunny fellow, encounters Night, a stranger of distinctly darker moods, sparks fly. Day and Night are frightened and suspicious of each other at first, and quickly get off on the wrong foot. But as they discover each other's unique qualities -- and come to realize that each of them offers a different window onto the same world -- the friendship helps both to gain a new perspective.

Lets Pollute (USA/6 min.) Director: Geefwee Boedoe
Writer: Geefwee Boedoe, Tim Crawfurd, Teddy Newton
Producer: Geefwee Boedoe

In the spirit of the ‘50s & ‘60s educational films, Let's Pollute is a modern satire on how pollution is our heritage and keeps our economy growing strong, while instructing us how to be better polluters for a better blighted tomorrow.

The Lost Thing (Australia, UK/15 min.) Director/Writer: Andrew Ruhemann, Shaun Tan
Producer: Sophie Byrne

A boy discovers a bizarre looking creature while out collecting bottle tops at the beach. Realizing it is lost, he tries to find out who owns it or where it belongs, but is met with indifference from everyone else, who barely notice its presence, each unwilling to entertain this uninvited interruption to their day to day lives. For reasons he does not explain, the boy empathizes with the creature, and sets out to find a place for it.

Madagascar, Carnet De Voyage (France/11 min.) Director: Bastien Dubois
Writer: Bastien Dubois
Producers: Ron Dyens, Aurelia Previeu

A visual travel journal demonstrating the importance of dance, death and traditional customs present and vibrant in the Malagasy society.

The Gruffalo (UK, Germany/27 min.) Directors: Max Lang, Jakob Schuh
Writers: Julia Donaldson, Max Lang, Jakob Schuh
Producers: Martin Pope, Michael Rose
Voices: Helena Bonham Carter, James Corden, Tom Wilkinson, John Hurt, Rob Brydon, Robbie Coltrane

The magical tale of a mouse who takes a walk through the woods in search of a nut. Encountering three predators who all wish to eat him -- a fox, an owl and a snake -- the plucky mouse has to use his wits to survive, creating an imaginary monster who then turns out to be all too real.

DOCUMENTARY PROGRAM

Killing In The Name (USA/39 min) Director: Jed Rothstein
Producers: Jed Rothstein, Liz Garbus, Rory Kennedy

In 2005, a suicide bomber walked into Ashraf's wedding, killing 27 people. Now he is on a quest to confront terrorism around the globe.

Poster Girl (USA/38 min.) Director: Sara Nesson
Producer: Mitchell Block, Sara Nesson

Apple pie cheerleader turned tough-as-nails machine gunner in the Iraq war, Sgt. Robynn Murray comes home to face a new kind of battle she never anticipated.

Strangers No More (USA/40 min.) Director/Producers: Karen Goodman, Kirk Simon

In the heart of Tel Aviv, there is an exceptional school where children from 48 different countries and diverse backgrounds come together to learn. Many of the students arrive at Bialik-Rogozin in the wake of poverty, political adversity and even genocide. Here, no child is a stranger.

Sun Come Up (USA, Papua New Guinea/38 min.) Director/Producer: Jennifer Redfearn

Sun Come Up tells the story of some of the world's first environmental refugees, the Carteret Islanders. The film follows relocation leader Ursula Rakova and a group of young families as they search for new homes in war torn Bougainville, an autonomous region of Papua New Guinea.

The Warriors Of Qiugang (USA/39 min.) Director: Ruby Yang
Writer: Thoman Lennon

Villagers in a remote district of central China take on a chemical company that is poisoning their water and air. For five years they fight to transform their environment and as they do, they find themselves transformed as well.

LIVE ACTION PROGRAM

The Confession (UK/26 min.) Director: Tanel Toom
Writer: Caroline Bruckner
Producer: Emily Williams
Cast: Aran Bell, Joe Eales, Lewis Howlett, James Simmons

Quiet and sincere, 9-year-old Sam is worried about making his first confession at church. As his conscience is clear, he therefore cannot hope for any relief from the experience. He and his friend Jacob decide to remedy that situation, but their initially innocent prank turns unexpectedly tragic.

The Crush (Ireland/15 min.) Director/Writer: Michael Creagh
Producer: Damon Quinn
Cast: Charlie Bonner, Neili Conroy, Oran Creagh, Rory Keenan, Olga Wehrly

An 8-year-old boy is so besotted with his teacher that he challenges her boyfriend to a duel to the death.

God Of Love (USA/18 min.) Director/Writer: Luke Matheny
Producers: Gigi Demant, Ryan Silbert, Stefanie Walmsley
Cast: Luke Matheny, Marian Brock, Christopher Hirsh, Emily Young, Miguel Rosales

Lounge-singing darts champion Raymond Goodfellow finds his prayers are answered -- literally -- when he receives a mysterious package of passion-inducing darts. The catch is that the one woman he loves -- Kelly, a drummer in his band -- is already in love with Ray's best friend Fozzie. Romance is in the air in this bohemian charmer.

Na Wewe (Belgium/19 min.) Director: Ivan Goldschmidt
Writers: Ivan Goldschmidt, Jean-Luc Pening
Producer: Ivan Goldschmidt
Cast: Renaud Rutten

1994: There is civil war in Burundi, a small country of Central Africa directly bordering Rwanda. A near genocidal confrontation opposes rebels mainly composed of ethnic Hutus and a national army with a majority of Tutsis. "Na Wewe" (pronounce "Na wayway") means "You Too" in Kurundi.

Wish 143 (UK/24 min.) Director: Ian Barnes
Writer: Tom Bidwell
Producer: Samantha Waite
Cast: Jim Carter, Jodie Whittaker, Dean Andrews

A 15-year-old boy with only months to live is granted one wish from the Dreamscape Charity. But David doesn't want to go to Disneyland or meet Gary Neville; what he really wants is an hour alone with a naked woman. Hey, I don’t know about you, but this sounds like the sort of short I’d vote for if I were an Academy member.

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Movie Review

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is technically stunning but lacks emotion

Photo by Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures

Matt Damon in The Odyssey.

For a story that is 3,000 years old and has been referenced innumerable times since the advent of the moving picture, it’s striking that The Odyssey has not been adapted into a film more often. Christopher Nolan’s new film is, depending on your definition, just the fourth time in film history that someone has attempted to tell the original story (oddly, the third film — The Return — came out just two years ago).

Matt Damon stars as Odysseus, who has been gone from his home of Ithaca for over 20 years. Waiting at home for him is his wife Penelope (Anne Hathaway) and son Telemachus (Tom Holland), as well as a hall full of suitors — most notably Antinous (Robert Pattinson) — who are hoping that Penelope will finally believe that Odysseus is dead and choose to marry one of them.

In typical Nolan fashion, the film goes back-and-forth in time often to show what has happened to Odysseus in the past two decades. His sea voyages with his crew have him attacking Troy using the legendary Trojan Horse; taking on the cyclops Polyphemus (Bill Irwin); trying to escape the clutches of the witch Circe (Samantha Morton); living with the nymph Calypso (Charlize Theron); communing with the vision of Athena (Zendaya); and more.

Nolan, who wrote and directed the epic film, has a clear reverence for the material and, perhaps more than any current filmmaker, has the chops to make the sprawling story feel coherent. With a plethora of characters who have names that take some time to understand for those not familiar with the ancient tale, it’s extremely tough to wrangle everything and everyone together, and Nolan and his team make that trick seem relatively easy.

However, there’s a difference between making the story comprehensible and making it compelling, and Nolan is not as successful on this front. As portrayed in this film, it’s difficult to care whether Odysseus ever finds his way home. His connection with Penelope and Telemachus is tenuous, at best, and his status as a hero is called into question on multiple occasions. Complicated protagonists are nothing new, but in a story where the hero’s journey is the whole point, Nolan fails to make the quest all encompassing.

That’s not to say that there aren’t some standout moments along the way. The sequence in Polyphemus’ cave is tremendous, as are a few other scenes in which Nolan’s reported reliance on practical effects make you wonder how the crew accomplished what they did. Damon has said this is the hardest movie he’s ever made, and that effort shows up in every scene, especially those on the water.

At 56 years old, Damon is getting close to elder statesman status in Hollywood, and he ably embodies the role of the respected and feared leader. Hathaway, Holland, and Pattinson get the next most screentime, and each makes their character interesting if not mesmerizing. The murderer’s row of the supporting cast — Theron, Lupita Nyong'o, Zendaya, Elliot Page, Morton, Jon Bernthal, John Leguizamo, and more — give each scene a nice sheen whether or not their individual arc makes sense.

While the technical achievements of Nolan and his team in The Odyssey are admirable and occasionally awe-inspiring, the story he lays out is not quite as overwhelming. The structure he chose to use doesn’t allow the story to overcome the episodic nature of Odysseus’ brutal journey, keeping big emotions mostly at bay.

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The Odyssey opens in theaters on July 17.

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