It’s now a tradition here at Irreviews to see the Oscar-nominated animated shorts at IFC during the month before the Oscars, and to write some brief remarks about them. It’s a tradition that I’m coming to truly enjoy, despite never really liking animation. In my opinion, the short feature is the proper format for animation; full-length animation invariably descends into tired slapstick, saccharine story lines, cardboard bad guys, outlandish, over-long chase scenes, and so on, while short features tend to use the strengths of the genera in a more focused and abstract way. This realization has changed everything for me where animation is concerned. I now really like the genera, as long as it stays under 20 minutes or so!

The 2014 animated shorts are a perfect illustration of what I am talking about. Let’s begin with The Dam Keeper. I had to struggle with all my might not to start openly sobbing during this film. It’s one of the most emotionally wrenching things I seen in a long time. It isn’t just that its narrative is basically the (somewhat sad) story of my life, but everything about this film is done so beautifully it’s overwhelming – the music, the conception of the characters, the way the scenes are constructed and framed, and the visual impact of the drawings. At one point toward the end, as the sun is coming out over the town, each frame is like an exquisite impressionist painting – I’ve never seen anything like it. In terms of emotional impact, the only film I can compare it to is perhaps Malèna, in the way it reaches so deep into the primal emotions of childhood it’s difficult to process on a merely intellectual level. The Dam Keeper is simply astonishing!

I also loved Duet, which is not nominated (it should have been), but is included among the four honorable mentions. This love story is visually almost as beautiful as The Dam Keeper, although in a completely different way, featuring a mesmerizing, turbulent stream of partly-colored line sketches which morph before your eyes in lovely and very surprising ways. Emotionally it was somewhat more pedestrian (although still moving), but it’s a beautiful piece of animation. The last of the three standouts is Me and My Moulton, about three sisters dealing with their strange and sometimes disappointing parents. It’s a wonderful story, the animation is simple and effective, the narration is really well-written, and the spectrum of ideas explored is very interesting.

On the lighter side, there is Feast, about a hungry stray dog who finds a home with bachelor guy who feeds him vast amounts of junk food, at least until the guy meets a girlfriend who cleans up his diet, much to the chagrin of the dog! This was much more traditional piece of animation, but I found it really funny, and surprisingly moving in the end.

Of the remaining features, A Single Life, though very short (2 minutes), is a total scream: a women realizes that a 45 record she receives in the mail is actually a time travel device to her entire life. Bus Story is a charming and quirky story of a woman whose life ambition is to drive a school bus. Footprints is a bizarre tale of a man who witnesses the aftermath of ordinary occurrences and imagines horrifying monsters perpetrating them. The only two I did not care for were Sweet Cocoon, which was your typical “animated mayhem”, and The Bigger Picture, which although interesting visually was pointlessly bleak and depressing.

In this sadly disappointing year for movies, a year that features the most uninspiring selection of Oscar Nominees ever, I can think of no better solution then to get yourself over to IFC and take in these funny, moving, beautiful shorts, which together artistically lay waste to most of the full-length features I’ve seen this year.