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‘2024 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Live Action’ Review: A Spoonful of ‘Sugar’ Helps the Medicine Go Down
Wes Anderson's exquisite 'The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar' helps to lighten a lineup marked by serious treatments of grief, mental health and abortion.
Director Lasse Lyskjær Noer has more style than the two previous nominees, to the point voters may be reminded of last year’s comparably cutesy winner, “An Irish Goodbye,” although both movies suffer from a similar problem: Approaching morbid subjects with humor, they aim to be edgy but are in fact quite tame. An hour into the program, we finally get a nominee that feels “Oscar worthy”: Canadian director Vincent René-Lortie’s enigmatic “ Invincible,” which attempts to understand the death of Marc-Antoine Bernier, a childhood friend whose tragic fate is revealed in the opening moments. Constructed as a winkingly self-aware story-within-a-story, the project boasts a starry ensemble playing multiple roles, including Ralph Fiennes as Dahl — not to mention an amusing montage in which Benedict Cumberbatch (as the title character) cycles through a number of ridiculous disguises.
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