MOVIES: An annual treat: the short films nominated for an Oscar

It's only about three weeks to the Academy Awards and time to catch up. The big titles are in theaters or streaming. The little ones, the short films, are harder to catch but you can. A company called Shorts TV assembles them into three programs, Live Action, Documentary and Animation, and sends them to select movie theaters. They're always marvellous to see and between today and next week I'll have notes on them all.

Notice that the full-length and award-winning documentary s-yéwyáw / AWAKEN about Indigenous people rediscovering the wisdom of their elders is now available across Canada. It's free at TELUS Optik TV channel 8 and online at watch.telusoriginals.com and on demand at Hollywood Suite. I gave it a positive review back in November.

Also notice that two very good films that have had a changeable or narrow release here in Canada are now playing wider. They are the magnificient Perfect Days and the very satisfying The Taste of Things. I reviewed them very positively last week.

And today we have Bob Marley, Russell Crowe and a self-affirming Peasant girl. Read on.

Bob Marley One Love: 3 stars

The Peasants: 3 ½

Land of Bad: 2 ½

Oscar Shorts

BOB MARLEY: ONE LOVE: This is not your usual bio-pic. It doesn't try to give a full biography of the legendary reggae superstar. It concentrates on only two years of his life, 1976-78. That's when he recorded his best work in London, England and held concerts in his native Jamaica to promote the pieces. The fight between two political parties there had turned violent. He planned a concert to bring people together and much of the film is taken up with debate over whether he should do that, what danger he might be in. That's pertinent, considering that he had earlier been shot at in an apparent assassination attempt. The film doesn't say by who or why. That's missing.

We do get a profile of the man though. Religious, follower of Rastafarianism, devoted to his family and fighting pessimism. "Why so much struggle from the day I was born?" he asks. Flashbacks give us his childhood including a recurring image of him before a burning field which turns out to be quite different than we originally thought. We see him in the London recording studio ("that's a hit," says the producer) and in intense conversations with his wife ("sometimes the messenger has to become the message" she says.) The film does give us that: his anti-colonial thinking and respect for his culture. It skips some other bits of his reputation but gives us quite a few of his songs. They're done in a sonic hybrid of his voice and that of the man who plays him, Kingsley Ben-Adir. He recently played Barack Obama, Malcolm X and even one of Barbie's Kens. He's solid here too. Reinaldo Marcus Green directed and the producers included Marley's son, daughter and wife. No wonder it is so positive. (In theaters) 3 out of 5

THE PEASANTS: The first thing you notice is the style. It looks like live action, but also animation. The husband and wife team, Hugh Welchman and DK Welchman, filmed these scenes, then had them painted over by artists from four countries. It gives a story-book look and feel to what is a harsh tale of rural and village life in 19th century Poland.

Jagna (Kamila Urzędowska) is being encouraged to find a husband, both by gossiping women and by her own mother who wants her to marry the richest man in town. “You'll be the first lady of the village,” she says. He'll give her some of the disputed land he controls. But he's way too old for her and she falls in love with his son who says to her “You are like holy soil that brings life.” This is from a classic Polish novel, which is apparently very long and has been shortened here. Her almost ethereal personality is strongly conveyed though, as is her free-spirited push to do what she wants and defy the local ways. It leads to tragedy, wrongful accusations, even charges fuelled by superstition that she's to blame for a poor harvest. “It's God's wrath,” someone yells. Can she overcome all that? It depends on how you read the final scene in this epic and enthralling story. (In theaters: Toronto and Vancouver now, Montreal next week) 3 ½ out of 5

LAND OF BAD: On first glance this appears to be one of those run-of-the-mill action pictures we get now and then. But, look it's got Russell Crowe in it and two Hemsworth brothers. And gripping action scenes that make this quite a nifty thriller. Just don't be too picky about story. It's not well explained and may not even be all that logical. But hey, the missiles, the drone strikes, explosions and tension-building is what you come for and director William Eubank delivers.

Two Hemsworths (Liam and Luke) plus Milo Ventimiglia and Ricky Whittle are in a special ops US Air Force team that's parachuted into a jungle in the Philippines to rescue a guy from a Russian arms dealer. Details about them aren't told to us well enough, but Russell, playing a character nicknamed Reaper, is watching everything on monitors at a base back in Las Vegas. When needed he radios what he sees ahead, sends a drone and fires missiles. But he's also waiting for a call from his pregnant wife, yells at colleagues watching a basketball game on TV and not listening for the phone, and at a most crucial time, as the clock is counting down and the delta force needs intel, he's off grocery shopping. Bizarre but it whips up the suspense. The worst guys, by the way, turn out to be Muslim extremists and a pre-script at the top did tell us that they're common in that area. Beyond that, logic isn't too clear in this Australian film. (In theaters) 2 ½ out of 5

OSCAR SHORTS: It's an annual treat. We can see all the candidates nominated for Academy Awards in the three shorts categories. They are Live Action, Documentary and Animation. The creativity they display is often superb. They tell entire stories in just a half hour, or a little more or less.

So far, I've seen the live action films and most of the documentaries. I'll write about the rest next week.

In the Live Action category, the highlight for me is a Wes Anderson film that shows all of his signature moves, quirks if you will, annoyances as some might have it. The Wonderful World of Henry Sugar is a story by Raoul Dahl about building wealth and it's told to us directly by Ralph Fiennes, Dev Patel, Benedict Cumberbatch and Ben Kingsley all of whom address the camera like a reporter or TV host. The stage and the background keeps changing as they talk. It's magic and feels much like The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Invincible is a Quebecois film about a troubled and trouble-making young man in a juvenile detention center.

Léokim Beaumier-Lépine plays him as a lost soul but still striving. Can he escape or not? It's plaintive and based on a true story.

The After has a solid star, David Oyelowo, as a man who lost his wife in a violent attack on the street. It's unbelievable because it comes out of nowhere. Then, driving a cab or maybe Uber, he overhears all sorts of problems from passengers in the back seat and somehow gets better. Good acting; unconvincing story.

Knight of Fortune is a Danish film with an unusual slant on grief. A man (Leif Andrée) arrives at a morgue to view his wife's body, meets a stranger whose wife is also there and with him gets involved in one of the funniest sequences you'll ever see. The film moves from solemn to wry and comic and back again. I don't know if enjoyable is the word, but it works.

Red, White and Blue is an American film about one of the most contentious topics down there: abortion.

A restaurant server (Brittany Snow) needs one and runs into obstructions in her state and has to drive to neighboring Missouri for it. It seems like a standard appeal for change. Then a huge twist in the story will astound you and add urgency and drama to the demand.

The DOCUMENTARY SHORTS include The ABC’s of Book Banning which offers the shocking information that public schools in the US have banned some 2,000 books. Many are about sex and gender issues, naturally, and many others are about race issues. Nikki Giovanni's book about Rosa Parks, for instance, or one about Martin Luther King. Margaret Atwood is on there but Eric Carle?

Some very articulate kids and an irascible Grace Linn, age 100, speak up. It works as a very strong protest.

Nǎi Nai and Wài has two very elderly women enjoying life, cooking, exercising and resolving to live well as long as they can. They're from Taiwan, now in the US, and they're being filmed by their grandson as a statement of make the most of old age. It's obvious but works.

The Barber of Little Rock is an optomistic statement about the racial divide in the US. Specifically about the racial wealth divide. Arlo Washington saw it increasing in Little Rock, Arkansas, started a barber college years ago and then a People's Trust financial institution. He gives loans to people the banks won't touch, which includes many blacks. It helps keep businesses and money in the community. "You can see it can be done," he says. "So there's no excuse."

They're playing in art house and repertory theaters now.