February/March 2026 [23-1]
Butterfly, Forevergreen, The Girl Who Cried Pearls, Retirement Plan, The Three Sisters, Éiru, The Harder They Fall
- Butterfly [2025] - 82
Now that the Olympics are over it’s back to movie time, and we’re starting out with all the Oscar noms for animated short.
Butterfly is a brilliantly animated film told through watercolor to depict complex scenes, thoughts, and emotions. While I think the next one on this list, Forevergreen, is likely to take the award, Marie Desplechin’s and Florence Miailhe’s Butterfly was certainly my favorite of the two. Telling the story of a man who lost everything to one of the world’s most senseless conflicts, in only fifteen minutes Butterfly manages to engage and enthrall just as deeply as some feature films. I saw this in a theater specifically rattling off all of the nominations, so the crowd was fairly united in purpose but, even as such, this was the only one of the whole grouping that elicited both applause and tears from everyone in the room.
- Forevergreen [2025] - 79
From creators Nathan Engelhardt and Jeremy Spears, Forevergreen also caused reactions from the room, but they were of “aww 🥹🥹🥹” rather than applause. Still good, just not quite the same. Featuring some really interesting animation that blends stop motion and CGI into a sort of woodcarving theme, Forevergreen tells a simple story about friendship, care, and family. While I’ve seen it get a little panned for summing itself up in a Bible verse right at the end, I’m not sure it’s a large enough part of the film to really matter. Whether or not a story is pulled from any form of mythology matters little compared to the way it’s told on screen or the parable is holds for the real world, and the story of Forevergreen is a sure crowd pleaser every, single, time.
- The Girl Who Cried Pearls [2025] - 74
With what is probably my favorite art style of the bunch, The Girl Who Cried Pearls is a perfectly haunted little Burtonesque fable about lying to get ahead. I think its story falls a little short when compared to some other things within the collection, but the fidelity of its physical art is incredibly impressive. Mike Jones and Pascal Trottier have put something together here that I don’t think is a strong runner for the award it’s being nominated for, but I do think will be copied and remembered in terms of styling by up and coming artists, and that’s more praise than any piece of shiny metal.
- Retirement Plan [2025] - 80
While I think that Butterfly is ultimately my favorite of the bunch, John Kelly and Tara Lawall have created something extremely unique and captivating in their rambling Retirement Plan that gives me pause at assigning a #1 on the list. Helmed by Domhall Gleeson as the voice of our retiree, Retirement Plan is a 7-minute onslaught of thoughts, actions, dreams, and goals that will make you laugh, well you up, and leave you entirely fulfilled in a way multi-season TV shows can’t even manage most of the time. There’s a sort of melancholy to this little adventure that perfectly encapsulates the way our real world eats every minute of time we have and forces us to always be thinking about “the next thing”, rather than what’s right in front of us, or what/ who we’d actually like to be. It’s kind of dark, the more you dig into Retirement Plan’s little corners, but I think that darkness creates a rich and vibrantly rounded picture that something of this length should be extremely proud of.
- The Three Sisters [2025] - 70
Easily my least favorite of the films I saw this week, The Three Sisters is still funny, complete, and interesting in exactly the way I think it intended to be. It’s got a very interesting and unique 2D art-style that I think helps it stand out from the crowd, but its story just fell a little short for me when compared to the other things here. Similar to The Girl Who Cried Pearls, there isn’t really a huge takeaway or lesson to this little fable, and I think those kinds of things are where short film really shines. Certainly not bad in any way, just a little too, well… 2D for my tastes.
- Éiru [2025] - 85
And then, at the end of all the nominated shorts, we got a little bonus: A shortlisted film called Éiru… And it was the best of the bunch by a bit of a margin. I’m truly baffled that this wasn’t nominated alongside everything else because it’s got the perfect balance of clear storytelling with an important message, beautiful and brilliant animation, and creativity that sets itself away from even feature films with larger budgets and . Éiru is a really interesting piece of art and I’d love to understand what it was that kept it from the final list of nominations, because it seriously stands out amongst them. If you liked anything from Tomm Moore’s “Irish Folklore Trilogy” [The Secret of Kells, Song of the Sea, or Wolfwalkers] Giovanna Ferrari’s Éiru is going to be an absolute shoo-in for you.
- The Harder They Fall [2021] - 74
At the behest of a friend, I also watched a full film this week in Jeymes Samuel and Boaz Yakin’s take on the western: The Harder They Fall. A character driven story with a cast the likes to make Tarantino blush, The Harder They Fall is a movie best enjoyed while a little distracted. Not a lot, just a little. At 2-hours and 19-minutes long there’s a lot of fat on these bones to be trimmed, a few characters to be consolidated or cut, and a couple plot points that still need a little sharpening. To contextualize this, however, it’s important to also note that The Harder They Fall is Jeymes Samuel’s debut feature film and, in that light, I find this all a bit more impressive. It’s still no Nine Days, My Heart Can’t Beat Unless You Tell it To, or His House, but the scope Samuel is willing to take on is certainly impressive — and mostly well executed. I’d like to see something more tempered and consistent from him in the future, but the highs of The Harder They Fall make the rocky ground beneath them all the more forgettable.
