Bridge to Terabithia

dir. Gabor Csupo

Tweens are soulless little monsters. Especially the tween girls—with their embroidered jeans and flip, nonchalant chatter—who walked out of Bridge to Terabithia, a movie conceived specifically for them and which, if their hearts weren't made of lip gloss and granite, would've had them weeping steadily for the last half hour like the adults in the theater.

Or at least one adult who, while walking out of the theater—dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief and thinking about death and innocence and love and the scene where the beautiful music teacher (swoon!) takes the boy character to the art museum—overheard two tweenaged voices squeaking ahead of him: "Yah, I didn't like it. The girl character didn't really do it for me." "Yah. I know. It was okay."

Stupid twits. Bridge to Terabithia (based on the 1977 children's novel) is a fifth-grade Casablanca—a movie of love, longing, and the inevitability of loss, set in an unidentified lower-middle-class town that looks heartlandish. Jesse is a poor farmer's kid with no style, no confidence, and no friends, whose only joys are running and painting. He meets Leslie, the new girl, when she smokes him in a school race (for boys) he'd been training all summer to win. She has the opposite problem. She's cocky and great and has tons of style (she looks like a indie-rock fan and her family doesn't have a religion or a television)—too much style for their cow-town peers who mock the pair to the bottom of the pecking order. Leslie and Jesse become friends, spend a lot of time playing in the forest (which becomes the magical kingdom of Terabithia) and fall into a presexual, childish love. The movie is sappy, unsubtle, and telegraphs its intentions from the start, but if you allow yourself to fall in love alongside Leslie and Jesse you will, when things get sad and your eyes fill with saltwater, wish you had the unfeeling heart of a tweenaged girl. BRENDAN KILEY

2006 Academy Award Nominated Short Films

dir. Various

Each year the Motion Picture Association of America deems 10 live-action and animated shorts worthy of Oscar consideration. And, just as frequently, the majority of those shorts go unseen by the majority of the public, their only chance at reaching a large audience limited to the 20 seconds they get during the Oscar presentation—unless, of course, you seek out this package at your local art house during its inevitably clipped run.

Of the live-action shorts in this year's crop, Binta and the Great Idea (Spain; dir. Javier Fesser and Luis Manso) stands out thanks in no small part to a charming narration from its 7-year-old main character, whose hopeful outlook on such touchy topics as education, outcasts, and gender roles lends lightness to what could easily turn into an overly sincere effort.

Less successful are Éramos Pocos (Spain; dir. Borja Cobeaga) and Helmer & Son (Denmark; dir. Sþren Pilmark and Kim Magnusson), both of which deal with the flaws of men. The former involves a husband who, after his wife has left him, attempts to persuade his mother-in-law to take care of both him and his son, only to have his newfound comfort turned upside down by the film's wheezy punch line. As for the latter, it's a simple affair involving a son, a father, and a closet in a rest home, building up to the easy laugh of elderly nudity and a heavy dose of sap.

The final two in the live-action category, The Saviour (Australia; dir. Peter Templeman), about a Mormon evangelist in love with a married woman, and West Bank Story (United States; Ari Sandel), about two competing fast food restaurants (Kosher King vs. Hummus Hut!) duking it out, West Side Story style, in the West Bank, are each notable for sharp direction and impressive production values, though even at a tempered length they still go on too long.

Things turn out better for the animation category, the best of the bunch being The Little Matchgirl (United States; dir. Roger Allers and Don Hahn). With tender, classic cell animation that evokes Disney at its strongest, Hans Christian Andersen's tale is presented without dialogue, only truly beautiful images and a strong score to fuel your heartbreak. It's simple; it's sad; it's perfect.

Also impressive is The Danish Poet (Norway and Canada; dir. Torill Kove), a light-hearted romance narrated by Liv Ullmann that orbits the themes of inspiration, long-lost love, and family trees. The animation is all bright colors and wiggly lines—with the occasional odd painterly cloud here and there—which works well with the story's generally breezy and light-hearted tone.

Rounding out the animation package are Maestro (Hungary; dir. GĂ©za M. TĂłth), which is all precision (camera rotating like the hands of a clock, rhythmic movements from the film's two characters, no real story—or inspiration, for that matter), as well as two more works from the U.S. One is called Lifted (dir. Gary Rydstrom), about an alien making a botch of his first human abduction, and the other No Time for Nuts (dir. Chris Renaud and Michael Thurmeier). Neither of them were on the DVD sent for review, but seeing as how No Time for Nuts appears to be nothing more than an outtake from the movie Ice Age, that's only half disappointing. BRADLEY STEINBACHER