But all Oscar considerations aside, it’s just exciting that a local theater is hosting a short films program. Shorts are fun and unique and different, and can often tell stories in a more visual way than a feature-length format.

Next Friday, the Times will start screening the five nominated animated short films, but this weekend, they are focusing on the live-action fictional shorts. So without further adieu, our take on the five nominated live-action short films:

Western, cancer drama top live action

It’s simply undeniable - the fact that two of this year’s five live action shorts are operating on a completely different level than their counterparts.

It’s like witnessing the difference between a minor league and major league baseball team. Residing firmly in the majors is Denmark’s "At Night," a moving medical drama about three women struggling through the days in a hospital’s cancer ward, as well as the United Kingdom’s "The Tonto Woman," an atmospheric western about a man risking his honor and his life to save a women from her isolated imprisonment.

While it will no doubt be a close contest between these two titles for the Oscar, it’s the subject matter that likely puts Christian E. Christiansen’s "At Night" in the place of front-runner. Opening with a sparse, pensive look at a cancer ward in which each patient seems trapped within her own bubble, overcome by fear and trepidation, "At Night" is less a story of illness than one about unexpected friendships brought on by illness. Building to a New Year’s Eve that brings the story’s three young women together in ways both celebratory and tragic, "At Night" is easily the most emotional of this year’s live action nominees.

In "The Tonto Woman," first-time director Daniel Barber makes a strong first impression, bringing to life the solitude and testosterone of the old west, as well as his obvious love for the classical westerns. At the heart of it all is the happiness of a woman who has been forever scarred by her experience as a prisoner, abducted and held for 11 years by Mojave Indians.

Brandishing a facial tattoo that the Indians have given her, this woman has become an outcast of her society, all but abandoned by her husband who’s nowhere to be seen until a rugged, handsome cattle rustler rides into town and starts to show interest in her. Outraged by the insult, the husband comes back into the picture with a vengeance. But a would-be saloon shootout takes an unexpected, intimate and passionate turn - as this stranger offers a convincing appeal that the real story here is not about the tempers of two men, but the wounded heart of one desperately lonely woman.

Two other shorts sputter more than they sparkle. "The Mozart of Pickpockets" seems to be about a professional pickpocketing ring until it veers soft, becoming instead the story of two crooks adopting a sad-faced orphan boy. For some reason, the Belgian entry "Tanghi Argentini" has been a popular awards favorite around the world, a light-hearted tale about a timid office worker asking one of his colleagues - a dance fanatic - to teach him the tango so he can impress a woman. It’s fun, but it’s also the kind of flat, two-dimensional product that one would hope the academy would be above.

Finally, this year’s oddball award goes to "The Substitute," a memorably bizarre story about a funny, frightening, somewhat aggressive substitute teacher in an Italian high school who, it turns out, might not really be a teacher at all.

Check it out:

Five titles all screen together in one program, starting at the Times Cinema on Friday:

"At Night": 4 stars out of 4

"The Tonto Woman": 4 out of 4

"The Mozart of Pickpockets": 3 out of 4

"Tanghi Argentini": 2.5 out of 4

"The Substitute": 2.5 out of 4

7 p.m. Friday

Times Cinema

5906 W. Vliet St., Milwaukee

(414) 453-2436

Timescinema.com

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