Just as many expected, Argo took home the top award of Best Picture at the 85th Academy Awards, despite Ben Affleck not receiving a Best Director nomination, something that has only happened four times in 85 years. It was a year for records as Daniel Day-Lewis winning Best Actor for his role in Lincoln means that he is now the only person to have won three Best Actor awards in Oscar history. Also, the first time since 1969 there was a tie for a category (both Skyfall and Zero Dark Thirty won for Best Sound Editing).

Even though Argo walked away with the top honors and two other awards (Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Editing), Life of Pi was the film that took home the most awards this year with four wins (Best Director, Best Cinematography, Best Score and Best Visual Effects). And while Lincoln had 12 nominations, the film only ended up winning two awards (Best Actor and Best Production Design).

List of 2013 Oscar Winners:

(The winners are highlighted in bold red font)

Amour
Argo
Beasts Of The Southern Wild
Django Unchained
Les Misérables
Life Of Pi
Lincoln
Silver Linings Playbook
Zero Dark Thirty

Michael Haneke – Amour
Benh Zeitlin – Beasts Of The Southern Wild
Ang Lee – Life Of Pi
Steven Spielberg – Lincoln
David O. Russell – Silver Linings Playbook

Denzel Washington – Flight
Hugh Jackman – Les Miserables
Daniel Day-Lewis – Lincoln
Joaquin Phoenix – The Master
Bradley Cooper – Silver Linings Playbook

Emmanuelle Riva – Amour
Quvenzhane Wallis – Beasts Of The Southern Wild
Naomi Watts – The Impossible
Jennifer Lawrence – Silver Linings PLaybook
Jessica Chastain – Zero Dark Thirty

Alan Arkin – Argo
Christoph Waltz – Django Unchained
Tommy Lee Jones – Lincoln
Philip Seymour Hoffman – The Master
Robert De Niro – Silver Linings Playbook

Anne Hathaway – Les Misérables
Sally Field – Lincoln
Amy Adams – The Master
Helen Hunt – The Sessions
Jacki Weaver – Silver Linings Playbook

Michael Haneke – Amour
Quentin Tarantino – Django Unchained
John Gatins – Flight
Wes Anderson & Roman Coppola – Moonrise Kingdom
Mark Boal – Zero Dark Thirty

Chris Terrio – Argo
Lucy Alibar, Benh Zeitlin – Beasts of the Southern Wild
David Magee – Life Of Pi
Tony Kushner – Lincoln
David O. Russell – Silver Linings Playbook

Amour
Kon-Tiki
No
A Royal Affair
War Witch

Seamus McGarvey – Anna Karenina
Robert Richardson – Django Unchained
Claudio Miranda – Life Of Pi
Janusz Kaminski – Lincoln
Roger Deakins – Skyfall

Brave
Frankenweenie
ParaNorman
The Pirates! Band Of Misfits
Wreck-It Ralph

5 Broken Cameras
The Gatekeepers
How To Survive A Plague
The Invisible War
Searching For Sugar Man

William Goldenberg – Argo
Tim Squyres – Life Of Pi
Michael Kahn – Lincoln
Jay Cassidy and Crispin Struthers – Silver Linings Playbook
William Goldenberg, Dylan Tichenor – Zero Dark Thirty

Dario Marianelli – Anna Karenina
Alexandre Desplat – Argo
Mychael Danna – Life Of Pi
John Williams – Lincoln
Thomas Newman – Skyfall

“Before My Time” – Chasing Ice
“Pi’s Lullaby” – Life Of Pi
“Suddenly” – Les Miserables
“Skyfall” – Skyfall
“Everybody Needs A Best Friend” – Ted

Anna Karenina
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Les Misérables
Life Of Pi
Lincoln

Anna Karenina
Les Misérables
Lincoln
Mirror Mirror
Snow White and the Huntsman

Hitchcock
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Les Misérables

Argo
Django Unchained
Life Of Pi
Skyfall
Zero Dark Thirty

Argo
Les Misérables
Life Of Pi
Lincoln
Skyfall

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Life Of Pi
Marvel’s The Avengers
Prometheus
Snow White And The Huntsman

Inocente
Kings Point
Mondays At Racine
Open Heart
Redemption

Adam And Dog
Fresh Guacamole
Head Over Heels
Maggie Simpson In The Longest Daycare
Paperman

Asad
Buzkashi Boys
Curfew
Death Of A Shadow
Henry

This year’s group of short documentary nominees may look like a harrowing bunch to sit through (topics include homeless teens, African children receiving heart surgery and breast cancer patients to name a few) but that should be no reason to scare anyone off from watching them this weekend. All five shorts share a common thread of people either enduring and/or prospering under tough circumstances. The subject matter may be bleak, but they’re all great displays of human strength.

Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts Reviews

Inocente (dir. Sean Fine, Andrea Nix)
Inocente opens with a close-up on its subject of the same name, a 15 year old Mexican-American who explains her situation. For years Inocente, her mother and younger brothers have been homeless. She goes over the various ways they’ve found shelter over the years before shifting to Inocente’s passion for painting big, colourful and unique pictures. The work speaks for itself when it comes to showing off how talented she is, and through a local arts program Inocente is given her own art show. A lot of focus is put on the arts program, but the most interesting parts come out of the fractured relationship between Inocente and her mother. Fine and Nix don’t get too deep into the reasons behind the rift in the family, with an ending that feels lacking. Early on Inocente mentions inviting her mother to the art show and worrying if she’ll show up; eventually her mother does show, but the attempt at an emotional climax falls flat since Inocente is never actually seen with her family. But what makes Inocente such an interesting subject is her relentless optimism. Her art is surprisingly playful, and we repeatedly see people amazed at her positive attitude despite everything she’s been through. A title card at the end points out that this is one story out of millions of homeless children in the United States, but hopefully this one story is only the beginning of a long career.

Inocente

Redemption (dir. Jon Alpert, Matthew O’Neill)
The title refers to New York City’s recycling program, where one recycled can or bottle earns 5 cents. Redemption follows ‘canners,’ people who make a living off of collecting and recycling goods throughout the city. The people Alpert and Neill encounter come from all sorts of different backgrounds: a Vietnam veteran, a former programmer for Microsoft who can’t live off of social security, a couple from Guatemala who fly up to collect cans while waiting for their crops back home to grow and a Japanese man who worked at the World Trade Center are a few of the stories told throughout. The not so subtle jabs at the upper class, including an eye roll worthy shot of the camera panning down from a Wall Street sign to a person pushing a cart full of cans, seems unnecessary given how much the subjects situations are more damning of “the 1%” than anything else. The intended goal of the redemption program has mutated from an incentive for morally good actions to a method of survival. The recession made more jobs disappear in the city, with most of the ‘canners’ complaining about how competitive the practice has gotten over the years (one person suggests that the amount of people collecting cans has recently tripled). Nothing in Redemption is more damning towards the upper class than seeing these people literally fighting with each other over empty cans.

Redemption

Kings Point (dir. Sari Gilman)
Kings Point opens with narration about New York City in the 1970s. According to the narrator, the crime was so bad at the time that many people moved out of the city to different states. Many of these people looked to Florida, where they were offered cheap prices for a condominium in an area with a nice climate. Now, almost 40 years later, the retirement community that the film gets its title from is filled with former New Yorkers entering what they assume to be the last years of their lives. Sari Gilman, whose grandmother lived at Kings Point for three decades, spent ten years filming people within the community either trying to enjoy themselves or going over their regrets in life. The documentary tends to go back and forth from lighthearted material to more sombre moments with some of the subjects. Two of the most memorable people in the doc are Bea and Frank, two friends who spend so much time together that people initially think they’re married. Frank says that he loves Bea but the age difference (she’s 10 years older) holds him back from committing to her. Eventually Frank tells the truth, explaining that he won’t marry an older woman because he doesn’t want to bury another wife. It’s these moments of candor that make Kings Point such a compelling film, as each person frankly discusses topics like aging, death and loneliness without holding back. Comparisons to Michael Haneke’s Amour are obvious, but Kings Point packs just as much of a gut punch in a significantly shorter amount of time.

Kings Point

Open Heart (dir. Kief Davidson)
Open Heart starts out in Rwanda with a father taking his 6 year old daughter Angelique to the doctor. The doctor lays out a grim situation for him: Angelique needs open heart surgery to survive, and the only place it can be done is 2500 miles away in Sudan. Angelique has been selected to get the procedure done for free, but her family cannot go with her and if she dies the body can’t be sent back home. The doctor’s blunt delivery of the news along with its placement right at the beginning of the film makes for one of many surreal moments throughout Open Heart. Angelique, along with several other children including 17-year old Marie, have been chosen to get open heart surgery in Sudan. Their condition, which can easily be prevented through penicillin that is unavailable to them, can only be treated in Sudan because it is the only hospital in the continent that can perform the necessary operations. Once the kids get to the hospital, whose modern and sterile environment directly clashes with the earlier moments in Rwanda, the doc’s focus opens up to include the doctors running the facility. Both stories are riveting, and Kief Davidson’s ability to weave back and forth between them without making one feel left behind is remarkable to watch. Open Heart has its fair share of moments that range from infuriating to heartbreaking, all of which add up to a terrific documentary.

Open Heart

Mondays at Racine (dir. Cynthia Wade)
On the third Monday of every month the Racine salon in Long Island offers its services for free to any women diagnosed with cancer. The owners, two sisters whose mother died of cancer, came up with the idea when they remembered how distressed their mother was about her looks as the cancer got worse. The salon is merely the jumping point for Mondays at Racine, which mainly follows two women with breast cancer who come to the salon regularly. Cambria is a young mother who was in the process of adopting a second child when she was diagnosed with stage three breast cancer. Linda is in her 50s and is still battling cancer after being diagnosed 14 years ago. While Cambria shows optimism through her chemotherapy treatments Linda shows the devastating impacts of cancer over the long-term. Her marriage is in tatters, and the interviews with Linda and her husband are so unflinchingly raw that it can get hard to watch. Cynthia Wade follows Cambria and Linda over several years, showing their respective progressions and declines in treatment. There’s a personal quality to Mondays at Racine that makes the subject matter hit especially hard, with an ending back at the salon that will move plenty of people to tears.

Mondays at Racine

What will win

Going by past winners, Open Heart seems to fit the requirements with its material hitting all the right tearjerker notes. But I won’t be surprised (or disappointed) to see Mondays at Racine win if voters are drawn in by its personal qualities. While Inocente, Redemption and Kings Point are all well-done they don’t resonate enough to be in the running.

What should win

Open Heart. As terrific as Mondays at Racine is, it doesn’t match the professionalism and impact that Open Heart achieves within the same amount of time.