Ramblin' with Roger

2025 OSCAR® NOMINATED Live Action Short Films

The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent; Anuja; I’m Not a Robot; A Lien; The Last Ranger

My wife and I saw the 2025 OSCAR® NOMINATED Live Action Short Films at the Spectrum Theatre on a Tuesday in mid-February.

The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent CROATIA/13 MINS/2024

Director Nebojsa Slijepcevic

1993, Bosnia and Herzegovina. A passenger train is stopped by paramilitary forces in an ethnic cleansing operation. As they haul off innocent civilians, only one man out of 500 passengers dares to stand up to them.

Anuja INDIA, USA/22 MINS/2024

Director Adam J. Graves

ANUJA tells the story of a gifted nine-year-old girl who, alongside her sister Palak, faces a life-changing opportunity that tests their bond and mirrors the struggles of girls worldwide.

I’m Not a Robot

NETHERLANDS, BELGIUM/22 MINS/2023

Director Victoria Warmerdam

After repeatedly failing CAPTCHA tests, music producer Lara spirals into obsession, haunted by the disturbing question of whether she might actually be a robot.

A Lien USA/15 MINS/2023

Director David Cutler-Kreutz, Sam Cutler-Kreutz

A young couple face up to and deal with a dangerous immigration process.

The Last Ranger

SOUTH AFRICA/28 MINS/2024

Director Cindy Lee

When young Litha is introduced to the magic of a game reserve by the last remaining ranger, they are ambushed by poachers. In the ensuing battle to save the rhinos, Litha discovers a terrible secret.

Whatcha gonna do?

In some ways, all of the films are about choice. From here re: Silent: “Each of us is faced with the question posed by the film’s protagonist: should we stand up to violence even if we are not its immediate targets?” Somehow, the heroism was too muted for me.

Anuja was more fully realized, with Palak repeating a story to Anuja that their mother used to tell. Palak is resigned to working at the factory, but math wiz Anuja has another option. Will she take it?

If you have ever been frustrated by CAPTCHA – I certainly have! – Robot is LOL funny early on. If Lara is a bot, what free will does she possess? Very relatable. You can see it for free here.

“A Lien brings you into the tense, intimate moment of a green card interview that could change three people’s lives forever.” It gets very intense and entirely believable. You can see the film for free here or here. Here’s an interview with the directors.

The Last Ranger is a story about limited economic opportunities in the region and choices made. From Kindred Films: “The rhino population in South Africa has been decimated by poaching in the last decade. The Last Ranger is a narrative story about the rangers who risk their lives daily to protect these magnificent creatures.” This was a strong concluding film.

The return of Sunday Stealing

FBH

I welcome the return of Sunday Stealing. It returned this past weekend, but I had stopped looking for it, so I didn’t notice it until today. I was going to dash through those Questions and then start on the new ones this weekend. My dashing, alas, failed. So here it is.

1. Where were you three hours ago? Eating breakfast with my wife, which is almost always oatmeal, mostly because it’s quick and dependable in terms of my diet.

2. Make a confession. I recorded the Grammys and the Oscars. Since it was filling up my DVR, I thought maybe I should watch some of this, so I finally watched the Grammys. So that’s who Chappell Roan and Teddy Swims are.

3. Bad habits? Staying up too late. The trick is that when I go to bed and am not tired, I toss and turn for a while; that seems inefficient.

4. Favorite color? Green probably or some variation thereof

5. Can you drive? No, I’ve had seven driver’s permits in my life, 6 in New York State, and one from North Carolina

6. 3 pet peeves: People who block sidewalk access. They park their cars to block part of the sidewalk, or they don’t clean the sidewalk after it snows. Loud music on the bus. Stuff left on the steps that I’m likely to trip over.

7. Last person you hugged: My wife. This was institutionalized in terms of an FBH, once in the morning and once in the evening. The Full-Body Hugs were partly derived because my wife usually goes to bed before I do. Sometimes, I didn’t even know that she had gone to bed, and she didn’t say good night or anything. I felt discombobulated by that.

8. Something you miss. My 401K is melting because of some stupid tariff that someone thinks is going to make America a lot of money.

Alto Knights

9. What song is stuck in your head at the moment? I went to the movies several times in the past couple of months. There’s a tease about a film called The Alto Knights coming out later in March, which I have no intention of seeing. But the trailer uses a song called Natural Blues by Moby from Play, an album I own. Then I discovered that it’s a remix of a Vera Hall song called Trouble So Hard.

10. Favorite quote. I don’t have one, so I Googled one: “Tell me, and I forget. Teach me, and I remember. Involve me, and I learn.” Benjamin Franklin. This is how I learn.

11. Favorite band. I’m going to pick the last group I played, which was the Supremes. Going Down For The Third Time

12. Something you’re excited for. Working on the Project.

13. Favorite movie. IDK. Possibly my favorite recent movie is Conclave. Certainly my favorite short film is The Only Girl in the Orchestra. I recommended the former to my wife and the latter to a blogger buddy, and they both loved the choices.

14. What type of phone do you have? I have an AT&T landline with three locations, one downstairs and two upstairs, and an iPhone 8 (which I had to look up).

15. Favorite animal: Probably cats. By the way, I liked the movie FLOW very much. I was waiting inside the Spectrum, and some folks talked about it. One woman said it should have had a narrator or subtitles, which would have defeated the film’s purpose.

Movie review: I’m Still Here

Ainda Estou Aqui

Of all the movies nominated for best picture, the film I’m Still Here (Ainda Estou Aqui in Portuguese) is the one I knew the least about when I went to the Spectrum Theater in late February to see it. I couldn’t even remember the name, saying to the ticket seller, “It’s the, uh, Brazilian film,” and they knew what I meant.

In 1971, “Brazil faces the tightening grip of a military dictatorship.” You first get a sense of this with a roadway police stop. Eunice (Fernanda Torres) and Rubens (Selton Mell) are living a reasonably comfortable upper-middle-class life. Eunice and Rubens clearly adore each other. They and their five children get along as well as a large family can. Rubens was in the federal legislature in the past but is long retired.

First, Rubens, then Eunice, and briefly, even one of their daughters are taken away and interrogated. This turns their world upside down, “The film is based on Marcelo Ruben Pavia’s biographical book and tells a true story that helped reconstruct an important part of Brazil’s hidden history.” This true story is just one of many families disrupted by the government.

Awards

The film won the Oscar for Best International Film. It was also nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture—I preferred it to Anora, FWIW—and Torres was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress. She won the Golden Globe for Best Performance by a Female Actor in a Motion Picture—Drama, and justifiably so. Fernanda Montenegro played the older Eunice Paiva in the film; she is the mother of Fernanda Torres.

On Rotten Tomatoes, it received 97% positive reviews from critics and audiences. And it did better box office in the UK than expected.

David Sims of The Atlantic notes correctly, “By highlighting Eunice’s role as a parent, [director Walter] Salles pushes viewers toward considering the mundanity of living under a dictatorship — and the gnawing nightmare of lacking control in the face of obvious evil.” A strong film.

The Putinization of America

“anything to stop him from talking”

**Used with permission of Sarah Neff, c. https://www.sarah-neff.com/**

The Atlantic ran an article titled “The Putinization of America” by Garry Kasparov, “the chairman of the Renew Democracy Initiative and a vice president of the World Liberty Congress.” Yup, “he was the 13th world chess champion.” The subhead is “Trump’s deference to the Russian dictator has become full-blown imitation.”

It begins: “We are barely a month into the second presidential term of Donald Trump and he has made his top priorities clear: the destruction of America’s government and influence and the preservation of Russia’s.

“Unleashing Elon Musk and his DOGE cadres on the federal government, menacing Canada and European allies, and embracing Vladimir Putin’s wish list for Ukraine and beyond are not unrelated. These moves are all strategic elements of a plan that is familiar to any student of the rise and fall of democracies, especially the ‘fall’ part.”

The article hit my email BEFORE Comrade FOTUS and Juvie Vance tagteamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on February 28. As an American, I was embarrassed by the vulgar display of a transactional worldview. VZ has repeatedly thanked the US, so anyone stating otherwise is lying. (Lindsey Graham, as usual, is an embarrassment.)

I Googled Putinization of America and found these, some of which are behind paywalls:

LeMonde, 27 Feb

By Piotr Smolar. Both at home and in international relations, the American president seems to be promoting illiberal ideas and methods that are in line with those of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

“He called Volodymyr Zelensky a ‘dictator.’ He accused Ukraine of having prolonged the war for three years, which started, according to him, because of the prospect of NATO membership offered to Kyiv. Is it Vladimir Putin talking? No, it’s Donald Trump. The confusion is understandable given the incredible turnaround in Washington. A slippery slope toward illiberalism, contempt for international law, neo-imperialist aspirations, politicization of the state apparatus, confusion between public and private interests and a cult-like attitude toward his leadership both in his team and in propagandist conservative media: The United States is ‘Putinizing’ at high speed.”

The New Yorker, 20 Feb

By Susan Glaser. “No matter how many times Donald Trump openly parrots the Kremlin line, it’s never not going to sound wrong coming from the President of the United States. In 2018, at a press conference in Helsinki, Trump announced that he accepted Vladimir Putin’s claim that Russia did not intervene in American elections, despite our own intelligence agencies’ conclusion to the contrary.

“I watched the scene sitting outside in the glaring Finnish summer sun on a CNN set, with Anderson Cooper, who, after a short, stunned silence, concluded, ‘You have been watching perhaps one of the most disgraceful performances by an American President.’ Later, Fiona Hill, the National Security Council senior director who had staffed Trump at the summit, would recall what it felt like inside the room when she heard Trump’s words: she thought about faking an illness, pulling a fire alarm, anything to stop him from talking.” I knew FOTUS and Putin had the same agenda after Helsinki.

Katie Couric interviewed Glaser on February 28, after the White House debacle.

Vanity Fair, 21 Feb

By Mikhail Zygar. “The rules-based order? A relic. Trump’s casual claims to Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal—and his cozying up to far-right movements in Germany and Britain—signal that the game has fundamentally changed. As Musk put it recently in a social media post directed at Justin Trudeau, ‘Girl, you’re not the governor of Canada anymore, so doesn’t matter what you say.’ According to many of my contacts in Moscow, the statement was so emblematic of the emerging global order that it might as well be considered its new slogan.

There is an interesting Wikipedia page about “Putinisation, a term popularised by Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament, is a perceived movement away from liberal democracy in certain Eastern European countries in imitation of the regime of Vladimir Putin in Russia. The process of reforming from an authoritarian rule to a liberal democracy is known as deputinisation.”

As Heather Cox Richardson noted: “On February 24, 2025, the U.S. delegation to the United Nations voted against a resolution condemning Russia for its aggression in Ukraine and calling for it to end its occupation. That is, the U.S. voted against a resolution that reiterated one of the founding principles of the United Nations itself: that one nation must not invade another.” [Emphasis mine.]

Whether FOTUS is Krasnov, owned by the Russians, or is merely a fellow traveler, the effect is the same: a danger to American democracy. The US is definitely in Putinization mode.