The Academy Awards — arguably the movie industry’s biggest event — has two categories for short films — animation and live. All 10 of the nominees this year are full of compassion, humor and meaning, with each introducing a unique element of comedy or drama to the category. Both the animated and live-action shorts are at Cornell Cinema throughout the weekend.

French Roast

A silent film about an uptight, selfish businessman who forgets his wallet at home, French Roast examines the morality of individuals of various social constructs. The policeman who is always falling asleep while on the lookout, the greedy entrepreneur who is left hopeless when broke, the sly old woman who surprisingly ends up the criminal and the dirty hobo who serves as our model of a hero all characterize various levels of human integrity and reexamine the order of principles in this corporate world.

Granny O’Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty

While Walt Disney’s version of Sleeping Beauty involves fluffy bunnies and a love story, O’Grimm’s revolves around a bitter old fairy in search of revenge. Her weapon of choice is a curse on all the other fairies and princesses that will immediately kill them as soon as they sleep.

Aurora may have had birds dress her in the morning, but that’s nothing compared to the happenings in this short: birth is literally a waterslide for babies and the fairies here double their bra size at the snap of a wrist.

The Lady and the Reaper

Primarily a long chase scene, The Lady and the Reaper follows a battle between a Grim Reaper who wishes to bring an old woman to her deceased husband and a disgustingly arrogant doctor and his voluptuous nurses who all wish to bring her back to life. The film is an interesting take on how natural death is good and structured medicine is bad.

Logorama

The most creative of these films, Logorama features a world made entirely of corporate logos, from Mr. Clean to the Pepsi globe. Ronald McDonald runs away from a group of Michelin tire men, meant to be police officers, while running into Mr. Peanut and Mr. Pringles.

The movie reveals a sad truth about our culture’s absolute immersion in advertisement and marketing.

A Matter of Loaf and Death

A Wallace and Gromit short, Loaf and Death is the cutest of the films despite being a murder mystery.

Wallace and Gromit’s bakery business is interrupted by a former “Bake-O-Lite” pin-up model, who wishes to seek revenge on the loaf industry for firing her from being its spokesperson after gaining too much weight. Her 13th (as in a baker’s dozen) and final victim is Wallace.

The Door

The Door, the most touching and tear-jerking short of all 10 shorts, has many elements the Academy usually falls for, such as unconditional love juxtaposed with terminal illness and children dying.

Shot on location in Ukraine, this moving account of a hopeless family in search of haven and tranquility after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 is the most poignant and historical of all nominated films in this category.

Instead of Abacadabra

This short is almost an amateur magician’s blooper reel, packed with the magician’s side-splitting mistakes, like stabbing his mother with a yard-long sword, and hilarious scenes of his lack of social skills, like masturbating to a wet dream he has of his new neighbor.

Kavi

Kavi follows an Indian boy who is forced into slavery along with his family due to his father’s debt. An ambitious child who wishes to play croquet like the free students, Kavi loses his parents and is left with the dilemma of continuing to remain a slave to hopefully see his family once again or a path to freedom by siding with people he doesn’t know he can trust.

Miracle Fish

This short takes a sharp turn towards thriller when a toddler’s school is overtaken by a former student, a tormented pariah who attended the same school years ago.

Miracle Fish is a powerful story that teaches the valuable moral that words and actions have greater influences than imaginable and that compassion is one of the most important virtues to have.

The New Tenants

Tenants is a hilarious sequence of events new residents face after moving into a drug trader’s apartment. The film is a riotous succession of a sticky situation the tenants get themselves into after accidentally giving their old neighbor a bag of heroin after mistaking it for a bag of flour.