Live-action shorts take long look at life

The five films nominated for the live-action short Oscar feature men seeking release from various worldly problems. Drawn from the U.S., Iceland, Britain, Germany and Ireland, the films have a northern tilt that seems to influence their outlook. All but one use humor, dark or otherwise, to leaven their protagonists’ lives of quiet desperation.

Kevin Pollak plays a dispassionate therapist in Rob Pearlstein’s lightly philosophical comedy, “Our Time Is Up.” Dr. Stern is a buttoned-down, methodical man who pacifies his long-suffering patients by telling them progress will be made “all in due time.”

When he learns that he has six months to live, the doctor is transformed and his practice revolutionized by his sudden disregard for propriety. The “American Beauty”-like transcendence comes when Stern discovers bluntness to be the best treatment.

An old Icelandic man in a raggedy sweater prepares to shutter his remote property and move to a slick retirement facility in Runar Runarsson’s bleak but moving “The Last Farm.” As Hrafn (Jon Sigurbjornsson) makes his arrangements, he holds the outside world at bay in order to carry out one final task. He hurries along the man who delivers his groceries and mail, and begs his daughter, Lilja, not to come until after the weekend.

The gray skies and hard earth of Iceland provide a fitting backdrop for Runarsson’s solemn rumination on mortality.

Art, beauty and the killing of time are the subjects of Sean Ellis’ “Cashback,” a wry take on the night shift in a British supermarket. Art student Ben (Sean Biggerstaff) and his co-workers search for any way to make the time pass more quickly. Sharon (Emilia Fox), the cashier, covers her watch and forbids herself to look at the clock. Barry (Michael Dixon) and Matt (Michael Lambourne), who work in the meat department, race their scooters down the aisles when the manager, Jenkins (Stuart Goodwin), is not around.

Ben, however, has a higher calling, deferring the tediousness of his eight-hour stint by pausing time and imagining naked the beautiful young women who frequent the store, so that he can sketch them and admire their form. Notably, he doesn’t envision any men or unattractive women this way. (A feature is in post-production.)

A young boy named Yuri (Maximilian Werner) turns up on the doorstep of Walter (Peter Jordan), a struggling Hamburg architect, just as he’s racing out the door to a job interview in Ulrike Grote’s “Ausreisser” (The Runaway). Yuri’s insistence on calling him Daddy and on Walter’s taking him to school rattles the reluctant guardian and results in his not getting the job.

Walter realizes that he knows the boy’s mother, and he begins to unravel when he can’t locate her. The affecting film takes a psychological turn as Yuri tries to warm Walter’s icy heart.

Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s film-directing debut, “Six Shooter,” contains some of the macabre types and menacing language that are in his plays, including “The Pillowman,” which had a Broadway run in 2005. Brendan Gleeson stars as Donnelly, a morose man who’s just lost his wife and boards a sparsely populated train bound for a strange conclusion.

Donnelly is immediately confronted by a rude lad (Ruaidhri Conroy) who is dying to tell him a story about a cow suffering from “trapped wind.” The gentleness of Gleeson, who is so often a figure of violence or intimidation in films such as “Gangs of New York,” absorbs the asocial bile of Conroy’s gleeful psychotic, and McDonagh’s lyrical dialogue makes it a dark joy to watch.