Like Sunday, Like Rain (2015)

Leighton Meester (left) and Julian Shatkin in the
coming of age drama "Like Sunday, Like Rain."

A precocious and lonely music prodigy meets a young woman in transition in the wonderful “Like Sunday, Like Rain,” an intelligent and highly compelling coming of age tale written and directed by Frank Whaley, an actor turned independent filmmaker.

Eleanor (Leighton Meester ) is a bright but struggling 23-year-old living in New York City whose messy breakup from a mercurial rock star boyfriend (Billie Joe Armstrong, a real rock star making his tentative movie debut) causes her to lose her job and move out on her own. She lands on her feet thanks to a desperate temp agent who sends her to the posh Upper West side to work as a live-in nanny for a gifted and rich 12-year-old cello player named Reggie (bulbous-nosed Julian Shatkin, very impressive in his first film).

After the boy’s frazzled mother (Debra Messing) leaves for the summer, Eleanor is left in charge of Reggie and much of the film involves the two characters spending time together and talking. A few daily activities—long walks in the park, visits to museums, lunches in restaurants—establish a pattern that lets the acquaintance blossom into a close friendship.

During one of their talks, Eleanor reveals that she used to play the cornet, a musical connection that sets the stage for a lovely final sequence in which Whaley crosscuts between shots of the characters each playing their instrument. Ed Harcourt, an English songwriter, is credited with the film’s soundtrack, an elliptical blend of dreaminess and melancholy that seems to capture the confusion, anxiety and longing of the characters.

Of course, for Reggie, a polysyllabic whiz kid with few friends who’s never been in love, the friendship begins to feel like something more. Suddenly, he’ll do just about anything to spend more time with Eleanor, even slyly and comically worming his way out of a trip to summer camp. As his unrequited fascination with the beautiful, older stranger turns urgent and his gazes into her brown eyes grow deeper, “Like Sunday, Like Rain” becomes a sensitive and exquisite chronicle of an adolescent’s ephemeral first crush.

World of Tomorrow (2015)

Small 'World': A scene from "World of Tomorrow,"
an Academy Award nominee for best short film.

During the Oscars broadcast, the award for best short subject has for years gone neglected or ignored by audiences. It's because of their obscure nature and limited accessibility, many of these one- and two-reel gems go unseen. Not anymore, thanks to the online age of streaming services.

Vimeo and Netflix have rescued at least one title from the shadows, offering “World of Tomorrow”—a wondrous 16-minute, digitally animated short written and directed by Don Hertzfeldt—that is among this year’s nominees.

In the movie, a young girl named Emily Prime (voiced by Winona Mae) answers a frantic series of beeps and buzzes on a computer and opens up a video call. Appearing on screen is another version of her, named Emily Clone (Julia Pott), older and wiser, calling from 227 years in the future. Emily Prime is eventually beamed into Emily Clone’s world, where her future self acts as a kind of tour guide.

Part of this imaginative future features endlessly shuffling, “Metropolis”-like robots working on the moon; strange love stories involving rocks, fuel pumps and a cute alien named Simon; a magical place called the Outernet, perhaps meant as an Internet metaphor, where lonely people often get lost; and a harbinger of doom linked to a destructive meteor.

During the journey, encouraging aphorisms are dispensed, such as living life broadly, not wasting time on meaningless trivialities, and remembering to enjoy life’s precious little moments. “The thing about the present,” future Emily warns, “is that it’s only appreciated in the past.”

Echoes of Hertzfeldt’s short film anthology “It’s Such a Beautiful Day”—an astonishing, hilarious and touching slice of surreal existentialism made in 2012—ring throughout, although “World of Tomorrow” doesn’t quite live up to that film’s level of brilliant originality.

Instead, it suggests a kind of dark, science fiction parable mixed with lighthearted comedy.  “World of Tomorrow” is sometimes didactic, inscrutable and gloomy, but it’s also inventive, endearing and funny. Drawn as quaint stick-figures, the characters and animation style have a charming look that dispels heavier, more profound themes of life and death with childlike innocence.

Long a prolific purveyor of short films, Hertzfeldt’s effusive visions still pack more content into a compact running time than many full-length features. Now that the award for best short subject is no longer just an occasion to run to the fridge for a snack, “World of Tomorrow” certainly deserves a look.