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One Rat Short (2006, Alex Weil)
One Rat Short is a story of chance and star-crossed lovers. It’s also the perfect example of good realistic CG animation. Director Weil and his animators revel in their medium and utilize it to the...
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Ditching School to Whistle (2012, Ien Chi)
Ditching School to Whistle has some of the general problems of a documentary short subject, especially one about a quirky topic. Director–and film student–Chi recounts his adventure cutting school to...
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Coffee and Cigarettes II (1989, Jim Jarmusch)
Coffee and Cigarettes II stars twins Cinqué Lee and Joie Lee as twins having coffee in Memphis. Why are they in Memphis? They don’t know, but it seems like it’s Cinqué’s fault. Jarmusch le’s the twins...
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A Day with the Boys (1969, Clu Gulager)
Ah, the joys of boyhood. Watching A Day with the Boys, one quickly tires of all the outdoor activities director Gulager chronicles. The titular boys have no names and no dialogue–Boys is entirely...
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It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown (1966, Bill Melendez)
“It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown” is near perfect. Director Melendez and writer Charles M. Schulz create this beautiful little experience. The special’s excellence is in its structure. “Pumpkin”...
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Stardust (2013, Mischa Rozema)
There’s a very personal story for director Rozema behind Stardust but I’m going to avoid it for now. To understand the film without that backstory, one either needs to be a NASA enthusiast or a Star...
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The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy (1915, Willis O’Brien)
Until the Missing Link shows up, The Dinosaur and the Missing Link is strangely realistic. Director O’Brien’s stop motion creations–he always uses long shot–seem like actors, like any other silent with...
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How to Bridge a Gorge (1942, Ray Harryhausen)
How to Bridge a Gorge isn’t just an instructional video about how to, you know, bridge a gorge… it’s Ray Harryhausen showing off the possibilities for what the short calls “three dimensional...
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Debutante (1998, Mollie Jones)
Debutante isn’t perfect. There’s some awesome sound design, but director (and editor) Jones pushes it a little to carry over into other scenes. It works a little bit, but not always. So it isn’t...
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Animal Love (2011, Mollie Jones)
Animal Love is a future story. Selma Blair and Jeremy Davies meet through an anonymous hookup service–writer-director Jones implies most of the ground situation, with ads standing in for an explanation...
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Leviathan Ages (2013, Jon Yeo)
Leviathan Ages is sort of performance piece as short, CG-filled film. Director Yeo juxtaposes the narration–presumably delivered by the film’s only apparent character, an octopus outfitted in steam...
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Windows (1975, Peter Greenaway)
Windows is exquisite. The short is a number of shots in a house, always out a window (hence the title), while pleasant harpsichord music plays. The music fits in later; Greenaway makes an exceptional...
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Killer-Dog (1936, Jacques Tourneur)
Killer-Dog is the story of a dog on trial. Really. It’s a courtroom short concerning a farm dog accused of being a sheep killer. Tourneur and producer Pete Smith take a while to get to that detail...
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Record/Play (2012, Jesse Atlas)
Record/Play is an awesome little short. Director Atlas–along with his co-writer, Aaron Wolfe–does something rather amazing. He starts with fetishizing old cassettes. The unnamed protagonist, played by...
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Red’s Dream (1987, John Lasseter)
Red’s Dream sure is depressing. It’s wonderfully depressing, actually, since the second act is so profoundly upsetting one almost hopes for the happy ending. The short is only four minutes, so I think...
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Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness (2013, Brian Rosenthal)
From the opening scene–a young couple in a parking garage on the run from zombies–Marvel Zombies vs. Army of Darkness is obviously well made. Rosenthal’s direction ably toggles between humor and gore,...
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Beauty (2014, Rino Stefano Tagliafierro)
In Beauty, director Tagliafierro takes classical paintings and makes them move through computer graphics and 3D modeling. He starts slow, with landscapes–moving through them, bringing lakes to life,...
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Kubrick // One-Point Perspective (2012, kogonada)
In a couple minutes–less, actually–kogonada takes the films of Stanley Kubrick and one of their shared elements, the titular One Point Perspective, and runs a bunch of them together. The short is of...
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All Hail the King (2014, Drew Pearce)
It's too bad All Hail the King wasn't the epilogue to Iron Man 3. It's a continuation of Ben Kingsley's story from that film and it's the best thing out of Marvel. At fourteen minutes. Writer-director...
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Troops (1997, Kevin Rubio)
Troops is an awesome "Cops" parody set in the Star Wars universe, specifically during the events of the original movie on Tatooine. The feel of short makes it work, with writer-director Rubio hitting...
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