If you have some free time, watch this 20 minute dive into why Stanley Kubrick was such a master filmmaker. If you don’t have some free time, make some. Channel Criswell’s look into the cinematic experience of Stanley Kubrick is so well done and so well researched that it’s absolutely worth checking out.

Welcome to the first edition of the Sploid Short Film Festival, a celebration of great storytelling and awesome eye candy. We will select the best short films of 2015 in the next five months leading to a November award ceremony at Gawker Media’s theater on Fifth Avenue in New York.

In Andrée Wallin’s short film State Zero, you know things are going to hit the fan and that the mission will go south but you don’t know when. The world Wallin creates is mysteriously dead and the fear in the characters is real so you know it’ll happen soon, you just have to enjoy the tense ride until it’s done.

Being in a relationship is hard. It doesn’t matter if it’s brand new or long term or just casual or really serious, trying to balance and figure out what two very different people want is so impossible that it’s remarkable that it ever works out. This short by Sam Boyd starring Dakota Johnson shows how two couples are…

Jonas Odell asked four different people about their first time having sex and then animated their stories in this wonderfully intimate short film. Some of the stories can get funny and familiar, other are touching and enlightening while another unfortunately is really sad. But even though the stories all very…

When a film sends a robot back into time to kill a baby, it's always going to bring back memories of the Terminator movies. But this short, Future Hero by Ramin Serry, is so much sillier and goofier and weirder that you almost forget about Ahnold. It's about a lazy dad and his future, time traveling son battling a…

I don't even know how to describe this weird music video directed by Mattew Lessener. All I can say is that it features dolphins, go-go dancers, and makes no sense at all. Just watch it because it's hilarious.

This great short film—written and directed by Ray Wong—tells the story of a young couple that one day finds out there is a hole in their backyard with awesome powers: It duplicates any organic life that falls into it. That uncanny discovery ends up affecting their life and, of course, their relationship.

Say it with me: awwwww. In a story that's a little like the first hour of Wall-E, this short film, Artoo In Love by Evan Atherton, tells a cute love story of R2-D2 and a blue mailbox. R2 starts holding picnics with it, zaps away people who want to mail things and holds an umbrella over its head when it rains.

You've done this. I've done this. We've all done this before. Daniel Koren completely nails the hilarious truth about using the microwave late at night and how our initial goodwill for silence is negated by our stupidity and desire for hot food. We all start out as a do good superhero and end up as his goofy klutz…

Watch this. Now. TIE Fighter is a short animation by Paul Johnson that shows a bit of Star Wars from the perspective of the Empire. It's done in the style of anime from the 80's and shows an aerial fight scene between TIE fighters and X-wings and is pretty much so awesome that Disney should make this an entire…

Take a big bowl. Add one cup of The Matrix, two table spoons of Inception, and a few drops of District 9 essence. Whisk it up until even and you'll get Sundays: A proof-of-concept short film directed by Mischa Rozema that, hopefully, will soon be turned into a feature.

Sometimes life—and love—seems to pass before your eyes at the speed of light. One day, you wake up and realize that the person you've been living with for years has changed so much that they've almost become a stranger. Head Over Heels is an Oscar nominated stop-motion film by Timothy Reckart that perfectly depicts…

Sequence—a great short film by Spanish director Carles Torrens—starts with a guy waking up one day. The girl he loves hates him because she had a terrible nightmare where he was doing something utterly horrible. They argue, he leaves to work, and finds out the whole world had that exact same dream and hates him too.

Jack Tew and Sorcha Anglim came up with such an awesomely creative way to tell a love story and one that makes so much sense: From the sole perspective of the bedroom. The short, Me & You, is filmed completely from the ceiling of the room, giving you a bird's eye view of the entire relationship, from start to finish.

Californian director Justin Lutsky makes fun of movie's action heroes in this hilarious short film that is almost like a check list of all the clichés in the genre.

My first thought when I started to see Danny and the Wild Bunch—a short live action and animation film by Robert Rugan—was: "Is this some dumb Pixar imitation." I'm glad I kept watching, because I love when sugar, spice, and everything nice goes to hell.

I don't know what Italian animators Salvatore Murgia and Dario Imbrogno mean by this: "OTTO is a video created with the intention to talk in a metaphorical and abstract way about the natural circle of events, which often switches the rules of the characters involved." But I know