One-Minute Time Machine
(5:40)This guy named James sits down on a park bench next to a woman named Regina (Erinn Hayes). James has a strange-looking black box with a big red button on it, and Regina asks what it is. We immediately learn that it's a one-minute time machine, which (as you might guess) lets James go back in time one minute whenever he pushes the button. He does this a bunch of times in the course of his conversation with Regina, each time learning a bit more about how best to proceed, in order to pick her up. (So it's kind of like Groundhog Day, except that James has complete control and could stop any time he chooses. And honestly, I think a few of the times he travels back in time were completely unnecessary.) Anyway... Regina obviously wants to be picked up, she just wants him to try harder. (For at least one of the attempts that she rebuffs, I think James would have had to be a complete douchebag to say what she wanted him to say, without knowing in advance that she wanted him to say it. So that's one of the times the time machine actually was, arguably, necessary.) Eventually, the two of them are about to go back to James's place, when they begin discussing a book Regina's reading. This leads to a brilliant plot twist which I am not going to spoil. So, there's really nothing more I can say about the plot. But it's an amazingly clever and funny short. And while the rating I've given it is quite high (in fact, it is thus far the highest I've rated any short I've reviewed), I think if I was reviewing a full-length movie that I liked this much, I would have rated it even higher than I did. (It's not a question of relative quality, it's just practically impossible for a short film to have the kind of lasting impact that a feature film can have.)