Horizon Research System has changed the world.

And they’re sorry for that.

In my advertising life, I’ve had to make corporate videos — one for Snausages had a client say the most amazing phrase I’ve ever heard in my career, “You’ll use Smashmouth in the video and you’ll fucking like it!” followed by the phone getting slammed like a cartoon bad guy — and I’ve had to make apology statements, so this stock footage driven short, brought to you by Horizon Research Systems, who wants to help you achieve the life of your dreams as well as the life you deserve feels like something I’ve had to make. Like the thank you for working for us videos with Starship’s”We Built This City” or the new year kickoff video about all the new oceans ahead that started with the Titanic getting launched and we couldn’t talk any of the creative directors out of it or explain to them why it was a bad idea.

This, however, is a very good idea.

The Chattanooga Film Fest ends tomorrow at 11:59 PM EDT. To get a Last Gasp Pass for just $32, visit the official site now.

Man, this movie looks gorgeous, as an astronaut drifts through space in a ruined spaceship, sifting through both space and memory in order to better understand his place in the universe. It’s all imagery with words over top, a lament for a dead world, achieving near poetry in both visual and audio form.

Director and writer Casey T. Malone has made nearly twenty projects in the last ten years; this is the first that I have seen but I am now hunting down the rest. I also love that the character in the story is called The Space Man. His voice is from Mario Andre Alberts and it’s perfection to these ears.

You can see more of Malone’s work here.

The Chattanooga Film Fest ends tomorrow at 11:59 PM EDT. To get a Last Gasp Pass for just $32, visit the official site now.

A super soldier that in no way is just a ripoff of the Winter Soldier and a cybernetically-enhanced and mech armored bear are on a mission to save the world, but things get screwed up when their communication game isn’t up to their gun shooting and head ripping off abilities.

This was all made in Unreal Engine and looks just like a video game, but I kept waiting for the joke and…well, maybe that was the joke. It seems like it could be something great and then, well…

Maybe there’s something more?

The Chattanooga Film Fest ends tomorrow at 11:59 PM EDT. To get a Last Gasp Pass for just $32, visit the official site now.

Samuel (Brennan Urbi) is getting closer to his girlfriend Samantha (Whitney Masters). And in between all the great sex — she’s GGG for more than even he may be ready for — he wonders what she’s all about. I mean, we all have our strange little things and part of the new relationship journey is discovering and living with those quirks. So after Samuel hacks her iPhone by getting her Netflix password, he starts looking through her private photos. Mostly, it’s photos of Larry the cat (played by a cat named Captain Pancakes, who has his own IMDB, Facebook and web pages). But then he finds something else.

Director and writer Jim Vendiola has made something strange and wonderful here. This is something I’ve never had happen to me and I thought I had truly seen it all. I guess now I have. Wow — you can still be shocked.

The Chattanooga Film Fest ends tomorrow at 11:59 PM EDT. To get a Last Gasp Pass for just $32, visit the official site now.

I worked in a survey research telemarketing place before I got into advertising and it’s the kind of job that still gives me nightmares. We had a set script that we had to follow, a mysterious room had people listening to us and you didn’t even get to call the number. It would just ring, you’d ask someone if they got their sample of laundry detergent, then they would call you an asshole for ten seconds, then you’d start all over again for ten hours at a time. Often, one of those mystery people would tell you that you were off script and take over and show you how. The worst was if you made a human connection at any point, they would terminate your call. I still wake up thinking that I’m late for my job there, a room of cubicles and no windows and people plugged into headsets as blood for the machine.

Cruise, directed and written by Samuel Rudykoff, finds telemarketer after telemarketer trying to sell a cruise and failure means death.

These days, when scam likely comes up on my phone, I don’t get mad or rude to the people on the other line. I was once them. It was not fun. And, as this movie will show you, you may end up getting them shot right in the head.

The Chattanooga Film Fest ends tomorrow at 11:59 PM EDT. To get a Last Gasp Pass for just $32, visit the official site now.

Break Any Spell impacted me more than nearly any other film I’ve watched at Chattanooga, as it made me think about the deteriorating mental condition of my father and how lost we become thanks to dementia and Alzheimer’s and just plain age.

Directed by Anton Jøsef, who co-wrote the film with Lisi Purr, some will watch this and laugh at the Live Action Role Playing (LARP) that the heroine falls in love with, but it seems like that’s her tether to keep her going in the world, as her mother begins to disappear and become someone else due to early stage Alzheimer’s.

The moment when the magic spell she’s been saving and all the work of her team means nothing in the face of a big man from out of nowhere with a sword? That’s life. That’s exactly how this life feels.

This movie feels like it needs more, that it could be part of a longer tale, but for what it is now, it is supremely powerful.

The Chattanooga Film Fest ends tomorrow at 11:59 PM EDT. To get a Last Gasp Pass for just $32, visit the official site now.

Nearly 2,200 days into a drought, a man and woman meet at a benefit show and go on a date of sorts that starts well and ends up a bloody mess.

Directed, written and starring Hannah Heller, this movie has a wood panel ramshackle aesthetic that serves it well. The meet cute scene in the beginning has so many odd closeups and so much strangeness that I laughed loud and hard, rewound it and ended up laughing even harder the second time.

We better start watching this and learning how we’re all going to date in a few years when it gets dry like the world of Ursula, huh?

The Chattanooga Film Fest ends tomorrow at 11:59 PM EDT. To get a Last Gasp Pass for just $32, visit the official site now.

Written and directed by Adam Park, The Drowned stars Ellora Torchia as a woman who wakes up on an empty coastline and is followed by a glowing orb as she searches for civilization, people, food or shelter. Everything is deserted and she begins to wonder if she’s truly alone in a world that she does not understand.

This is a gorgeous short that feels like the proof of concept for something bigger. Whatever that is, I want to see it.

The Chattanooga Film Fest ends tomorrow at 11:59 PM EDT. To get a Last Gasp Pass for just $32, visit the official site now.

54 Miles to Home stealth snuck up between genre films and arty shorts to teach me about three black farming families who risked their lives in 1965 when they opened up their land to thousands of voting rights protesters during the Selma to Montgomery March.

Six decades later, the Halls, Steeles and Gardners explain exactly how much their parents and grandparents risked, as well as share stories of the rural and agricultural roots of the civil rights movement.

Protesting has been on everyone’s mind as of late, but these days, the dissent seems online and impersonal. These were people fighting for their ways of life, working as one to overcome.

This was directed by Claire Haughe, who says that she is pursuing “stories that address the intersection of environmental justice, income equality, and community.” Documentaries like this are why I love watching movies, as I learned so much about part of my country’s history that I never knew about. I urge you to do the same.

To support the preservation of these historic homes, visit the Alabama Rivers Alliance.

The Chattanooga Film Fest ends tomorrow at 11:59 PM EDT. To get a Last Gasp Pass for just $32, visit the official site now.

Directed and written by Karsten Runquist, this is a movie about how a man found a bag of dirt, became introduced to the world of dirt culture, met more dirt collectors, then nearly killed a young girl when the bag of dirt he’s desperate to give away gives her a peanut allergy. By the end, I worried that he’d developed a new addiction to plants, because my mom and wife have that.

You have to make a pretty great movie to keep my attention if it’s about bags or dirt for eleven minutes. Guess what? This one did exactly that.

Also: do not pick up lone bags of dirt.

The Chattanooga Film Fest ends tomorrow at 11:59 PM EDT. To get a Last Gasp Pass for just $32, visit the official site now.