RNG '25 | You're Taking Too Long, Tarantino's 10th, The Weed that Holds the Torch, One of These Things

It's the most wonderful time of the year: Run N Gun season! The birds are chirping, the Red Truck lagers are flowing, and Vancouver filmmakers are out shooting shorts. The rules of this festival are simple: Filmmakers have one weekend to film a short in the hopes of winning the Best Film award. There are certain criteria to follow, like this year's included the theme of time and including the number 10 somewhere within the film. These filmmakers showed out, with tons of creative ideas and technical prowess.

The main event on Saturday night was nothing short of amazing. The Orpheum was full of Vancouver's most eclectic crowd, and the fans were making plenty of noise for these highly creative productions.

You're Taking Too Long (by MuckyMoo)

You're Taking Too Long felt like two movies in one, like The Godfather II, only truncated to four-and-a-half minutes.

It starts with Gator Freeway, our protagonist, getting annoyed with people that take too long to say what they're going to say. So, he plays walk-off music to shut them up. I got the joke in the first example, but then the film does the same gag three more times. It felt like MuckyMoo was filling time in the under-five-minute short, which is diabolical behaviour.

Then, in the second half of this movie, Gator must train hard to improve his performance at a friendly games night. He trains with his uncle in a parking garage, in a largely physical manner for something that requires heightened mental strength.

Evidently, they're trying to make jokes. The guy jumping off the apartment balcony, which was clearly a dummy, was pretty funny, and landed very well with the Run N Gun audience. The training montage was reliant on gross-out humour, like farts, nut shots, and lots of milk. It was kind of depressing. I wanted them to try harder to find a deeper level of humour.

The short also lacked the theme of time. The story exists in time, and plays with the notion of time (as he goes to train and comes back and the games night is still going on), but it doesn't talk about time or have time as a central theme, other than that time is valuable and people shouldn't waste it by boring you.

MuckyMoo brought the surrealism and the absurdism to Run N Gun. Though they hit a lot of comedic beats, rarely did the movie make me laugh. I left wanting more.

Tarantino's 10th (by Floating Walls)

This one was a bit better. I don't think sense was what they were going for, either, but it was full of clever Tarantino references, some more obvious than others.

It also included my favourite use of the "you're going to need a bigger..." line, which was one of the criteria to include in this year's films. It was through a gross-out joke, but I can't deny that I lol'd.

The theme of time was there, through the guise of time travel. The idea of Tarantino going back in time to kill Weinstein is on the right side of history (and this concept got a big pop from the crowd), but why would Tarantino kill the man, as evil as he is, who made his career? The movie was implying that Tarantino was going to kill Weinstein (a bad guy) and replace him with George Lucas (a good guy).

This movie is very in the moment. Freakoffs, Zendaya's hat, baby oil; it's all here. But sometimes it feels like too many ideas at once. Like the very ending, with the Oscars footage. It works, but it made the movie feel jumpy. The TMZ angle seemed especially unnecessary. Just start with Tarantino going to Lucas's house.

It also doesn't make sense to have the TMZ guy ask why they didn't get the shoe-store freakoff, then show said freakoff and have it watermarked with the TMZ logo. That implies that TMZ did get it, right? I think short would have benefited from focusing on Tarantino's time-travelling journey and his relationship with George Lucas.

Taking away the TMZ stuff would have given the Floating Walls team a solid extra minute to add another scene to detail Tarantino's journey.

The Weed that Holds the Torch (by Betta Naught)

I actually really liked this one! The black and white immediately gave it a sense of artistry. As well as its serious tone — it wasn't trying to be funny for funny's sake. And the frog sheriff was not only cool but also, like, how did they do that? And the setting of an old church was captivating. It reminded me of Kill Bill. I wonder where they shot it.

The story was a bit murky. Something about a railroad. And something about people getting shot. But I liked that this at least tried to evoke an emotion other than gross-out humour. And the frog's monologue at the end. Don't know what he was getting at, but it sure sounded cool. And the theme of time was there too, even if why people are killed every 10 minutes is kind of not really clear. I didn't understand the frog's motivation. I suppose if he was the sheriff and the tied-up people were bad guys... But that's not entirely clear.

Despite obvious shortcomings, this movie does the most with what it has. Even the acting is surprisingly strong. And the concept is sound, even if the story doesn't make too much sense. I think it's very smart that the Betta Naught team decided to stay in a single location for this film. It gave their characters time to grow, and gave the audience time to establish an emotional resonance with them. I may not have entirely understood what the two men were fighting about, but damn if I didn't feel the tension in the room.

Overall, I think the Betta Naught team did a lot of things right with this short. The single setting, the conflict of the characters, the style, the unique curveball of a frog sheriff, all made this short memorable.

One of These Things (by Llamas with Hats)

I liked this one too. Shoutout to Carl. I liked the mask that Carl wore and that he (it?) was a silent character. The silent character is a trope I love, so it was great to see it get some representation at RNG.

This short has a typical lights-go-out-and-someone-dies plot. It's far from original, but I do love mysteries.

It also included a music theme, which was a nice touch. This song, "One of These Things" from Sesame Street, tied the whole short together.

Unfortunately, we don't get a clear resolution. It didn't make much sense; like we didn't get a reason for the killings, but given the space that they had to work with, they did what they could. I commend them for their solid efforts.

The theme of time was present, as they only had until the end of the song to figure out the killer. It wasn't the most time-centric plot, but it tied the story nicely together and gave the mystery a sense of urgency.

I like how this movie used its space, containing the film within the office, but still using the office to set up many different shots. And the story is engaging in its mystery genre. Was it Carl? The truth will never be revealed.

In the end, it was refreshing to see these exciting and, for the most part, good movies created in such a short period of time. I was worried that they would all be silly, and though humour was a definite thread through most of these movies, not all of them chose to be silly for silly's sake. Instead, the filmmakers used the opportunity to not only express themselves but also flex their creative capabilities. It was inspiring and I, for one, can't wait for the next Run N Gun!

Best of the bunch: The Weed that Holds the Torch