Tibor Szakaly’s Nougat started the show off right. Funny, sadistic, and dark, Nougat will have you laughing and cheering.

Matthew Ehler’s Lunch has one joke, kind of funny, but not really, and made me want to gag when he drank love butter.

Terry Rietta’s Crank Calls made a 10-minute short from a 5-minute idea. Funny in a sadistic way, but the unlikable hero soured the payoff for me.

Morto, The Magician, written by Steve Martin and directed by Conrad Vernon, continues the sadism theme with an animated (and silent) Martin in the incompetent title role. Cruel, bloody, funny.

Brett Froomer’s A Stoner’s Life: Huh? What? Oh, forget it.

Glaadiator, by Luka Pecel, valiantly threatens to be hilarious, with great locations, props, and costumes, but fails to be wacky or campy enough to more than tease the funny bone.

I was warned to walk out of Todd Rohal’s Hillbilly Robot and stay out for all of its 20 minutes to prevent mental anguish from ruining the rest of my night. I saw the last five minutes and wished I hadn’t.

Jonah Kaplan’s Interview With Spike Jonze didn’t work either way for me. If real, then pathetically depressing. If mock, then utterly pointless. Foibles with celebrities do not humor make.

Wayne Coyne’s Christmas on Mars seems to be a behind-the-scenes look at a truly terrible upcoming sci-fi film by The Flaming Lips. Neither inspiring nor funny, it fails to get by on weirdness alone.

Woman throws fits while boyfriend copes incompetently. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you David Baer’s Never Date an Actress: A bit predictable, but otherwise forgettable.

And finally, Bryant Jackson’s Jackie Pepper. Funny and flashy, yet it left me wanting more, especially a more satisfying ending. Even a mockumentary short needs a story arc.

Disappointingly weak program, remarkable only for three programs: Profiles In Science, Wes Kim’s wickedly funny film about a pioneer in stop-motion photography, and The Hunger Artist, a long, beautifully melancholy presentation of a Kafka story.

The third worthy short was Vessel Wrestling, a story of food and sex rendered in clay. Here, as in Jan Svankmajer’s Dialogue, the man and woman melt into each other’s embrace. One of the best movie titles ever, I think was Eat Drink Man Woman. It covers all the basics (well, for 90 percent of us), and those were the words running through my mind during Lisa Yu’s highly erotic 13-minute animation.