My favorite film that I saw last year was “Yes! Ham Goes Up An Escalator”, a one minute and seven second inspirational masterpiece created by the evil geniuses at Clickhole (makers of the viral hit “This Stick Of Butter Is Left Out At Room Temperature; You Won’t Believe What Happens Next”) in which footage of a ham going up an escalator is edited and scored into an epic story of triumph. French auteur cineaste Jean-Luc Godard actually used music very similarly, abruptly silencing the score before it has a chance to resolve, muting diegetic sounds, or just using totally incongruous music for a scene. The audience is unable to take for granted the “natural” and romantic use of score we assume of conventional movies, and our taste for the easy bourgeois payoff is left unsated. It’s a meme that sadly should have gone much further than it did.
 

 
In this same spirit of semiotic silliness, filmmaker Jim Archer manages to capture and skewer a plethora of corny and emotionally manipulative little film gimmicks, with his documentary parody trailer for Phil: A Tribute to a Man from 2015.

In Phil—who Archer describes as “a man that, to be honest, doesn’t really deserve to have a film made about him”—we hear the meaningless blathering of an inconsequential weirdo rendered into a story of somber introspection—the mundane (but hilarious) dialogue is entirely improvised.
 

 
Archer’s latest short film My Sister’s Dollhouse tears into the twee, favoring Jean-Pierre Jeunet’s “cheeky” and erratic expositional style, combined with Wes Anderson’s jejune narration, and a splash of that patented Ira Glass “aw shucks” tone of self-effacement, for a critical mass. The film itself makes no sense—it’s a mish-mash of random sentiment, pointless characters, and implied conflict, but the direction and acting are so steeped in earnest affect you know exactly how you’re supposed to respond.

Watch them all—they’re really damn funny.