The Lord of All Future Space & Time (23:09)
Chris Paul Russell; IMDb; official site; YouTube

This is kind of science fiction and kind of comedy and kind of a western. The comedy aspect is pretty dry, coming mostly from the narration and the absurdity of everything that happens, and the way it's explained. The story jumps around in time, sometimes by a little bit, and sometimes by a lot. It's mostly set in the Old West, and begins as a duffle bag from the future falls out of the sky. Nearby, a man named Dyson Wheeler was being forced to dig a grave for himself and his wife, Rachel, who had been murdered by a man named Frank Beatty, who owned everything in town, and was jealous of Dyson for marrying Rachel. The cowboy who had a gun trained on Dyson as he dug, Dumb Nate, was distracted by the falling duffle bag, which gave Dyson the opportunity to knock him out with his shovel.

All this and so much more is narrated by someone who lives in a future that had been created by Dyson's actions, which is only one of many possible futures, but it's the one future that matters to those who live in it (and I suppose, to anyone watching the short film). I don't want to give too much more away about the plot, but while Dyson is considered the titular Lord, all he really does is get revenge for Rachel's murder (after looking in the duffle bag), then goes on with his life as normal, I guess. What really matters is the future lineages that were snuffed out when Dyson killed certain people, and one new lineage that was created because of Dumb Nate's death.

More duffle bags would fall in the same spot, but they wouldn’t be discovered until much later. I won’t spoil by whom, or what ultimately was done with them, except to say that a time loop was eventually created. (I suppose you might call it a sort of predestination paradox.) Anyway… yeah, the whole story is just really… something. I don’t know what to tell you, except that I liked the film a hell of a lot. I liked absolutely everything about it. It’s hard for me to explain why it’s so great, you just kind of have to watch it for yourself, to understand. I mean, if you enjoy absurdist time travel stories with a clever framework, an inventive take on how both time travel and storytelling actually work, and drily humorous narration, then I’m pretty sure you’ll like this film.