Film

Breakfast of Champions

Name: Breakfast of Champions
Genre: Comedy, Drama
Released: 2024
Cast: Sabrina Robinson, John R. Smith Jnr., Doc Kurzweg, Ed Molina

Comedy

An 11-minute comedy about a relentless saleswoman and a resistant bar owner locked in a pitch battle. Sharp, scrappy, built on the collision between unstoppable enthusiasm and immovable apathy. Quick enough to hit hard, funny enough to stick with you. For anyone who loves character comedy in miniature—the kind that proves you don't need an hour to break something open.

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy small, sharp comedies about pushy salesmanship and the quiet stubbornness of people who run ordinary businesses, where a short runtime is all the setup it needs.

Skip it if you want big set pieces or a sprawling plot, since this is a slight, tightly confined piece that stays small in both scale and ambition.

What it asks of you: Eleven minutes, quick and light, with a brisk pace that wants your full attention for one sitting and gives you no room to drift.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Glengarry Glen Ross1992

Two hours of salespeople scrambling, bullying, scheming. The same essential engine: ambition meets resistance, and everything gets ugly in brilliantly funny ways. David Mamet at his sharpest.

But Relentlessly bleak. Every character is a shark. If you want warmth or redemption, you're in the wrong place.

Clerks1994

Two guys behind a counter, talking trash, getting interrupted. Kevin Smith finds comedy in the small collision of personality against circumstance. Same economy of scale, different angle.

But The dialogue is genuinely uneven—Smith's voice hadn't quite locked yet. Black-and-white on a shoestring budget means it looks dated now.

After Hours1985

A man's evening spirals into absurdist chaos through a series of encounters with impossible people. Scorsese's comedy is anxiety-driven slapstick. Disorienting, relentless, smaller in scope than his other work but punch-for-punch funny.

But It's mean-spirited in a way that never lets up. The protagonist gets no breaks, and neither do you. Can feel exhausting rather than fun.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Breakfast of Champions

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Upstream Color2013

Both trust the audience to hold confusion and laughter simultaneously. Both prove the power of form over exposition.

Two people form a connection after being manipulated by forces neither fully understands. Plotless but propulsive, wordless but dense. Shane Carruth made something that moves like your short film does—through suggestion, precision, and formal restraint.

But It's cryptic to the point of opacity. Some viewers find this liberating; others will feel locked out. No explanation is offered, and the ending won't satisfy anyone looking for closure.

Swimming with Sharks1994

A studio executive terrorizes his assistant for ninety minutes straight. Two people, power imbalance, dialogue as a weapon. The intensity of a pitch meeting taken to its logical extreme.

But It's genuinely uncomfortable watching someone be humiliated. The humor requires you to enjoy cruelty, and that's not for everyone.

Rubber2010

A sentient tire rolls through a desert killing people. Absurdist horror-comedy that commits entirely to its premise. Proof that constraint breeds invention. Ninety minutes of 'what if this one ridiculous thing was real?'

But It's aggressively weird for the sake of it. Some will find that liberating; others will find it exhausting or just pointless.

Night and Fog1956

A 32-minute meditation on the Holocaust. Alain Resnais makes something so formally precise and emotionally devastating it redefined documentary. Smaller in scale than the weight of its subject.

But It's about genocide. This is not entertainment. Requires the right frame of mind and emotional capacity.

In a Violent Nature2024

A slasher film told from the killer's perspective as he walks through the woods. Visual storytelling with almost no dialogue. Proof that constraint and a single point of view can remake a genre.

But It's graphic and bleak. If gore bothers you, this will bother you. The lack of traditional plot structure means it's less cathartic than scary.

The Twentieth Century2019

A portrait of a young William Lyon Mackenzie King through surreal comedy and formal invention. Black-and-white, Canadian, utterly unconcerned with your expectations. Small budget, enormous personality.

But It's deliberately alienating. You're not supposed to feel comfortable. Knowledge of Canadian history helps, but the strangeness is the point, and that's enough.

Nights and Weekends2008

Both are about the friction between people who want different things, told with economy and precision. Both make something sharp from constraint.

A relationship between two people conducted mostly offscreen, documented through phone calls and fragments. Greta Gerwig and Joe Swanberg made something intimate and formal from almost nothing. About presence and absence, distance and connection.

But There is almost no plot. It's 84 minutes of two people talking on the phone and being together in rooms. If you need external incident, you'll be bored.

Love, Death & Robots2019

Both understand that constraints breed innovation. Both ask: what's the least time you need to tell a story that sticks?

An anthology series where each episode is wildly different in style, tone, and genre. Some are five minutes. Some are comedies about mundane things that twist into horror. Proves that short form can contain entire worlds.

But The quality is genuinely uneven—some episodes are brilliant, others land flat. You're committing to mining for gold. Also: it's often graphic, violent, or sexually explicit.