Pride burnout? General malaise? We can fix that! (Well, for an hour or so….) Our 2017 sampler of upbeat short films features half a dozen bite-size mood elevators, each with a different flavor of sweet-tart goodness to lift your spirits and warm your heart.

We start in an unusual support group, where cheerful devotees addicted to a certain pop star meet, in Britney-holics Anonymous: A Spear-itual Awakening. Next, cutie-pie Nathan is being ignored at the local gay club, but when he is taken under the wing of a drag fairy godmother, he finds his self-image may be Picking Up. Haygood Eats is a bickering husband-and-wife catering team (or is it husband-and-beard?), and we get to see the hilarious outtakes of their cheesy TV ad. Meanwhile, all Guy wants is an anonymous sexy hookup in Andrew’s apartment, but the morning arrival of Andrew’s grandma turns things a bit awkward, in the charming Aussie romance Cake. Imagine Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Little Mermaid” retold by Tom of Finland, and throw in an homage to early gay erotic films, and you get the artful Rusalka. Finally, Danny DeVito directs Curmudgeons, in which a potty-mouthed octogenarian in an assisted living facility gets a big-time surprise engineered by his daughter.

— PETER L. STEIN