DC Shorts’ Showcase 11 is frightfully unbalanced, though most of it is also quite bland. But its opening film does offer a peek into a business model that is almost certain to be the next growth area in New York City’s notoriously bizarre child-rearing industry, while another in the middle of the pack earnestly bends a few normally implacable gender barriers of the Middle East.  The rest is unremarkable, save the second film, which adds a whole new entry to the taxonomy of were-creatures.

Kidwalker: Underemployed 20-something starts a business walking the unattended children of time-starved Upper West Side parents, forecasting what will surely emerge in real life as an actual industry that gets overhyped by The New York Times‘ Sunday Styles section.

Brookton Hollow: Hot country action between a twinkish farm boy, his pet heifer, and a naked stranger from the woods.

Still in Motion: An old man suffering from Parkinson’s disease wards off the effects with dancing.

Gear School Plug & Play: Spy Kids meets Hogwarts? Makes slightly more sense after Googling the Dark Horse Comics title of the same name, but not by much.

Tasnim: A precocious Bedouin girl shocks her family be ditching her hijab and dropping in a tent reserved exclusively for the men.

Fatum!: Multiple brushes with death are always creepier in Monty Python-style stop-motion.

Out of the Shadows: A North Korean immigrant is pulled between his demanding family and a bright independent future; you’ll be pulled between boredom and sneaking out to use the bathroom.

Buon Giorno Sayonara: An Italian man and Japanese woman, both dumped while on vacation, rebound with each other on the dreary English seaside.

Tonight at 7 p.m. at E Street Cinema.
Saturday, Sept. 17 at 7:30 p.m. at the Atlas Performing Arts Center