A few things that are getting tiresome: '80s nostalgia, Adam Sandler comedies, and movies where New York is under attack. So when the trailer for the new movie Pixels went online last week, the reaction online was so-so. The premise? A time capsule was sent into space in 1982 full of arcade games. Aliens misinterpreted it as a message of war. So now they're attacking us with Pac Man, Donkey Kong, and Space Invaders.

But it turns out Pixels is adapted from a short film by French filmmaker Patrick Jean, who works at the Parisian visual effects studio One More. Pixels was his first solo project and it gained a million views in the first 24 hours after it went online. While the Hollywood version feels gimmicky, the short film is mysterious. The pixels simply emerge from a broken old TV set by the side of the road. There's no dialogue, and no happy ending. It's kind of mesmerizing. 

After the success of Pixels, Jean was flooded with offers from Hollywood to adapt it into a feature. More recently, he's been working on other shorts. His latest is Motorville, where Los Angeles is embodied by an oil-starved Google Maps monster. For a Frenchman who is so keen on American iconography, it's a little odd that he makes one big mistake -- he places New York City off the coast of Virginia. But at least this time the monster doesn't destroy it.