Dark Reprieve (2007)

Billy Eichner provides a hearty dose of good old fashioned romance with a lot of laughs

Everything Everywhere All at Once is exactly as the title describes, yet unexpectedly so. It's like the Matrix, but with OCD and hallucinogens, plus a heart’s dose of mother-daughter intergenerational intercultural growing pains. Review and cast.

In this short film, writer/director Nikita Hattangady focuses on Jai, a starving artist rooted in the latter category. Though unhoused, he works hard.

Considering the runtime, I expected each scene to hit harder as opposed to a series of montages and vignettes. 

“And I think to myself….what a wonderful world”. Louis Armstrong sang about this notion via his classic 1967 song, an ode to witnessing elements of our life that should be but some reminders of exactly what that concluding line of each verse indicates. Now we see our contemporary realities and, just being honest, it makes a sentiment like this seem SO overtly far away….perhaps even impossible….to accept or believe could be. It sounds harsh, but again, so much of what is occurring speaks not to beauty, but bedlam.

The film basically says she was a lost cause from the start. We don't get a sense of who Marilyn was.