Everything Everywhere All At Once

New film by Daniels, Michelle Yeoh starring, etc. Just saw an advance screening and you know what?

Film of the year. I will not be taking questions at this time. There's still nine months to go and if something else matches it in terms of what it did and what it pulled off, well then, fucking great because that means something else is THAT good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZhI2NuC-Fs

Still missing a UK release date AFAIK

Okay surely at least some of the other US crew has seen it by now.

gonna see it this week i think

...and did you?

Only heard of it through this thread. Wonder where I would be able to see it.

the two Nitehawk Cinemas in Brooklyn are showing it

This thread from Mr. Jenkins is correct.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE is an absolute BLAST — a loud, craven, Evel Knievel thrill-ride of a movie with a BIG ASS HEART. The @Daniels have taken a generation’s love of ALL KINDS of cinema and folded it into the multiverse family saga we’ve all sorely needed. A THREAD👇🏿

— Barry Jenkins (@BarryJenkins) April 4, 2022

I’m keeping my fingers crossed for it to open here this weekend.

craven?

okay i see that was addressed elsewhere -- meant to type brazen.

Great interview with Ke Huy Quan

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/05/movies/ke-huy-quan-everything-everywhere.html

the two Nitehawk Cinemas in Brooklyn are showing it

J/k, I was there yesterday, although not to see one film. I will definitely go see something in that borough if my new bestie MUBI GO sends me there.

I'll check it out but I was already tired of multiverse movies right after that animated Spiderman

Thought I can see why it's a tempting device for writers

Still need to read that multiverse book mookieproof recommended.

Good thread from one of the Daniels here:

This film and all of us who worked on it are a product of our time. We learned VFX from Video Copilot. We learned shot design from Every Frame A Painting. The Martial Club (fight choreo) are youtubers with no formal training, and learned everything from watching HK movies. https://t.co/rjLCdGKedK

— Daniel Kwan (@dunkwun) April 7, 2022

All I will say about Everything Everywhere etc is: the fingers dimension stuff really, really unsettled me. (Once you see the movie you’ll understand.) And yet I’m glad I saw this.

really delightful. not really my thing totally but i can’t be mad at it

Film of the year.

I dunno, it seems like RRR is giving it a run for its money. (Haven't seen either yet.)

i saw it last night. the fingers dimension was especially powerful for me because in my pre-ILX days i used to have the most posts on radiohead/msgboard, and one of my many pseudonyms was "penisfingers". you have to forgive me for this, i was like 17 years old i think, but one of the qualities of the penisfingers character was that each of the penisfingers was 17 inches long. so, spoilers, when i saw the hot dog dimension, especially right after (i think) the scene where the guy with the pixelated genitalia, it immediately made me think that in this dimension, all of them had really, really long penisfingers, with some perhaps nearing 17 inches in length. it was like a really immature vision come to perfect life, and the part with the feet on the piano made me realize there was so much more to be found there

fingers dimension definitely my favorite part of the movie

they're not remotely similar movies trying to do the same thing but seeing memoria the night previous was prob a bad decision. reminded me i prefer movies that have a single iota of patience; this film has none. still, so fun, so who cares

i really thought the movie they were going to meta reference in-film would be The Matrix - my lips were saying it as the other words came out

i enjoyed the repeated references to “absolutely (story of a girl)”. my kind of silly a la the jennifer paige “crush” scene in the recent resident evil movie

I also think there's a lot of interesting stuff to be said about the different kinds of forces and themes and how they're reconciled, but hard to talk about without spoilers so waiting is probably in order

I saw this movie on the strength of the trailer and the amazing "Turn Down For What" music video (same directors). But I always have a problem with movies where the conflict is on a grand (multi-) universal scale. The more cosmic the stakes, the more the personal elements of the story feel trivial.

The movie deals with that tension in clever way, and gives the directors a perfect excuse to include every gag and visual idea they could ever want. But it also requires them to stuff the first half of the movie with exposition, and the second half with tedious emotional speeches. And it's all in vain, because ultimately the tension is irresolvable (for me, anyway). Either it's all too big for this one mother-daughter relationship to matter that much, or the conflict isn't as all-consuming as it's made out to be. I can't keep it all in focus.

I took that as a symbol that the personal relationships we have come to feel like the entire universe weighing heavy; sometimes a breakthrough in an individual relationship seems to affect everything else you know

I was waiting for one friend in particular's reaction to the movie -- among other things said friend's an author who also works as a translator between English and Mandarin -- and these threads say a lot worth considering:

I have never sit so still through a movie or laughed so fucking hard while watching anything alone as I did with #EverythingEverywhere, and oh my god it was a delight to understand the vast majority of the movie, I only didn’t understand the cantonese

— S. Qiouyi Lu 🧧 陸秋逸 (@sqiouyilu) April 9, 2022

I think we often try so hard to be hypermasculine because we know how much we’ve been emasculated by white supremacy, when really it’s like, the truest chinese masculinity is the one that completely exists outside white supremacist notions of masculinity and femininity https://t.co/NYWSYFsF6b

— S. Qiouyi Lu 🧧 陸秋逸 (@sqiouyilu) April 10, 2022

I still can’t believe they did this lmao like you don’t understand, traditional chinese homes typically have a courtyard where you enter through a round opening in the wall, and typically there’s a wall immediately behind the moon gate, and spaces to either side https://t.co/pWHZ9JDCRL

— S. Qiouyi Lu 🧧 陸秋逸 (@sqiouyilu) April 10, 2022

Good interview

https://gizmodo.com/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-interview-the-daniels-1848778652

This was fucking great

was amazed by the cast list when I first heard about this, and that's before I knew Santa Claus would be in it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHOSiFzcHJ8

loved this, and would love to see more of Ke Huy Quan now that he's back in the movies.

Yeah enjoyed this very much. Clever and not afraid to be silly. Interesting to see it shortly after I saw Encanto — both use fantasy-film trappings to interrogate intergenerational family trauma.

fuckabees

saw this today, what a blast. deserves to become the major movie phenomenon of the year IMHO.

saw this today & holy shit
fucking brilliant
felt so good to watch w an audience, like a feelings purge but w ecstatic joyful what the fuck is happening laughter

For darn sure. That advance showing I caught was rollicking

It was a blast even in a half-full theater. I can’t imagine seeing this for the first time on a laptop or something- wouldn’t be the same.

there were a group of teens in the back row & one of the girls was scream-laughing hysterically at almost every line & it was v funny

great movie. usually i'm turned off by the level of heavy-handed emotional manipulation that was going on in this movie but it worked for me this time. it made me cry a little and i almost never cry at movies.

saw the adult Ke Huy Quan in Finding 'Ohana a few months ago and while he basically had about sixty seconds of screen time in that I was like "damn he is super charismatic as an adult" so I'm glad he got a chance to really get a role he could sink his teeth into.

The climactic fight scene is one of the greatest things I've ever watched.

Last two posts otm

I've spent the last week looking at random things and saying "even this _________ could be kung-fu!"

everyone otm. I fucking hate papercuts though, that scene was worse for me than any horror/gore/squickfest

same. i have never squirmed so hard in my life

for a minute i thought the challenges were only going to escalate from there and the movie would turn into a mindblowing version of jackass

papercuts were fkn ~horrifying~

xp: I mean, it kind of did! Or did you not see buttplug-fu as escalation?

i have to say, i did not. that part got a little cartoony for me, but the papercut scene actually made my neck nerves tighten and i couldn't look at the screen - i can't remember the last time i could not look at a screen

plus, i have very vivid, active dreams with mostly strangers, and never remember anything. i'm sure at some point i've seen or done some buttplug-fu in my dreams, so i may be emotionally primed

first Chekhov's Buttplug in history?

depends what kind of movies you're watching i guess

lol chekhov's buttplug

Racocoonie was killing me

omg that was hysterical

Juju Chewbacca ftw

the cast is so weird: an international superstar, a former child star who hasn't been in a movie in 25 years, a new young actress, an iconic actress who hasn't done much of note lately and who is playing way out of type, an elderly character actor who has been working consistently for like 50 years, and a surprise cameo from ... jenny slate

and yes, santa claus

apparently Slate was going to have an extra scene later in the movie but they cut it, so her last moment is finding her yeeted dog

lol I yelled Biff Wiff at the screen before realizing only wee on ILX would probably be excited about him

I was sitting there going "wait WHO IS THAT" every time he was on screen until I read this thread

I also was like "wait that's the dude from Glee" during the Racocoonie scenes

so sad that Wiff didn't say "everything has sucked lately"

Biff Wiff is in this? christ, now I have to see it

Agreed overall about the cast... a reminder that things can be so much more interesting when you don't just pick a bunch of recently-popping names. I do think Jamie Lee Curtis's profile is higher than it's been in a long time - the 2018 Halloween was a very big hit (top 20 for the year in the US box office - just a few slots below Crazy Rich Asians, which obviousky did a lot for Yeoh). And then Knives Out finished pretty close to that spot in 2019... I'd guess more young people probably know her than would have 10-15 years ago.

xpost not for a LONG time mind you, but small cameo yeah, in a few different scenes.

lol somehow I completely forgot Jamie Lee Curtis was in Knives Out

i went to see this totally blind not know anything about it at all. damn i thought this it was dumb as hell! yeoh was amazing but not enough to save it from the try hard script. the fight scenes were either sped up super fast or reallllly matrix-y slow. not ONE just straight up fight scene filmed normally with awesome choreography. butt stuff and dildos was hella stupid! also goddamn its long!

(but also i aint mad this is getting hype i get it! it just not for me. i hated the farting corpse movie too.)

I really hated this, wayyyyyy too twee for me, with the plot playing out like the back cover summary of a middling immigrant tiger mom late 90s early 00s book and not really getting past the surface of whatever that means, plus the teenage huckabees what the bleep do we know philosophy bits. Some nice visual moments at times, but I wasn't expecting to have this overwhelming negative reaction the whole time. It also had a B or C tier marvel movie vibe

I had a good time sitting in a theater watching a movie

feel like short round was really terrible at acting!

loathed swiss army man but love the turn down for what video so idk where that leaves me. going to catch this soon & trying to stay optimistic despite the ominous runtime & strong "ultimate epic bacon" vibes.

oh good, didn't want to be the one to break the "shitting on an overwhelmingly well regarded movie" seal but now that it's been broken, i'm with the posts above although i liked it a bit more than them

Yeoh and Quan were fantastic, movie itself was merely okay, that i thought it wasn't nauseatingly awful with its suffocating amount of zany is a testament to the movie i suppose

Loved this so, so much.

the characterizations, emotional beats, and life lessons (or whatever) are all pretty simple and trope-y, but simple and trope-y doesn't necessarily mean "bad." and you have to simplify some things when you're dealing with a high-concept plot and so much visual stylization.

feel like short round was really terrible at acting!

I don't get this at all, I thought dude was outstanding in every scene he was in.

yeah i have more than a few qualms with this movie but he def isn't one of them

imho Quan killed it across the board, as supportive weenie, interdimensional badass, and wistful Wong Kar-Wai guy. What was terrible???

ok ok sorry to be a h8r but you asked! i would describe his line reads as "sloppy" esp when switching between alphaworld guy and sadsack tax office guy.. but yes he is very likable and im rooting for him in general as a human

and it was VERY VERY apparent when next to yeoh and hong who are very good with silly dialog

Think this thread needs more Stephanie Hsu love.

really can't see that role being Awkwafina and not her, as much as I like Awkwafina

So curious what the Awkwafina version would've been like, but she was outstanding, as was Quan

Hsu is great on Awkwafina's show. Can't wait to see this.

I hid behind my hands during the papercuts (and at a few other moments)

The Raccooncoie (or whatever) payoff blew the roof of my showing and was shockingly satisfying, I was laughing hard

Despite how much fun I had with this I may never see it again. 10% of this movie was too much for me (papercuts, creatively repurposed IRS awards, finger reality [not for sexual orientation reasons]) though the other 90% was enough to win me over.

Have to wait til June, maybe July or longer, why are we going backwards, are we going back to the days when it taken forever for films to come to UK unless its Disney?

Some good stuff

Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) is known:

- in Mainland China as 瞬息全宇宙 (In an Instant, the Entire Universe)
- in Hong Kong as 奇異女俠玩救宇宙 (Weird Woman Warrior Fucks Around and Saves the Universe)
- in Taiwan as 媽的多重宇宙 (So Fucking Many Universes) pic.twitter.com/SRkh00vQyi

— Jeremy Tiang (@JeremyTiang) April 20, 2022

I need to also point out that 媽的 literally translates to “mother’s” and that the tagline next to the release date says “more mother bodhisattva than the mother bodhisattva” and I love that daniels is translated as 棒棒丹丹 (excellent Dans), this whole poster is *chef kiss* https://t.co/Ae36BoWxxb

— S. Qiouyi Lu 🧧 陸秋逸 (@sqiouyilu) April 20, 2022

Didn't laugh much and I thought it was overall weirdly claustrophobic (dozens of universes from the perspective of office buildings and the interior of a van). But I loved this. Some of my wife's family is in "please meet my daughter and her very good friend Jane" territory and I liked how that was handled here.

People wondering what sad Awkwafina would even look like, definitely check out "The Farewell".

I also kinda resisted the set-bound "we're still at the IRS building?" quality. But I feel like it might play different for me on rewatch... knowing that's where we're staying, maybe I won't be antsy to see "more."

And thematically, I think there's something to it... seems like exactly the right place to catch yourself, at 60, wondering what the hell happened, how you ended up here talking to this functionary about the tax audit on your laundromat. To the extent that the movie's about a kind of generalized FOMO angst (which I think is only one very rich slice of its metaphors), the staggering banality of the settings works for me. I'm sure it also has to do with the $25 million budget - put the dollars into all those shots and setups, not flying around to locations and building (and trashing) more sets.

I mean that's also the thing about it, it generates a legit sf feel on the relative cheap, and it works. I really like that!

Agree. I just didn't know what I was getting into and was a bit surprised. fwiw I've seen next to no comic book movies. The performances were just great

so I have a question.

how is it that Yeoh's 'home universe' at the end is one in which she went home to do the taxes, didn't do them, and then got an extension due to her husband.. and not the one in which she assaulted the IRS agent and her "husband" assaulted a bunch of cops.

good point, as apparently she has still smashed the place up. There's a lot you're just kind of asked to roll with i figure. Like in hotdog finger land we use our feet for so much and yet interior design is unchanged

but then all conceivable combinations are happening 😳

I figured it was because she was so bad at everything and therefore could do anything , she actually healed some of the rifts between universes with her off the map jumping. Really want to watch this again.

i ended up concluding that that final exchange ISN'T about with the Evelyn we've been following all movie, but rather the one we met partway through, from the very similar but slightly different universe... the one where she leaves the IRS building peacefully after the meeting with JLC, but blows the 6 pm extension and turns all cynical at the laundromat party. in this interpretation, the "main" Evelyn's story concludes with pulling kiddo out of the bagel at the top of the stairs, and we don't see the immediate aftermath, only the ways it resonates across the other universes where Jobu Tabacky's nihilism had previously been poised to triumphant. i def don't have this all tidily worked out and might be reading it completely wrong, especially as it is a very odd way to conclude a story! but i kinda like the idea that if all the Evelyns equally matter, then it doesn't matter where we finish.

yup, i think that's right

“All Evelyns Matter”

lol definitely not what i was going for there! just trying to invoke the nihilist vs. existentialist takes on 'nothing matters' at the core of the philosophical dispute at the film's climax

something else i wanna watch for next time is the circle motif. I'm sure smarter people have already more thoroughly unpacked this, but it seems really intentional that the black bagel is formally the inverse of the lone googley eye (obvious i know, they're even similarly displayed on the forehead)... and yet both could also be derived from staring long enough at the washing machine. would be inclined to look for some more black circles next time. also seems significant that Evelyn's totem is something that actually comes from Waymond and which she rejects early on - she does have to go on a complete journey to get to where she can answer back to the void. all character arc 101 stuff but nicely done i thought. movie is overall so good at seeding things in small ways, in passing, then making a real meal out of it later.

that explanation makes sense. thanks all.

Think this thread needs more Stephanie Hsu love.

Yeah i just ADORED haute couture dripping w attitude Jobu

Film of the year.

I dunno, it seems like RRR is giving it a run for its money. (Haven't seen either yet.)

― Max Hamburgers (Eric H.), Saturday, 9 April 2022 16:34 (two weeks ago)

I've seen both twice now, and RRR beats EEAAO in terms of audacity, scope, action, comedy, emotion, songs, dance, sound mixing and kickflipped motorcycles. However, it is set in only ONE alternate universe. (They're about on par in terms of range of fighting styles.)

Saw this last night. It could easily have done everything it set out to do in 30-45 fewer minutes (there was SO MUCH switching back & forth between universes that didn’t advance the plot an iota. Still, so very worthwhile. Corny and completely surprising, manipulative and heartfelt, obvious and deep, fast-paced and drawn-out, cartoony and true: all dichotomies existing simultaneously & not needing to be resolved. The rock scene was perfectly timed to give the viewer a much-needed break. Loved how the final fight posited radical love instead of violence as the winning approach, obviously not a new concept but framing in a way that I’ve never quite seen a movie do before.

Very post-Nolan but also so many other things & not just another tediously “deep” high-concept SF philoso-venture. V much enjoyed. Might watch again (but probably not more than once).

Would have fallen HARD for this movie as a younger me & re-rented it weekly for months, I’m sure.

what is RRR?

^^

RRR was the #1 film at the global box office a few weeks ago, written and directed by S.S. Rajamouli. (My local American multiplex was showing it on three screens in Telugu, Tamil and Hindi.) It’s a joyous action epic about the emotion of platonic brotherhood, the pain of hiding one’s true self, and the eternal dichotomy of whether to overthrow the British through a violent nationwide revolt, or through direct assassination of Ray Stevenson. In a passing moment during an attempt to carry out the latter, one Brit gets whipped in the face with a leopard.

(RRR is the whole name: it was a working title for the project, which stars Rama Rao Jr and Ram Chan in a Rajamouli film; eventually they went “fuck it” and ran with it, working in a variety of semi-jokey intertitles that justify it.)

EEAAO playing in IMAX in USA this week BTW

I'm tempted to see a third time in IMAX

This was fantastic. I am 100% fine with having a trope-y love>hate story when it is done with this much heart. What stands as unique to me (in my limited cinema-vocabulary) is how they did it with so much "FUN". No room for melancholy or intellectual-vanity. It doesn't have a silly pride about its philosophical ideas (a la anything Nolan has done). What I loved the most was its ability to squeeze comedy into its most heart-felt moments (I don't care about supposed manipulation if I believe the message to be true, all cinema is propaganda). Racocoonie tragedy killed me.

I'd demur that there's room for melancholy, the sign on the room says "like Wong Kar-Wei". But yeah, this was amazing.

loved this a lot, how it managed to tell a story that was massive and small at the same time. a lot of dream/multiverse movies struggle with the limitless possibility that their premise implies, but this didn’t suffer from lack of imagination or whirring plot mechanics for their own sake (like inception, and i haven’t seen the new doc strange, but I’ll just assume that one has the same problem)

i did not expect nearly this much action, so that was a pleasant surprise, especially considering how creative the fight scenes were

also, i am 99% positive that the scene with the rocks was filmed at canyonlands in utah, which i visited very recently. so that just added to the surreality

Didn't realise RRR was on Netflix, although not in it's original language apparently :(

The actors did their own dubs, 100% of the dialogue is ADR even in Telugu, and it takes over 45 minutes before the first scene that doesn’t include at least one character speaking English (and another 20 before the second). I bet you wouldn’t notice if you didn’t know to look for it (I have not seen the Hindi tho)

Ah, cheers

I didn't love this. I probably need to see RRR shortly.

For all its charms I didn't like this movie much, found it kind of annoying and too long by ... an hour? "RRR" is definitely pretty long itself, but I enjoyed almost every ridiculous minute of it.

michelle yeoh was such a hosebag mom that she's dissolved the barriers that normally separate her daughter's metaversal existences; her daughter feels every possible infinite permutation of reality at the same time every second. and instead of this breaking the daughter's brain it has made her into a supervillain who wants to suck all of existence into a black hole of nihilism of her own creation. have i got that right?

yeah it feels almost churlish given the inventiveness and ingenuity and michelle yeoh but it felt like something wild and original had been contained and tamed

Found all the wacky shit and second-half speechifying very very grating but in the end liked this, maybe mostly for Yeoh and Quan.

like the tagline was “her real superpower was…. unconditional love” or some shit

what worked the best for me was the glimpse of other lives, the regret for paths not taken, all the wong kar-wai stuff, which is difficult to resolve, maybe impossible.. i would have liked the movie to move around in that difficult area more

So, less dumb stuff, more serious stuff?

no. there's an unresolvable difficulty about paths not taken that, when it was front and centre, was compelling. how did michelle yeoh end up in this shit universe doing thankless, backbreaking work, when she has it within her to be a star, a badass? is she going to do something about it? what about her husband? is a life with HIM worth giving up all this OTHER stuff? it can be serious or silly or both but to me it's interesting. much more so than, i dunno, figuring out how to say "i love you" to her daughter

To me there's plenty interesting here though... The Evelyn who saves the day is the one who never excelled at anything, and is so lost in the struggle to support the family in general, that she doesn't really see or hear its individual members (including Joy but also Waymond). The Joy she needs to reach is the one whose mother excelled beyond all prior human experience by pioneering dimensional travel... but saw her daughter as a tool or sacrifice in that project. And now this Evelyn has experienced all this multiversal potential of herself, but maybe because she's exactly who she is, she's able to come to some new conclusions and engage evil Joy in a way nobody else could. Idk. It's not a completely worked out reading obv.

The final 45 minutes of this, it felt like every shot in every scene was in slow motion. First time I’ve ever been tempted to watch a movie at 1.5x.

Film’s getting re-released with an extra 8 minutes of outtakes

watched this at home but would be tempted to see this in a theater now with 8 minutes of additional stuff. This movie was long but didn't feel long at all to me.

how did michelle yeoh end up in this shit universe doing thankless, backbreaking work, when she has it within her to be a star, a badass? is she going to do something about it? what about her husband? is a life with HIM worth giving up all this OTHER stuff?

There are a LOT of women out there you could put this question to. Maybe it resonates more being a woman but yeah women do give up lives of stardom and badassery because they have to be mothers. It wasnt odd to me at all!

otm that was maybe the throughlone that made the most sense lol

throughline ffs

i loved this

lol Michelle Yeoh herself stopped working for years to have a family with her husband, so obv it is worth giving up the other stuff for some people

Yeah if anything the point is that ANYONE chooses responsibility/obligation over full indulgence of their capabilities, or of stardom, in 99.9% of possible universes

Film’s getting re-released with an extra 8 minutes of outtakes

It’s still going in first run here!

Is this thread about this video?

This whole video stressed me bad. pic.twitter.com/PTBHbjenog

— Andrew Tate is a d1ck3ater (@CreamBlanco) July 28, 2022

sic i’m not sure anyone needs to mansplain “the point” of this movie to anyone else

i think that’s me Trayce is quoting there and i agree that was the most interesting theme in the movie and i kinda wish we’d had a bit more of it

is agreeing mansplaining now?

i leave that as an exercise for the reader

She's doing great across the multiverse if that's the worst version of her.

I hope The Daniels make more films with fighting in them.

this is the exact level of information you should know about this movie going into it, 13/10, excellent work airplane synopsis copywriters https://t.co/qgjILcJElx

— Ben Smith (@BenMSmith) July 30, 2022

Incidentally the extended version is being shown at the Curzon Bloomsbury in goode olde London. I was tempted to go, but it's a teeny-tiny screen:
https://i.imgur.com/29Z6z0e.jpg

I remember seeing Barry Lyndon there a few years ago and thinking "that is a teeny-tiny screen" and "I am uncomfortably close to Leonard Rossiter" and "what is tow?" and "can you shoot someone with your toe" and "did Stanley Kubrick hang out with Leonard Rossiter" and "did they go drinking" and "that's a nice-looking house".

The Prince Charles has it, presumably on a bigger screen

The airplane synopsis is directly from the Daniels if I recall correctly - it's only recently been slightly expanded on the A24 website https://a24films.com/films/everything-everywhere-all-at-once

finally watched this; liked it a lot; can't imagine that inspecting the details too closely will be worthwhile; michelle yeoh is incredible

only caveat is that initial waymond is far too weak. there's no way that guy a) wanted to leave hong kong or b) could persuade evelyn to join him in leaving

I think informational rewatches are only rewarding once or twice. If you're rewatching for feels, it never gets old.

xp Watch it again someday; even the original Waymond is far from weak. His strength is one of the great things about the film! Especially when you realize so much of his persona, while genuinely sensative and caring, is still deliberate

Saw it sometime ago but have to agree with that. It is a bit of a cliche to describe it this way but his character has that “I’m secure in who I am so I don’t need to seem tough“ kind of persona

Cosigning the bewilderment at reading Waymond as weak

tbh I can't believe how little Stephanie Hsu has been talked about here and elsewhere. Like, every moment Joy or Jobu was on the screen I was completely captivated.

I think it’s a given that all three leads in this were stellar

I liked this, although not quite as much as everyone else, maybe because I only saw it last week so am a little late to the party. Saw it in the same theater I saw the Elvis movie in, wonder what the next movie could possibly be to complete my American Trilogy.

Prey obv

Prey was initially jarring watching 18th century Comanche speaking modernly structured, 21st century styled English, but I mean this IS a Predator movie

if you want to get hardcore you can watch the Comanche dub with English subtitles

that's probably what i'm going to do honestly.

i used to be the guy that avoided the hilarious cheesy English dubs in kung fu cinema because I preferred hearing Mandarin dubs with English subtitles

Subs over dubs, always

About the rerelease, when they say “outtakes” do they mean deleted scenes edited back into the film or like… an 8-minute gag reel? Have to think the former cause how can the latter really be a draw but it’s unclear in the stuff I’ve seen about it

The latter.

Oh I can’t believe I haven’t chimed in yet to say that the score for this is a monumental achievement and Son Lux deserves every kudo that exists

Oh yeah! I was surprised and happy to see that credit.

Yes, totally agreed

I didn't mind watching the 8 minutes of bloopers after a first viewing but can't imagine that really being a draw for a second viewing.

Loved this the first time I saw it, but felt it didn't hold up as well on second viewing.

xp lol yeah I’ll wait for the dvd never

Feel like a second viewing might be a bit of a slog

it's hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that people would want to watch this a second time. but then again i was having a hard time accepting that ppl found a lot of the humor in this movie funny. you guys were really going up for that raccoon bit like 2 hours and 20 minutes into this? the butt plug thing... like......

i do think there was a good movie in here somewhere... i actually thought it might end after chapter 1, which made me think fondly of "kill bill." that would've been a great movie cut off at that point imo, but the further it developed the more it lost me & by the final 30ish minutes i was one of the ppl who was just praying for it to end.

when the credits rolled and it showed that the Russo brothers produced this, it really clicked for me as to why i was increasingly finding the movie to be grating and childish and then ultimately a non-tenable experience for me. so at least that helped

So what you're saying is

Honestly can't remember the last time a single thread made me dislike so many ilxors.

ridiculous

come on, man

the humor in this movie seems like a logical heir to zucker/abrahams/zucker filtered through a couple generations, i loved it

it is overloaded with a deeply convoluted plot and too many action sequences, clever editing and special effects - all of which already look dated as I’m watching it - but I really like that it ultimately is about a mother and daughter struggling to stay connected to each other. I like what sic said, that it was about choosing responsibility/obligation over full indulgence of capabilities or of stardom

Just saw it, not in the best setting. But it hit me the same way when I saw “Eternal Sunshine”way back when that was released, only now I’m that married person with a family. Yeah was obviously amazing, but as the movie sped toward the end I thought Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan brought out some beautiful moments of their own. Quan giving the leading man speech in the back alley of the theater was touching.

So mote it be

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/21/movies/everything-everywhere-all-at-once-oscars.html

An hour of this was enough for me. Ke Huy Quan is very good, but this is just the wrong kind of exhausting.

i liked this well enough, not really my thing. all the onscreen gags / music video style cutting reminded me of scott pilgrim.

story ultimately being about family set in a sci-fi multiverse made it feel like a children's/young adult novel, maybe something bruce coville would have written?

not sure why they needed to speak mandarin at all in this, both yeoh's and quan's are so bad.

We tried watching this yesterday and stopped after 45 minutes, don't really need a second Matrix even though the dramatic build-up had me intrigued. I'd probably have watched a bit more if alone.

Having a multiverse and a prophecy doesn't make a movie a Matrix knockoff. Not as if the Wachowskis invented that

Getting the sense that this movie has more DNF ratings than any other movie in ILX history

I gave it a Walked Out rating

An hour of this was enough for me.

Me too. At a certain point the fun wears off and it starts to feel a little bland.

the range of responses has really surprised me, we were super dialed in, devouring every scene etc. different strokes i guess.

I've watched it no fewer than 10 times this year, probably more, and I'd happily watch it again if someone who hadn't seen it came over. Easily my favorite film of the 21st century.

For context, I fucking HATE The Matrix.

The 3rd-best film of the 21st Century for me, that's how much I loved it.

The multiverse aspect of it is <1% of the interest for me. Favourite part is the relationship between the husband & wife which is almost exactly the relationship between me & my wife.

sorry bro!

for folks who just couldn't with this, how much was the hype? i cannot wrap my head around going into this cold and finding it bland!

I fucking HATE The Matrix.

I don't think I've ever known anyone who feels this strongly about it.

the Matrix is Woah-Dude-Camp, I for one am very fond of Woah-Dude-Camp, but it really rubs some people up the wrong way.

What finally prompted me to watch this was seeing some of The Daniels' pretty good choices for their upcoming film series at Lincoln Center; particularly Mister Lonely, which I saw for the first time recently and thought got a raw deal when it came out.

The great actors carry this intermittently until the pacing and the flying spaghetti monster-level writing just exhausts any goodwill with which I approached it. The sheer number of Bjork album cover versions of the cast that flash by are impressive but otherwise this doesn't even rise to the level of a Tom Robbins novel, philosophically or creatively. The part with the telepathic rocks in particular made me feel like I was browsing cards at a boutique stationary store. I had no idea before watching that the Russo Brothers, kings of paying fraudulent lip service to great auteurs, were executive producers until the end credits, but that makes sense.

I thought this was really interesting for the first twenty minutes or so and then was exhausting. I can't recommend it to anyone who would not be on board after that.

It was redemptive in the end though, which kind of made up for the chaos and incoherence of the story in between

Okay getting some Oscar noms was always going to be kinda neat if it happened...LEADING them? In double digits? Cool.

probably bcz they entered the speed force

Very happy for this film and its creators

The Daniels just made everyone of the #DGA nominated directors and the entire audience do a theatre warmup. This is a first, and a delight! #dgaawards pic.twitter.com/op3il6bts0

— Paris Barclay (@Harparbar) February 18, 2023

The backlash is nearly here.

there's been grumbling all year on the internet. probably in this thread!

Backlash, what backlash:

Between winning the top honors at the Directors Guild Awards last weekend and the Producers and Screen Actors Guild awards this weekend...

I still don't love it, but I agree that it would be an interesting Best Picture winner.

in case i wasn't already convinced that EEAAO would be one of the most fun & formally unbound Best Picture winners ever — an ecstatic nail in the coffin of the Oscar movies that have ossified Hollywood for so long — it's making all the right people utterly shit their brains out. pic.twitter.com/4GN3zFOZ0o

— david ehrlich (@davidehrlich) February 26, 2023

who is he quoting?

Jeff Wells

All I know about this film is that my sister hated it and I mean HATED it.

Where would the movie realm be right now if Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert had never dreamt and maneuvered their way into a certain A24 orbit that has strangely transformed itself into a Millennial consciousness brand that is darkening many more brows than just my own?

Hard to say but boy, my heart is not only bleeding right now but staining the wood floors and certainly the carpets. And for some reason a lyric from a mediocre Jimmy Webb song is filling my head…”I don’t think that I can take it ‘cause it took so long to bake it, and we’ll never have that recipe again.” The bad guys are winning!

There are few events presently unfolding on the global stage that deliver more in the way of moral clarity than Ukrainians fighting tooth and nail against the rank evil of Vladimir Putin. If you can’t or won’t put aside peripheral matters and grasp which side is with the angels in this conflict, I don’t know what to say to you. Except that a certain moral fiber or awareness is clearly missing deep down — that your sense of humanity is minus an essential component.

Either you understand that Everything Everywhere All At Once represents not just an aesthetic pestilence but a terrible forced banality…a film that’s a good deal less about verse-jumping and spiritual dreamscapes and a lot more about pulp Marvelism and the relentless drumbeat of identity politics (Asian + queer), or you don’t. Or you do get this and you don’t care, in which case we’re all fucked anyway.

We all understand, sadly, that a certain either-or mindset, born of a certain malevolent social-media logic, has settled into award-season consciousness.

Last year at this time a fundamental shift of allegiance among the Academy middle-grounders happened…a moment when it became clear that a weird 1920s western about repressed queer desire and a refusal to bathe and an anthrax murder scenario just couldn’t be the Best Picture standard bearer, and that a generally decent but underwhelming family fable about singing, destiny and deafness had to replace it…my God, what a totally myopic, solitary confinement prison–cell choice that was!

But it happened, sadly, and what were we left with at the end? Nothing…nothing but a feeling of being surrounded and enveloped by mediocre minds (i.e., the degraded identity-politics principles that flooded the delta when SAG became SAG-AFTRA).

And this year and right now, we’re back in that same dank prison cell with a choice between a multiversian IRS audit-meets-queer politics Marvel film that has stymied and suffocated people of taste and perspective in every corner of the globe and certainly among the storied 45-plus community…a choice between a film by the makers of a metaphysical fart movie called Swiss Army Man and a smart, crafty, populist-pleasure machine that saved the film industry’s ass (in the view of no less a personage than Steven Spielberg).

God help us but the SAG-AFTRA philistines have apparently decided to choose, for the fifth time since the 2017 Oscar ceremony, identity politics symbolism over other considerations…again. Moonlight, Parasite, Nomadland, CODA, EEAAO.

Talk about The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant or The Bitter Tea of General Yen. Or, you know, anything using the word bitter.

Friendo: An Academy voting member passed this along: “One could state with absolute clarity that this year’s Oscar race is a spiritual tug–of–war for the Academy’s soul. Choose quality or choose woke. And it looks like the proverbial ‘they’ are going to choose No Academy for Older White Men and Their Wives.

“Henceforth we will be swimming in a sea of mediocrities at the Oscars from now on. The Salieris of the film world have now officially taken over. Let the virtue-signaling continue. It’s appalling. I can’t believe they’re going to give a BP Oscar to these pseudo-artiste clowns who made a film about a farting corpse. Jesus wept.”

And that friend’s name…was Mel Gibson. I’m Paul Harvey.

I honestly can’t tell what the other film Wells is positing as an alternate choice. Top Gun: Maverick? Avatar 2?

Assumed it was Spielberg's?

Nah, the Spielberg reference is clearly not to his own film. (And _The Fablemans_ wasn’t a massive blockbuster.)

Jeffrey Wells=Movie Lefsetz

Although maybe I misread the brackets bit as I'm guessing he's quoting Spielberg talking about another film? xp

It's TG Maverick:

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/culture/article/steven-spielberg-tom-cruise-saved-hollywood

Jeffrey Wells=Movie Lefsetz

Oh yeah he’s terrible. I honestly expected that Ukraine paragraph to be about how poor Vlad is just misunderstood

wow that whole thing is many magnitudes worse than what ehrlich quoted. i am not tuned in enough to know much about wells but sounds like this is basically his m.o.

putin's name in gossip-rag bold like he's rumored to be in talks to helm something is v funny

This was fine. Not my thing but totally fine, in the end. Stephanie Hsu not too surprisingly the MVP for me.

And Jeffrey Wells and Sasha Stone are in some kind of race to the bottom rn

Wells has been sort of an anti-woke wannabe edgelord reactionary for decades at this point.

This movie is Not My Thing x 10. It's like a movie made to impress people that have not seen a movie for 20 years. Though of course people legit love it, so who am I to say, etc.

Don't miss James Hong's SAG awards acceptance speech

FOUND IT. Here is #JamesHong's full #SAGAwards speech. he was all LET ME DO MY TIGHT 5! this guy knows! part 1...@allatoncemovie pic.twitter.com/rs6xgws7eB

— Jenny Yang (@jennyyangtv) February 27, 2023

Now that rules.

Yeah, that was fun. His list of credits is insane--IMDB lists 456. The Clark Gable movie he mentioned as his first role was Soldier of Fortune (1955). The same year, he was in Blood Alley with John Wayne and Lauren Bacall.

#tbt to one of my very first roles, acting with Lauren Bacall in "Blood Alley" in 1955 pic.twitter.com/lCyeibGdfz

— James Hong (@IAmJamesHong) August 24, 2017

Well worth a watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2DJjaB-xuY

Good profile I thought

https://www.vulture.com/article/daniels-daniel-kwan-daniel-scheinert-oscars-everything-everywhere-all-at-once.html

And this was fun too.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2023/02/28/jamie-lee-curtis-oscar-nomination/

Still think Hsu should win it but I won’t be surprised or disappointed if it’s Jamie Lee.

Both my editor and I are absolutely perplexed how Hsu is the least likely of the four to actually win an Oscar when she's so clearly the MVP

bc acting oscars often reward lifetime achievement instead of actually good performances?

dunno seems pretty obvious to me

Except when they don't (e.g. Lauren Bacall, Sylvester Stallone, Ruby Dee, Mickey Rourke).

that nepo baby article really broke JLC's brain. every time she talks now she opens with NOT BAD FOR A NEPO BABY!!! lol

Hahah this is VERY true.

Hsu deserves it, but at least she's young and she'll have more chances. Also, counting her as a "supporting" actress is a bit of an award shenanigan anyway

Hsu is memorable, but Jamie Lee Curtis has been a film icon for my entire adult life, with many memorable roles starting with Halloween, and at age 64 this is her first nomination

I love Jamie Lee Curtis, and she's been an enjoyable part of some fabulous films, but I can't think of a single one of them that would be award worthy. Maybe A Fish Called Wanda, but would you have moved her in ahead of any Best Actress nominee from the class of 88? I wouldn't.

Deirdre in EEAAO was a good role. Joy/Jobu in EEAAO was a STUNNING role. My heart is with Stephanie Hsu, even though she'll have more chances in the future for her work to get noticed. (Also, really liked Kerry Condon, but I'd be surprised if she has an Oscar chance, BAFTA award notwithstanding.)

Freaky Friday maybe. I would've nominated her for Wanda.

would you have moved her in ahead of any Best Actress nominee from the class of 88?

i haven't seen anna and the cher and holly hunter performances are both v good but sure i'd be happy to sub in JLC's flawlessly timed screwball for glenn close as a rubber monster or meryl streep being Utterly Transformed

oh wait that's not how years work

on nepotism - love Lena Horne's comment during her '81 one woman show Lady & Her Music re allegations that she was only cast as Glinda the Good Witch in The Wiz, cos her son-in law Sydney Lumet was directing it "nepotism, nepotism, nepotism - if you got it - use it"

its how world works - everyone uses whatever links they have to get ahead (and obv lena horne wasn't cast in The Wiz just coz of her son-in-law) but there are so many more serious issues for ppl to think about (esp in Hollywood)

of course deeply amused by all the people falling over themselves denying they had no easy access/step-up - just acknowledge it

that said there is no excuse for, say, brooklyn beckham

oh wait that's not how years work

― difficult listening hour, Wednesday, March 1, 2023 4:03 PM bookmarkflaglink

clicked forward to the 1989 oscars to start all over again and imagine my surprise there at meeting glenn close and meryl streep

she'll have more chances in the future for her work to get noticed

I would've nominated her for Wanda.

And it's worth remembering Kline got his Oscar for supporting actor there.

Anyway less than a week to go until it hopefully wins everything (I can dream), and this is the most detailed interview with Hsu I've read yet:

https://ew.com/movies/stephanie-hsu-profile-everything-everywhere-all-at-once/

The Daniels did the opening for tonight's Colbert

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23sRimLcTBk

awesome

Still need to read that multiverse book mookieproof recommended.

― Came Here to Roll the Microscope (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, April 5, 2022 1:38 PM (eleven months ago) bookmarkflaglink

which book Mookie?

i'm not really into this movie, representation politics can be kinda ridiculous, and i love JLC, but if JLC ends up being the only one to win from a movie with a predominantly asian/asian-american cast, that will not be a good look.

Good thing then that won't happen as Ke Huy Quan is as close to a lock as anything this year.

KHQ seems like a lock, and Yeoh has a decent chance. The movie is a enough of a success story and has given such visibility to the cast/crew/directors that even JLC wins a legacy Oscar (essentially) it's NBD

I was kind of surprised that the "directors who worked up from doing creative music videos" to movie pipeline ended up making a film so similar to the Spike Jonze/Michel Gondry era of twenty years ago

but it was a pleasant surprise

Roll on Sunday. Meantime:

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2023-03-10/queer-movies-parents-family-coming-out-identity-sexuality

As I said on FB: I can sense that for those for whom the film didn't work it may seem that these kinds of pieces read as trying to force you into liking it, but I've seen plenty like this and heard similar and sometimes a piece of popular art just hits harder.

I tried to watch this with my most respected movie friend this past summer, and when the first action sequence at the IRS office came around he wanted me to turn it off.

I then watched it by myself and was somewhat put off by all of the chaos and cheesy effects, but saw that there was a story behind it

Watched it again recently and the story became much more clear and poignant. The movie is still a TikTok/Youtube/video game obfuscating mess, but I can now see how it is groundbreaking and has a very distinct aesthetic point of view

:-)

Ya. Glad this did well.

<3

lol I'd like to see this movie inspire a whole bunch of shitty knockoffs a la "Pulp Fiction." Imitators, start your engines! (Not you, OGs Spike Jonze/Michel Gondry, just keep doing whatever it is you are up to).

Get Morty

Wrong supporting actress won

Good title for what's happening now.

https://t.co/Y7WfQgfoU6 pic.twitter.com/VwRHMFWlsj

— Mr. Bedtime (@InternetHippo) March 13, 2023

I liked this piece by Justin Chang, who's ambivalent about the movie but happy for its success: https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/awards/story/2023-03-12/oscars-2023-everything-everywhere-all-at-once-best-picture

Yeah I liked that as well. Obviously I feel much differently about the film but that’s a thoughtful disagreement there instead of whatever screed Wells has.

Good piece, sticks the landing with a quality Dad-pun. In theory I like the idea that more than prestige Oscar-bait films can win best picture; they don't need to because people can already tell they're prestigious. So while I can't imagine ever seeing this movie a second time and struggled with it the first, I like the idea of it winning more than I like the movie itself. Even if somewhere in the multiverse murk I feel it moves us one step closer to Pomplamoose winning an Oscar.

Wrong supporting actress won

I agree with this on paper but ... seeing Hsu unabashedly cheering for JLC's victory was a nice consolation

Even if somewhere in the multiverse murk I feel it moves us one step closer to Pomplamoose winning an Oscar.

LOL, they're totally going to EGOT now

Meantime most of the core cast is in this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAeemjfVvM0

speaking of fwiw I've seen next to no comic book movies.

Good thread

I liked EEAAO a lot, think it’s the best action comedy since Hot Fuzz etc. but I also think it’s an interesting adaptation of the fantasy of fixing our problems by exploiting another land that we see in things like The Tempest and earlier 20th c sci fi.

— Isaac Butler (he/him) (@parabasis) March 13, 2023

I was hoping that someone would have thanked Kathleen Malone of the 2005 Cincinnati IRS office.

_Still need to read that multiverse book mookieproof recommended.

― Came Here to Roll the Microscope (James Redd and the Blecchs), Tuesday, April 5, 2022 1:38 PM (eleven months ago) bookmarkflaglink_


which book Mookie?