'Everything Everywhere All At Once,' 'Infinite Storm,' Mothering Sunday' offer needed fresh content and choice at the specialty box office.
Elsewhere in specialty, Sadhvi Siddhali Shree’s documentary Surviving Sex Trafficking is the story of survivors, their journey, their trauma, their escape, and how they continue to live their everyday lives. Topside from Vertical Entertainment, written and directed by Celine Held and Logan George in their feature directorial debut. She might look and sound the same, but Angela’s behavior has taken a dark turn, as if she has been replaced by a malevolent force. On her way down, she encounters a lone, stranded man clad only in shorts and a windbreaker and struggles to get them both down the mountain before nightfall arrives and they succumb to the storm. That includes her uncommunicative, elusive son Max in Hong Kong, where ongoing pro-democracy protest prevent him from returning to Germany. Anke travels to Hong Kong to find him. The film by Erin Vassilopoulos premiered at Sundance last year with some splash for its identical twin stars. She has a rare chance to spend the time with her secret lover (Josh O’Connor), the aristocratic boy from the manor house nearby who is engaged to be married to someone else. When she returns home without explanation the following evening, it becomes clear to Char and her grandmother, Rita, that something is amiss. He and others have noted week after week that no specialty recovery is really possible in any case without the consistent flow of new content that we’re just starting to see. Shree directed and produced the film, with Sadhvi Anubhuti co-producing. Based on a true story, Naomi Watts is Pam Bales, a New Hampshire nurse, mother and experienced climber ascending Mount Washington who turns back before she reaches the summit as a huge blizzard approaches. With Hazel Doupe as Char, Carolyn Bracken as her mother Angela. It’s the week before Halloween and Char’s mom, Angela, inexplicably disappears with her abandoned car all that remains.
When we first meet harried, unlikely, and unwilling hero Evelyn Wang (played by the inimitable Michelle Yeoh), she is literally buried under the weight of her ...
She is a temptingly nihilistic antihero, with her seductive ethos of “nothing matters.” Joy and Jobu guide the main tension of the film: what to do with all this chaos. But his strength is in his kindness, which persists in his alternate selves, whether he’s an agent of the Alphaverse or the debonair leading man in a universe that recalls Wong Kar-wai’s romantic In the Mood for Love. But Joy plays in the murkiness of the unknown: She can’t articulate how she feels beyond the fact that she’s tired and hurting and she succumbs to her life’s private chaos. “Her mind experiences every world, every possibility, at the same time,” and she is scouring the multiverse looking for the one Evelyn, leaving a trail of dead Evelyns in her wake. Everything Everywhere All at Once is deeply disorienting (though not, as some critics have claimed, because it’s multilingual), but the existential chaos is cathartic. Everything Everywhere All at Once flits between universes quickly, challenging audiences to keep up and make sense of every moment, as bewildered as Evelyn seems while moving through the multiverse for the first time. Hsu is mesmerizing as both the villain and the object of Evelyn’s affection and frustration. At long last, Evelyn gets to be more than she is, but she’s not allowed to linger as any of her alternate selves. The source of that chaos is the omniversal being Jobu Tupaki, who has no motives or desires. Evelyn learns to jump between universes, accessing the skills of her other selves. The Wangs’ business write-offs tell a story of Evelyn trying on other potential lives: as an actor, a singer, a novelist, a chef, a teacher. On its surface, Everything Everywhere All at Once is about a woman just trying to do her taxes.
In Swiss Army Man, the debut film from Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan (collectively and fitting known as Daniels), Hank (Paul Dano) and his corpse friend ...
Daniels try to cram everything everywhere all at once into Everything Everywhere All At Once, and I’ll be damned, they accomplished that goal with brilliance and style. Everything Everywhere has to be as nutso as it is to prove its point: when everything is possible, what truly matters? Also tremendous is Quan, the gigantic beating heart of the film, who gives an earnest, hilarious, and emotional performance, and Hsu, who has to be both extremely vulnerable and one of the biggest threats to the universe at the same time—not an easy task. There are no restraints, no stops, no idea too wild that doesn’t make it into Everything Everywhere. And while at times, the film can almost feel suffocatingly overwhelming, it’s all part of the bigger plan, an everything bagel of probabilities. Part of the brilliance of Everything Everywhere All At Once is the remarkable amount of ideas Daniels can cram into this story without it becoming an absurd mess. Daniels has given audiences a wholly unique vision that literally feels like everything everywhere all at once.
That anxiety hangs in the air around Evelyn Wang (played by Michelle Yeoh), a Chinese American woman who operates a laundromat with her sweet, if guileless, ...
The version of Waymond who recruits her is from another world, one already in the middle of an apocalypse, and he demonstrates his different identity by taking on a gaggle of security guards armed only with a fanny pack. As her troubled business is being audited by a domineering IRS inspector (Jamie Lee Curtis), Evelyn is dragged into a closet by her husband and informed that she’s the only person who can save the entire multiverse from total annihilation. In Everything Everywhere All at Once, the multiverse crashes into the mundane, as the film uses comic-book logic to pose a question nearly everyone has asked themselves at some point: What if my life had gone in another direction?
The film is an action epic, and a love story, and a timely reflection on Hollywood's current obsession with multiverses. But it's also a Michelle Yeoh showcase, ...
And the young generation will have to be kind and patient in the way that they hope that the next generation will be kind and patient with them. Even within the past week of showing this movie to people, I’ve had many people come up to me and say, like, “Is this movie about ADHD?” Last night, we did a Q&A. The moderator was like, “I got diagnosed with adult history these past couple of years because of the pandemic, and I saw that in this movie,” and I was kind of blown away that it was so obvious. But I have one foot in the character of Joy, the younger generation, and now I see myself in the character of Evelyn as a parent, and now I can fully see my movie as a reflection of this experience of generational trauma, but also generational love, like what it means to stretch in both directions like this. But I changed so much because of this movie, not just during the making of this movie, but because of this movie. I went to therapy and got diagnosed, and I am in such a better place now because of this movie. The day after the premiere, she was very emotional and really thankful to us, and it was a very moving experience, having someone like Michelle Yeoh open up to us in that way. Maybe we can find a way to exist in all this noise.” So, yeah, I think it’s very different from what other people and other franchises are doing with the multiverse, conceptually, and I think audiences are going to really connect with it because of that. DS: It was never a conscious thing, that our movie be a love letter to Michelle Yeoh. It just happened because we love her. This movie was able to hold all of her past in a small pocket, but also, it just opens up the world and says “you deserve to show off so much more of who you are and what you’re capable of.” DK: One of the only ways you can react to that is to go numb, and I think a lot of people have gone numb. The phrase “love letter” gets thrown around a lot and very easily these days because it sounds nice and makes people feel good, but I did get the sense that Everything Everywhere All at Once did very much come from that kind of space or mode of creativity. DS: In our free time, we just love science, like articles and hot takes and things, and that was what brought us to the multiverse more than any media.
Michelle Yeoh stars as a Chinese American immigrant who suddenly develops the power to leap between parallel universes in this moving and often exasperating ...
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Vulture's Alison Willmore reviews the new A24 sci-fi family drama Everything Everywhere All at Once, starring Michelle Yeoh, Ke Huy Quan, and James Hong, ...
It’s a euphoric showcase for Yeoh, bringing the superstar down to earth and then flinging her back into space, but it’s also a poignant return to the screen for former child star Quan, who as Waymond is the tender heart of the film, as well as someone who can use a fanny pack as a rope dart in combat. The film extends an empathy toward Evelyn that’s deeply moving and long in coming, giving consideration to her in all her shortcomings — her impatience, her callousness with those close to her, her inability to finish anything, her doubts — and then finding in her generosity and grace as well. But for all its own garbled mythology, which it doesn’t take especially seriously, always at its core are the Wangs and the hurt they keep doing to one another in the name of love. Snapping in bursts from universe to universe, Everything Everywhere All at Once constantly courts sensory overload, lining up the edges of surreal domestic scenes and wuxia fights and a Wong Kar-wai street-scene homage and the windowless confines of the IRS, and moving between them, sometimes too quickly to register. The joke was that the cool kids could only dream of matching the oblivious swagger of an elderly Chinese man in a sweater vest and a night-market beanie emblazoned with “Die Yuppie Scum.” But underscoring the project was an understanding of how unremarked upon its subjects otherwise were, considered invisible even in their ubiquity in laboring to keep the world running. It’s also about 15 to 20 percent more movie than it needs to be, and gets bogged down by its overabundance of ideas in the middle.
Written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels, the movie is an explosion of creative weirdness that is equal parts ...
It’s not glossy or careful; the film is an onslaught of visual and thematic ideas that will frequently make you think “How did they get away with this?” It’s a good thing they did: In an era of sequels and remakes, something this outside the box is a welcome alternate reality. Her existence is about as mundane as it gets, so Evelyn is surprised to discover that she’s the key to saving the multiverse from a mysterious evil power. It would be easy to make comparisons to films like The Matrix or even Sliding Doors, another film that played with the idea of “what if,” but the truth is that Hollywood has never allowed Asian protagonists to lead a story like this before.
Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's action-comedy involves domestic drama, a manic multiverse, and plenty of outrageous action sequences. Michelle Yeoh stars.
It's not just destined to be one of the best films of the year, but also a classic comedy, sure to be treasured for decades to come. Now, I understand all my talk of the overwhelming everything of Everything Everywhere All At Once might make the movie itself seem anxiety-inducing. She is a force of nature, her onscreen presence so radiant and powerful that it's instantly believable that her laundromat matron would be the one person destined to save all existence. (DIY double feature suggestion: pair Everything Everywhere All At Once with Turning Red!) Curtis, who seems to revel in the freedom of a character actor role, bursts with energy and antagonism that makes her every incarnation of the auditor a wonderful jolt. Perhaps because Daniels seem to see us, those who feel the burden of this everything everywhere all at once. True to its title, Everything Everywhere All At Once throws a dazzling and dizzying barrage of imagery and ideas at its audience. In all this, Everything Everywhere All At Once isn't just a wildly entertaining action-comedy; it's sensational cinema of visual splendor and unapologetic silliness. Everything Everywhere All at Once is a tornado of a movie: dizzying, filled with turns, and peppered with eye-catching elements. The delights of this movie are not only a balm for what pains us. The Daniels' empathetic script invites us into the shoes of Eleanor, who is righteously frustrated at being attacked by everything everywhere all at once. Then, this barrage turns more beautiful and more bizarre, begging her and us to relish the treasure amid the trash, or maybe even how the latter urges us to appreciate the former. Amid flurries of costume changes and cheeky turns from the stellar supporting cast, Evelyn learns the radical power of joy.
Is it possible to make a film that's not for everyone but also about everyone? The team of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinart, known as Daniels, ...
Setting aside its technical ingenuity, the true marvel of Everything Everywhere All at Once is in its navigation of Evelyn’s mid-life crisis and the film’s drive to answer perhaps the most timeless question of all: how did I get here? It also allows them to employ pop culture references (The Matrix‘s kung-fu, Wong Kar-wai, and Ratatouille figure prominently) which is fun—even as it clashes with the film’s attempts at sincerity. Is it possible to make a film that’s not for everyone but also about everyone?
Ars chats with the writer-directors of our favorite film of 2022 (so far).
And I was like, "This is fantastic and beautiful." One of the many relationships in that movie was a linguist who talks about modal realism [a philosophical argument holding that all possible worlds are real in the same way as the actual world]. I started to go down a Wikipedia rabbit hole. "I fell in love with those movies," Kwan said.
Michelle Yeoh stars as a Chinese American immigrant who suddenly develops the power to leap between parallel universes in this moving and often exasperating ...
For all its cosmic craziness, Everything Everywhere All at Once has a simple emotional message: It's about how the members of this immigrant family learn to cherish each other again. This is a big comeback role for Quan, whom you may remember as the '80s child star from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and The Goonies. All this Matrix-style interdimensional hopping, plus the nonstop martial-arts action and in-your-face slapstick, makes Everything Everywhere All at Once an often frenetic viewing experience, and I checked out more than once the first time I saw it. In order to defeat evil, Evelyn must repeatedly jump between her universe and others, sort of like a video-game avatar, and absorb crucial knowledge from those other Evelyns, all of whom represent different paths she could have taken through life. Multiverses are having something of a moment, popping up in recent movies like Spider-Man: No Way Home and upcoming ones like Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness. It's refreshing, then, to get a new multiverse movie this week that doesn't spring from the world of comic-book superheroes. Evelyn might think she knows the story of her life, but she doesn't know the half of it.
The directing Daniels duo drew inspiration for 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' from psychedelic anime, the Beatles, and more.
"A Day in the Life" by the Beatles is one of my favorite songs of all time. They're different time signatures, and then they're glued together by chaotic strings that feel like the song is about to implode, and then it gives you this resolving chord at the end that makes you feel so good. KWAN: It was one of the best movies of the 2000s. SCHEINERT: It was fun to bounce between stories with structure like Groundhog Day or It's a Wonderful Life and then get inspired by filmmakers who are willing to just blow up what a movie is supposed to be. There is very little dialogue, none of which is in English, and our hero never speaks a word. Ultimately, it's kind of a metaphor for death chasing you or something like that. A film that repeatedly shows up on entertainment publications' Best Movies of the Century/Decade/Whatever lists and yet is also impossible to explain, Leos Carax's bizarro opus Holy Motors was one of the directing duo's biggest inspirations. It fully ends, and then before the credits roll, there's just a full on five minute montage of just random images of life existing and you don't know any of the characters or you recognize some of them. For Everything Everywhere, which tosses Michelle Yeoh into a network of increasingly absurd alternate worlds in an attempt to reunite her family, both directors took inspiration from the beautiful and the odd, and took Thrillist along for the ride. Structure is a crucial component to any film, but Daniels looked specifically at films that upended the traditional narrative cues and pathways. It's tough to make a multiverse movie without referencing the aesthetics of The Matrix. You don't cast Yeoh in a film unless you're going to pit her against some breathtaking Jackie Chan and Stephen Chow martial arts choreography. From the moment Everything Everywhere All at Once spits Michelle Yeoh's dowdy laundromat owner into a multiverse of wild and wonderful possibilities, the movie becomes an I Spy of filmic and musical influences.
Stars Michelle Yeoh and Stephanie Hsu on the hot dog hands, zany martial arts fights and mother-daughter love story at the core of 'Everything Everywhere ...
And it was such a great opportunity not just to tell the story of a very ordinary family that you know, but also to give them an opportunity to be a superhero. She has no Waymond, and she has no Joy. And that was the first thing she realized when she came out of that. It was important that in the back of your mind, you’ve seen this woman in Chinatown or on the streets before. The hot dog dance with Jamie Lee Curtis, at first we were like, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me, right?” We went at it with such love, because it was a ritual; this was the way they expressed love for each other. Give it to me.” And I felt so lucky for that to be one of the first scenes that we had together. So I told the Daniels, on the day of the hallway scene, can you announce it to everybody, “OK! Stephanie’s going to be crazy now!” because I don’t want to scare Michelle. I was nervous to get weird in front of her. But because Michelle flew in right before we started filming, one of the first scenes we shot was the introduction of Jobu in the hallway — the “swinging dildo” scene. The one thing that stays with you is that emotion of love. Yeoh: The first pass when you read it was a little overwhelming because it’s this and that and what?! And it somehow takes having to go to every single universe to be able to finally realize that the one they have got is the one that they need and perfect in all of its messiness. But only when I met them did I understand the passion they had and why they wanted to tell a story like this. The mother-daughter relationship is one that I haven’t seen much of and told like this in such a messy, honest way.
You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times. The Oscars are finally upon us this weekend, bringing to an end months and months ...
For The Times, Robert Abele wrote, “Husson’s commitment to the dreamlike is notable, but the arch framing, careful rhythms and drowsy line readings start to feel like a crutch at a certain point when the emotional thickness in the air begs to be explored in scenes more grounded than elliptical. … ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ is thus a story of redemption and reconciliation, as sweet and sentimental at its core as it is deliriously busy on the surface.” As wonderfully recalled as ‘Apollo 10½’ is, Black’s narration, Stanley’s eventual trip to the Moon, and the dreamlike animation that illustrates it in the same vivid style as real life are unified by an idea that Linklater has carried with him since he first picked up a movie camera: To remember the past is to re-imagine it as well.” Though the movie belongs to the boldly sensual performances of Young and O’Connor, there are also cameos by Olivia Colman, Colin Firth and Glenda Jackson. The film is in limited release. But then again, that’s our Linklater, and complaining about narrative aimlessness is kind of like coming out of a Scorsese movie bitching about all the voice-over. It’s a new Linklater, is the point, and that’s good news indeed.” And so I think people are also reconsidering, ‘Is this a habit we want to get back into?’ Which is troublesome for a lot of people but not for your average moviegoer.” Written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert — who work collectively as “Daniels” — “ Everything Everywhere All at Once” strives to live up to its title with a story that involves multiple universes, which range from absurd to profound. For a special edition of The Envelope podcast, I spoke to Glenn Whipp, Justin and Mary McNamara about the specifics of this year’s Oscars but also the bigger picture of what the future might hold for the academy. As Mary put it, “I think they reflect the energy level of the culture in general, which is everybody’s trying to figure out how to be, and normal doesn’t feel normal, and there’s a lot of other stuff going on. It means airing clips from terrific movies like ‘Drive My Car’ and ‘The Lost Daughter’ and ‘Parallel Mothers’ and ‘The Worst Person in the World,’ whose Oscar nominations reflect a level of critical discernment that is precisely the opposite of a blockbuster-first mentality. It means granting at least a few minutes to key cinematic disciplines, like editing and sound, that constitute the often-overlooked building blocks of the medium.
The hairstylist for Everything Everywhere All at Once talks about the standout beauty looks for Michelle Yeoh, Jamie Lee Curtis, and Stephanie Hsu.
In most movies, the main characters have a signature look that lays the groundwork for additional spinoff hairstyles as the plot evolves. The extent of it is usually an updo for a fancy event or maybe the addition of a hair accessory here or there, but mainly, just as we don't change our entire look day in and day out, most film characters don't either. Michelle Yeoh Wears 25+ Different Hairstyles in "Everything Everywhere All at Once"