Everything Everywhere All At Once

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