Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) April 9th, 2022

It’s nearly time for the Academy Awards and Everything Everywhere All at Once finds itself rightfully nominated 11 times. A surreal emotional rollercoaster notably similar to directors Daniels’ previous film Swiss Army Man, Everything Everywhere All at Once sets a new bar for absurd pathos. Everything Everywhere All at Once is the best new movie I saw in 2022. However, it is the only Best Picture nominees I’ve seen besides Top Gun: Maverick so I’m admittedly uninformed about the competition but I suspect none of the other nominees explore the multitudes of diverse characters or the emotional punches contained within Everything Everywhere All at Once.

What begins as a simple story of a Chinese-American family financially struggling to keep their laundromat business open and repair their relationships after decades building pain and resentment quickly turns into an emotional sci-fi romp through the en vogue multiverse where nothing less than everything in existence is at stake. Bill and Ted Face the Music meets Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It’s too new and too good for me to justify examining in greater detail, but if you’re like me and have only seen a couple of the films nominated for Best Picture then do yourself a favor and watch Everything Everywhere All at Once soon.

The film with an all inclusive title managed to uniquely distinguish itself. How many movies contain a tear jerking scene where two inanimate rocks chat telepathically on a canyon ridge? One. Or a scene where two women fall madly in love in a world where humans evolved hotdog fingers instead of our normal boney digits? One. How many films nominated for Best Picture can win this year? One.