BEST MOVIES OF 2022 . . . so far

[oscar jubis]

Even "the idea" of watching Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's Everything Everywhere All at Once is too much to bear for you?
Before I had read any reviews, a student in my scriptwriting course gifted me a digital copy of the film. He is very passionate in his appreciation of it; other students shared this response. I was intrigued, so I watched it and found it to be remarkable in many ways (However,I'm not ready to call it a masterpiece or even a top 10 film for me this year.)

EEAO for short, may be defined as a post-modern film. It is a pastiche that evokes tropes from multiple genres in an extremely fluid and transformative manner. It plays with the (Transcendentalist, Emersonian perhaps) concept that personhood or personal identity is never fixed but always in a state of "becoming". In a way, the film may be considered a bildungsroman where the person coming-of-age is already about 60 years of age (Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang). Another feature of EEAO that squares with postmodernism is unprecedented fragmentation of time and space through the use of old science fiction idea of multiple planes of existence or universes. The film exploits this concept in a manner comparable to how David Lynch channelled the idea of doppelgangers or "doubles" in Twin Peaks (especially the amazing 2017 television series). It is a measure of how radical EEAO is that it may be ultimately regarded primarily as a family melodrama involving "ordinary" familial issues such as marital conflict and a generation gap (the chasm between Evelyn's father and daughter over her sexual identity). Finally, the film's postmodernism is also at play in the manner in which alludes constantly to the history of cinema in general and the particular career of its principal actors. Everything Everywhere All at Once is a fascinating film.

[Chris Knipp]

That was what I said.
Multiverses are not for me.
I may try to watch it if it's so highly admired. Or not.
It doesn't sound anything like TWIN PEAKS to me. More like a semi-comic Marvel sci-fi movie.

TRAILER