Everything Everywhere All At Once, which had a ground-breaking awards season,took home seven awards at the 95th Academy® Awards including; ‘Best Picture’, ‘Best Director’ (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), ‘Best Actress’ (Michelle Yeoh), ‘Best Supporting Actor’ (Ke Huy Quan), ‘Best Supporting Actress’ (Jamie Lee Curtis), ‘Best Original Screenplay’ and ‘Best Film Editing’. Watch Everything Everywhere All At Once on HBO and HBO GO.
Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, Everything Everywhere All At Once is an irreverent and big-hearted sci-fi action adventure about Evelyn Wang, a flustered Chinese American mother who is contacted from a parallel universe and told that only she can save the world. The unlikely hero learns to channel her new-found powers and fight through the splintering timelines of the multiverse to save her home, family and herself. The global hit stars Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., James Hong and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Awarded the Oscar® for ‘Best Documentary Feature’, CNN Films and HBO Max co-produced documentary thriller Navalny was directed by Daniel Roher and explores the life and work of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who, after years of campaigning against corruption, has developed powerful enemies. Navalnychronicles the politician and activist’s brave stand against the government that tried to silence him – and his never-ending fight for democracy. The feature is available to stream on HBO GO.
Top Gun: Maverick available on HBO and HBO GO took home the Oscar® for ‘Best Sound’. After more than thirty years of service as one of the Navy’s top aviators, Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. Maverick then finds himself training a detachment of Top Gun graduates for a specialized mission no living pilot has ever encountered. Stars Tom Cruise, Miles Teller, Jennifer Connelly, Jon Hamm and Glen Powell.
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Written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, it follows a Chinese-American woman being audited by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and discovers she must connect with parallel universe versions of herself to prevent a powerful being from causing the destruction of the multiverse. It stars Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., James Hong, and Jamie Lee Curtis.
Directed by Kyle Balda, it is the sequel to the spin-off prequel Minions and the fifth entry to the Despicable Me franchise. The film is set in the 1970s as young Gru tries to join a group of supervillains called the Vicious 6 after they oust their leader Wild Knuckles. When the interview turns disastrous, Gru and his Minions go on the run with the Vicious 6 hot on their tails. It features the voices of Steve Carell, Pierre Coffin, Taraji P. Henson, Michelle Yeoh, RZA, Jean-Claude Van Damme, and more.
It was exhausting watching ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once.’ Exhausting physically. Exhausting mentally. Exhausting emotionally. And I loved every minute of it.
The film is over two hours of crazy, out-of-this-world action-adventure moments but carefully interwoven into a poignant drama about family (mothers and daughter; husbands and wives, mothers and fathers) and, ultimately, the meaning of life. It is a story about the multiverse, the number of alternate realities that are present and happening simultaneously with ours, and how one character, Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) must learn to access every possible iteration of her to save the world – every world in every universe, in fact – and save her daughter.
Directors and screenwriters Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (credited as Daniels, one moniker for both) approach this material with a madcap sense of humor. They are not afraid to get dark (the violence and gore can get pretty intense), not afraid to get vulgar (there are dildos and buttplug jokes that are actually funny), not afraid to get meta (in all the variations of Evelyn’s character, there is quite a number that reference her career), not afraid to get weird, and definitely not afraid to get personal.
The story is already a lot to deal with: an ordinary housewife, while trying to pay her taxes, discovers that in an alternate reality, she discovered the multiverse and found a way to “verse jump.” Verse jumping is accessing the memories and skills and talents of another version of yourself in another universe and little, ordinary housewife, Evelyn must now find a way to learn how to verse jump so she can save the universe from a destructive being called Jobu Topaki.
Photo from Official Movie Website (www.everythingeverywheremovie.com) Photo Credit: Allyson Riggs
Mixed in with this dense science fiction adventure is a story about a woman in strained relationships with her husband (played by Ke Huy Quan) and daughter (an excellent Stephanie Hsu) and father (James Hong). The film manages to bounce back and forth effortlessly from adventure to family drama while pondering upon the meaning of life.
If that wasn’t enough, Daniels manages to imbue the film with exquisite filmmaking. There are split screens, subtitles that shift and change with the story, and clever cinematography and editing. As Evelyn moves between realities, the tone and style of filmmaking change as well. There are homages to Wong Kar Wai’s ‘In the Mood for Love’ in some realities, others are homages to Jackie Chan period kung fu films. The costume designs are out of this world in some moments. Nothing can be expected and everything will take you by surprise.
It’s chaos but there’s so much sense in all of it. It’s why I say ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ is exhausting. You are laughing out loud in one moment and then, in the next, you are marveling at the fight choreography right before it brings you to horror film levels of suspense and dread. The film itself takes on the infinite possibilities of its own story and Daniels is unafraid to go there and mine it for all its thrills, laughs, and tears.
Photo from Official Movie Website (www.everythingeverywheremovie.com) Photo Credit: Allyson Riggs
The performances are all incredible, Quan makes a fantastic return in front of the camera (he became famous as a child actor in the 80s films ‘The Goonies’ and ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’), while Stephanie Hsu shows off her incredible range. Jamie Lee Curtis is incredible and reliable, as always. But at the heart of this movie is Michelle Yeoh. The role is so demanding and she manages to be as mercurial as she is human. She infuses Evelyn with such an ordinariness, a woman who is completely unprepared for this wild journey she is about to enter but can quickly shift to a myriad of different characters. It would be a shame if this performance isn’t recognised at all by any award-giving bodies.
And at the heart of all this beautiful chaos, is a story that really digs deep into what it means to be alive and what it means to be happy in this very crazy world we live in. The craziness of this movie is just an exaggerated reflection of the craziness of the real world of the audience watching it. This two hours and twenty-minutes film manages to encapsulate a lot of this younger generation’s fears and anxieties and triggers and manages to create a dialogue between Evelyn and her husband, daughter, and father that proposes a sort of rationale that can address the underlying nihilism and cynicism that is at the surface of this film.
Photo from Official Movie Website (www.everythingeverywheremovie.com) Photo Credit: Allyson Riggs
By the end, I was in tears. I was emotionally spent as much as I was mentally overwhelmed and physically drained by the experience. The last time I felt like this was watching Alfonso Cuaron’s ‘Gravity’ in a 3D IMAX cinema, though I don’t remember laughing as much. I’m definitely watching this film again.
Dive into the crazy worlds of the multiverse with A24’s new movie Everything Everywhere All At Once! Starring Michelle Yeoh, this movie from Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively known as the Daniels) combines action and comedy in one high-energy, multiversal adventure.
The film follows the aging Chinese immigrant Evelyn, who is facing struggles from all corners, from her business to her marriage. Evelyn seems to be a failure in every aspect of her life, but when an interdimensional rupture threatens the safety of the multiverse, only she could restore balance to her world and all the alternate realities. To do this, she must tap into the acquired skills of a variety of Evelyns hailing from the different parts of the multiverse.
Watch the trailer below:
Before you see the movie on the big screen, we’ve rounded up some interesting behind-the-scenes facts about Everything Everywhere All At Once that you might want to know!
1. Jackie Chan was the first choice for the lead role.
It is no secret that the Daniels really tailored the lead role of the film for Jackie Chan while Yeoh would star as his wife. When Chan was unavailable, something clicked and the directors realized that the story would be better with the wife as the protagonist.
In an interview with The Guardian, Yeoh shares her fun banter with Jackie Chan: “Jackie actually texted me and he says: ‘Wow, I hear amazing things about your movie. Did you know that the boys came to see me in China?’ And I said: ‘Yes, your loss, my bro!’”
Photo: ‘Police Story 3: Super Cop’ on Netflix
2. The directors almost had to explore the Marvel’s multiverse as well.
As it turns out, the Daniels had the choice between working on the Marvel’s cinematic multiverse or on their own multiverse. The Daniels were offered to direct Loki, MCU’s spinoff series where the God of Mischief is introduced to his other variants across the multiverse. But the directors decided to focus on their film, thus, the director’s chair was given to Kate Herron. Given that both titles received great praises, it seems that everything worked out well in both multiverses.
Photo: ‘Loki’ trailer
3. Yeoh’s husband in the film is an iconic Indiana Jones ally.
Starring as Waymond, the husband of Michelle Yeoh’s Evelyn, is Ke Huy Quan. If you think his face is quite familiar or his name rings a bell, that is because he is an iconic child actor. Ke Huy Quan played the ever-dependable Short Round in Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom and as Data in The Goonies. In his new film, the actor even had a quick reference to his popular role in The Temple of Doom, which you’d want to see for yourself.
Photos: ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once‘ and ‘Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom‘ trailers.
4. Jamie Lee Curtis wanted her character Deirdre to look real in the film.
In Everything Everywhere All At Once, Halloween icon Jamie Lee Curtis stars as the eccentric IRS inspector named Deirdre Beaubeirdra. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Daniel Scheinert reveals how Curtis was so enthusiastic about portraying the character, saying she’d send them photos of weird outfits and hairdos for Deirdre right after signing up.
It was also important for Curtis to make the role realistic. “I wanted to just be truthful to this woman. In the world, there is an industry — a billion-dollar, trillion-dollar industry — about hiding things. Concealers. Body-shapers. Fillers. Procedures. Clothing. Hair accessories. Hair products. Everything to conceal the reality of who we are. And my instruction to everybody was: I want there to be no concealing of anything,” said Curtis.
Photo: ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once‘ trailer
5. The indie film’s eye-popping visual effects were worked on by just five people.
The film has a lot of visual effects given its surrealistic and high-energy multiversal premise. In an interview with WIRED— which you can watch below– the Daniels revealed that there were only five people working on the movie’s visual effects. They even shared how they put together some of the sequences in the film.
A24’s new much-talked-about movie Everything Everywhere All At Once has finally been announced to screen in Philippine cinemas this June!
The mindbending film starring Michelle Yeoh will hit local theaters this June 29, according to SM Cinemas and TBA Studios. Check out the trailer for the film below:
Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (collectively called Daniels), Everything Everywhere All At Once is a comedy sci-fi action-adventure that follows a Chinese American woman stuck in the middle of a ruptured multiverse. She must then use her newfound powers to face bizarre and bewildering dangers that threaten the fate of the world.
The film also stars Ke Huy Quan, Stephanie Hsu, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., James Hong, and Jamie Lee Curtis. For more details, visit the film’s official website.
