2022 is not even halfway over, but I saw Everything, Everywhere last night, and I simply cannot imagine it not being the best film of 2022.
To say I was stunned is an understatement. I am 37 years old and have been a movie buff since I was a child. Movies are my passion - classic cinema, international cinema, domestic cinema. I see at least 30+ movies in theaters every year from all counties and compile a top 10 list of my favorite films.
I can count on both hands the number of times I have sat in a movie theater slackjawed and stunned, unable to move as credits rolled on a film. I can count on one hand the number of times this has occurred to not only me but the audience with whom I've watched a movie. I have also only seen a few movies where the audience erupted in applause during the credits - rapturous, earnest, sustained cheering.
Last night's screening of Everything, Everywhere falls into the latter category. As credits rolled, no one moved in a sold-out IMAX theater. We all sat and stared at the screen in awe before eventually cheering and clapping.
This is a special movie, a miracle of a film, the type of lightning-in-a-bottle motion picture that comes along once in a blue moon to blow your mind and annihilate your heart with its boundless, bursting soul, energy, spirit, and creativity.
In all my movie-watching years, I have never seen anything like it. The closest comparison I can muster is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. There are many similarities between both films' unhinged, creative expression as well as their ultimate message of persistence and living life in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds and the inevitably that all things, both good and bad, will eventually come to a crashing end when the curtains on our lives close.
Michelle Yeoh is remarkable and delivers a knockout performance that will surely garner plenty of awards attention. It's hard to imagine many actresses who could have so effortlessly kept step with such a demanding role, but she coasts through drama, comedy, action, and sci-fi with a verve and energy that left me breathless. It's the fiercest performance I've seen from one of the best actresses of our time and one of the best performances I've seen in years.
As for the movie itself, really the less you know going in, the better. I saw the trailer two or three times prior to watching the film, and it did little to spoil the experience. I really do recommend going in blind, though.
I don't rate many movies a 10/10. I also rarely leave theaters feeling the way I felt last night: dizzy on the possibilities of cinema and lost in thought over all I had just experienced. Even as I write this, I cannot wait to see the movie again with new people so they can experience just how special this is.
Everything, Everywhere dazzles with its creative vision, but it marries the bizarre and magical with the mundane and the ordinary to make a statement about human potential and how often we let our daydreams - what could have been, should have been, will or won't be - roadblock who we are. The movie obliterates the veil of ordinary to reveal the extraordinary, but it never loses itself within its relentless, wacky, metaphysical vision.
Quite the contrary, really. When the dust settles by the end of the film, you feel like you have been taken somewhere new - to a place only the best films can take us - and are reminded that even though we might not matter in the grand scheme of the universe, there are kind things we can do - to one another and ourselves - to make the pain and joy of being human mean...something.
And at the end of the day, maybe that's everything.
To say I was stunned is an understatement. I am 37 years old and have been a movie buff since I was a child. Movies are my passion - classic cinema, international cinema, domestic cinema. I see at least 30+ movies in theaters every year from all counties and compile a top 10 list of my favorite films.
I can count on both hands the number of times I have sat in a movie theater slackjawed and stunned, unable to move as credits rolled on a film. I can count on one hand the number of times this has occurred to not only me but the audience with whom I've watched a movie. I have also only seen a few movies where the audience erupted in applause during the credits - rapturous, earnest, sustained cheering.
Last night's screening of Everything, Everywhere falls into the latter category. As credits rolled, no one moved in a sold-out IMAX theater. We all sat and stared at the screen in awe before eventually cheering and clapping.
This is a special movie, a miracle of a film, the type of lightning-in-a-bottle motion picture that comes along once in a blue moon to blow your mind and annihilate your heart with its boundless, bursting soul, energy, spirit, and creativity.
In all my movie-watching years, I have never seen anything like it. The closest comparison I can muster is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. There are many similarities between both films' unhinged, creative expression as well as their ultimate message of persistence and living life in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds and the inevitably that all things, both good and bad, will eventually come to a crashing end when the curtains on our lives close.
Michelle Yeoh is remarkable and delivers a knockout performance that will surely garner plenty of awards attention. It's hard to imagine many actresses who could have so effortlessly kept step with such a demanding role, but she coasts through drama, comedy, action, and sci-fi with a verve and energy that left me breathless. It's the fiercest performance I've seen from one of the best actresses of our time and one of the best performances I've seen in years.
As for the movie itself, really the less you know going in, the better. I saw the trailer two or three times prior to watching the film, and it did little to spoil the experience. I really do recommend going in blind, though.
I don't rate many movies a 10/10. I also rarely leave theaters feeling the way I felt last night: dizzy on the possibilities of cinema and lost in thought over all I had just experienced. Even as I write this, I cannot wait to see the movie again with new people so they can experience just how special this is.
Everything, Everywhere dazzles with its creative vision, but it marries the bizarre and magical with the mundane and the ordinary to make a statement about human potential and how often we let our daydreams - what could have been, should have been, will or won't be - roadblock who we are. The movie obliterates the veil of ordinary to reveal the extraordinary, but it never loses itself within its relentless, wacky, metaphysical vision.
Quite the contrary, really. When the dust settles by the end of the film, you feel like you have been taken somewhere new - to a place only the best films can take us - and are reminded that even though we might not matter in the grand scheme of the universe, there are kind things we can do - to one another and ourselves - to make the pain and joy of being human mean...something.
And at the end of the day, maybe that's everything.