Director: Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.
The hype is real. Everything Everywhere All At Once is a great movie! What makes it a great movie? - It tells a simple story in a complicated way, and we live in a time where complexity in visual storytelling is praised as a great achievement:
A family at the verge of collapse learns to accept and love each other after overcoming the greatest obstacle of all: Paying taxes.
I recognized the greatness of the film at the 'inciting incident' of the 1st act, when the mother tells her daughter she gets fat and needs to eat more healthy; this moment is written and performed perfectly, it's honestly one of the best cinematic moments I've seen recently. So, when a film has such a strong base to it, it can get as crazy as this film does and still work perfectly well.
Michelle Yeoh is killing it in every moment! I even enjoyed the action scenes that paid homage to old Hong Kong films. The humor was not always to my taste but I don't mind honestly, I learned to expect nothing from American humor.
Editing and sound are excellent. I am not jealous of Paul Rogers who had to edit this huge monumental project, but he deserves recognition for making this parallel montage storytelling work.
I was also thinking a lot about camp and how hard it is to make a campy movie that works. Some friends and colleagues of mine try and fail at making camp. After watching this film I understand it takes excellent actors to make camp work. Many fail at making camp by assuming they can compromise on acting. But the truth is the exact opposite.
I am also glad to witness an overall movement in cinema towards elevating genre to high levels of fine art. I would like to be part of this movement as a contemporary visual storyteller.
Verdict: 5 / 5 ★ - Defines a generation.
