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Few things in life are certain besides death, taxes, and maybe the never-ending task that is doing laundry. At least that’s where the characters in writer/directors Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert , collectively known as Daniels, new film “Everything Everywhere All at Once” find themselves initially. That is, until they take an emotional, philosophical, and deeply weird trip through the looking glass into the multiverse and discover metaphysical wisdom along the way.

In this love letter to genre cinema, Michelle Yeoh gives a virtuoso performance as Evelyn Wang, a weary owner of a laundromat under IRS audit. We first meet her enjoying a happy moment with her husband Waymond ( Ke Huy Quan ) and their daughter Joy ( Stephanie Hsu ). We see their smiling faces reflected in a mirror on their living room wall. As the camera literally zooms through the mirror, Evelyn’s smile fades, now seated at a table awash with business receipts. She’s preparing for a meeting with an auditor while simultaneously trying to cook food for a Chinese New Year party that will live up to the high standards of her visiting father Gong Gong ( James Hong , wiley as ever).

On top of juggling her father’s visit and the tax audit, Evelyn’s sullen daughter Joy wants to bring her girlfriend Becky ( Tallie Medel ) to the party and her husband wants to talk about the state of their marriage. Just as Evelyn begins to feel overwhelmed by everything happening in her life she’s visited by another version of Waymond from what he calls the Alpha verse. Here humans have learned to “verse jump” and are threatened by an omniverse agent of chaos known as Jobu Tupaki. Soon, Evelyn is thrust into a universe-hopping adventure that has her questioning everything she thought she knew about her life, her failures, and her love for her family.

Most of the action is set in an IRS office building in Simi Valley (which, as a Californian, had me in stitches), where Evelyn must battle IRS agent Diedre ( Jamie Lee Curtis , having the time of her life), a troop of security guards, and possibly everyone else she’s ever met. Production designer Jason Kisvarday crafts a seemingly endless cubicle-filled office where everything from the blade of a paper trimmer to a butt plug shaped auditor of the year awards become fair game in a battle to save the universe.

Editor Paul Rogers' breakneck pace matches the script’s frenetic dialogue, with layers of universes simultaneously folding into each other while also propelling Evelyn’s internal journey. Match cuts seamlessly connect the universes together, while playful cuts help emphasize the humor at the heart of the film.

Born from choices both made and not made, each universe has a distinct look and feel, with winking film references ranging from “ The Matrix ” to “ The Fall ” to “ 2001: A Space Odyssey ” to “In The Mood For Love” to “ Ratatouille .” Even Michelle Yeoh’s own legacy finds its way into the film with loving callbacks to her Hong Kong action film days and the wuxia classic “ Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon .” The fight sequences, choreographed by Andy and Brian Le , have a balletic beauty to them, wisely shot by cinematographer Larkin Seiple in wide shots allowing whole bodies to fill the frame.

Yeoh is the anchor of the film, given a role that showcases her wide range of talents, from her fine martial art skills to her superb comic timing to her ability to excavate endless depths of rich human emotion often just from a glance or a reaction. She is a movie star and this is a movie that knows it. Watching her shine so bright and clearly having a ball brought tears to my eyes more than once.

Just as Evelyn taps into Yeoh’s iconography, facets of Waymond can be found throughout Quan’s unique career. The comic timing from his childhood roles as Data in “ The Goonies ” and Short Round in “ Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ” echoes in Evelyn’s nebbish husband. His work as a fight coordinator shows through in Alpha’s slick action hero capable of using a fanny pack to take out a group of attackers. Even his time as an assistant director to Wong Kar Wai on “2046” can be found in the universe where he plays the debonair one who got away. Quan tackles these variations with aplomb, bringing pathos to each and serving as a gentle reminder that there's strength in kindness.

As Evelyn and Waymond’s relationship ebbs and flows in iterations through the multiverses, it’s their daughter Joy who proves to be the lynchpin. In a true breakout performance from Stephanie Hsu, Joy represents a growing generational divide. Joy carries the weight of Evelyn’s fractured relationship with her grandfather and the disappointments of an American dream unattained. Her queerness as foreign to her mother as the country was when she herself first arrived. Her aimlessness a greater disappointment because of all that Eveyln sacrificed for her to have more options in life than she did. This pressure manifests in a rebellion so great it stretches beyond the multiverses into a realm where a giant everything bagel looms like a black hole ready to suck everyone into the void.

If the void arises from the compounding of generational trauma, the Daniels posit that it can be reversed through the unconditional love passed down through those same generations, if we choose compassion and understanding over judgment and rejection. Chaos reigns and life may only ever make sense in fleeting moments, but it’s those moments we should cherish. Moments of love and camaraderie. Sometimes they happen over time. Sometimes they happen all at once.

This review was filed from the premiere at the SXSW Film Festival. The film opens on March 25th.

Marya E. Gates

Marya E. Gates is a freelance film and culture writer based in Los Angeles and Chicago. She studied Comparative Literature at U.C. Berkeley, and also has an overpriced and underused MFA in Film Production. Other bylines include Moviefone, The Playlist, Crooked Marquee, Nerdist, and Vulture.

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Film Credits

Everything Everywhere All at Once movie poster

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Rated R for some violence, sexual material and language.

139 minutes

Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn Wang

Stephanie Hsu as Joy Wang / Jobu Tupaki

James Hong as Gong Gong

Jonathan Ke Quan as Waymond Wang

Jamie Lee Curtis as Deirdre Beaubeirdra

Anthony Molinari as Police - Confetti

Jenny Slate as Big Nose

Andy Le as Alpha Jumper - Bigger Trophy

Brian Le as Alpha Jumper - Trophy

Daniel Scheinert as District Manager

Harry Shum Jr. as Chad

Boon Pin Koh as Maternity Doctor

Daniel Scheinert

Cinematographer

Larkin Seiple
Paul Rogers

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‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Review: It’s Messy, and Glorious

Michelle Yeoh stars as a stressed-out laundromat owner dragged into cosmic battle and genre chaos.

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By A.O. Scott

The idea of the multiverse has been a conundrum for modern physics and a disaster for modern popular culture. I’m aware that some of you here in this universe will disagree, but more often than not a conceit that promises ingenuity and narrative abundance has delivered aggressive brand extension and the infinite recombination of cliché. Had I but world enough and time, I might work these thoughts up into a thunderous supervillain rant, but instead I’m happy to report that my research has uncovered a rare and precious exception.

That would be “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” an exuberant swirl of genre anarchy directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. The filmmakers — who work under the name Daniels and who are best known for the wonderfully unclassifiable “Swiss Army Man” (starring Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse) — are happy to defy the laws of probability, plausibility and coherence. This movie’s plot is as full of twists and kinks as the pot of noodles that appears in an early scene. Spoiling it would be impossible. Summarizing it would take forever — literally!

But while the hectic action sequences and flights of science-fiction mumbo-jumbo are a big part of the fun (and the marketing), they aren’t really the point. This whirligig runs on tenderness and charm. As in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” or Pixar’s “Inside Out,” the antic cleverness serves a sincere and generous heart. Yes, the movie is a metaphysical multiverse galaxy-brain head trip, but deep down — and also right on the surface — it’s a bittersweet domestic drama, a marital comedy, a story of immigrant striving and a hurt-filled ballad of mother-daughter love.

At the center of it all is Evelyn Wang, played by the great Michelle Yeoh with grace, grit and perfect comic timing. Evelyn, who left China as a young woman, runs a laundromat somewhere in America with her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). Her life is its own small universe of stress and frustration. Evelyn’s father (James Hong), who all but disowned her when she married Waymond, is visiting to celebrate his birthday. An I.R.S. audit looms. Waymond is filing for divorce, which he says is the only way he can get his wife’s attention. Their daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), has self-esteem issues and also a girlfriend named Becky (Tallie Medel), and Evelyn doesn’t know how to deal with Joy’s teenage angst or her sexuality.

The first stretch of “Everything Everywhere All At Once” is played in a key of almost-realism. There are hints of the cosmic chaos to come, in the form of ominous musical cues (the score is by Son Lux) and swiveling camera movements (the cinematography is by Larkin Seiple) — but the mundane chaos of Evelyn’s existence provides plenty of drama.

To put it another way, the Daniels understand that she and her circumstances are already interesting. The key to “Everything” is that the proliferating timelines and possibilities, though full of danger and silliness, don’t so much represent an alternative to reality’s drabness as an extension of its complexity.

Things start to get glitchy as Waymond and Evelyn approach their dreaded meeting with Deirdre, an I.R.S. bureaucrat played with impeccable unpleasantness by Jamie Lee Curtis. Waymond — until now a timid, nervous fellow — turns into a combat-ready space commando, wielding his fanny pack as a deadly weapon. He hurriedly explains to Evelyn that the stability of the multiverse is threatened by a power-mad fiend named Jobu Tupaki, and that Evelyn must train herself to jump between universes to do battle. The leaps are accomplished by doing something crazy and then pressing a button on an earpiece. The tax office turns into a scene of martial-arts mayhem. Eventually, Jobu Tupaki shows up, and turns out to be …

You’ll see for yourself. And I hope you do. The Daniels’ command of modern cinematic tropes is encyclopedic, and also eccentric. As Evelyn zigzags through various universes, she finds herself in a live-action rip-off of “Ratatouille” ; a smoky sendup of Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood For Love” ; a world where humans have hot dogs for fingers and play the piano with their feet; and a child’s birthday party where she is a piñata. That is a small sampling. The philosophical foundation for this zaniness is the notion that every choice Evelyn (and everyone else) has made in her life was an unwitting act of cosmogenesis. The roads not taken blossom into new universes. World without end.

The metaphysical high jinks turn out to rest on a sturdy moral foundation. The multiverse — to say nothing of her own family — may lie beyond Evelyn’s control, but she possesses free will, which means responsibility for her own actions and obligations to the people around her. As her adventures grow more elaborate, she seems at first to be one of those solitary, quasi-messianic movie heroes, “the one” who has the power to face down absolute evil.

Yeoh certainly has the necessary charisma, but “Everything Everywhere” is really about something other than the usual heroics. Nobody is alone in the multiverse, which turns out to be a place where families can work on their issues. And while you are likely be tickled and dazzled by the visual variety and whiz-bang effects, you may be surprised to find yourself moved by the performances. Quan, a child star in the 1980s (in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and “Goonies”), has an almost Chaplinesque ability to swerve from clownishness to pathos. Hsu strikes every note in the Gen-Z songbook with perfect poise. And don’t sleep on grandpa: Hong nearly steals the show.

Is it perfect? No movie with this kind of premise — or that title — will ever be a neat, no-loose-ends kind of deal. Maybe it goes on too long. Maybe it drags in places, or spins too frantically in others. But I like my multiverses messy, and if I say that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is too much, it’s a way of acknowledging the Daniels’ generosity.

Everything Everywhere All at Once Rated R. Fighting and swearing. Running time: 2 hours 12 minutes. In theaters.

A.O. Scott is a co-chief film critic. He joined The Times in 2000 and has written for the Book Review and The New York Times Magazine. He is also the author of “Better Living Through Criticism.” More about A.O. Scott

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Everything Everywhere All at Once Reviews

This film can’t quite commit to its interdimensional-war gimmick; it’s an appendage, mostly played for laughs, to the real story, which I kept waiting to arrive -- and when it did, I wished it hadn’t.

Full Review | Apr 11, 2024

A great, fabulous, huge movie that is almost literally all heart.

Full Review | Feb 27, 2024

Everything Everywhere All at Once is beautifully chaotic, wonderfully weird, and one of the coolest movies ever made.

Full Review | Sep 27, 2023

The Daniels accomplished something wonderful for the audience.

Full Review | Sep 26, 2023

Michelle Yeoh finally gets a role this decade that pays tribute to her rare talents, and absolutely owns it...

Full Review | Sep 12, 2023

The genre mashup provides a fuller insight into the characters’ personalities than a straight independent film could depict. The multiverse is a metaphor for the different facets of peoples’ potential and makes their internal lives literal.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Aug 16, 2023

Everything Everywhere All at Once will remind you of why you love cinema. It is fresh, creative, and will leave you laughing and shedding some tears.

Full Review | Original Score: 5/5 | Jul 27, 2023

An omnipotent being is threatening the multiverse. Who ya gonna call? Spiderman? Dr. Strange? How about a middle-aged Asian-American woman failing as a wife and mother?

Full Review | Jul 26, 2023

Everything Everywhere All at Once is one of the greatest films of all time. Entertaining, hilarious, emotional, wild, unique, action packed, & INSANE

Full Review | Jul 25, 2023

At the heart of it all, we ride a roller coaster of emotions that are inventive, complex, stimulating, and raw.

With such a low budget, it's almost humiliating that so many expensive Hollywood blockbusters can't even reach the heels of so much originality, imagination, excitement, and emotion.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Jul 25, 2023

Everything Everywhere All At Once is a spectacle in the purest sense of the word. A sensory overload, especially in IMAX, the movie is a science fiction, multi-verse spanning love letter to family.

Delightfully disorienting and intellectually absorbing.

Full Review | May 26, 2023

Visual, sonic, and thematic noise.

Full Review | Original Score: ZERO STARS | May 11, 2023

At a few minutes short of two and a half hours, Everything Everywhere All at Once nearly wears out its welcome, but as far as hot dog-fingered audacity goes, the Daniels will make plenty of new eyeballs go googly.

Full Review | May 9, 2023

... Touches upon important themes such as control through technology, media, food, and body while resorting to an anarchic and hilarious sense of humor. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Mar 28, 2023

The filmmakers try to load the entire weight of life, the universe, and everything onto their movie. This is too many things on a bagel.

Full Review | Mar 24, 2023

Michelle Yeoh proves that being a middle aged immigrant has no boundaries and she is backed up with the amazingly gifted talents of Ke Huy Quan, Jaime Lee Curtis and Stephanie Hsu ! The Daniels provide a supreme sci-fi smorgasbord for the ages.

Full Review | Mar 22, 2023

It holds within it a great idea, when one disentangles it from the hairball that is the EEAAO narrative. But [...] in all its originality, it telegraphs its message, instead of allowing this intricately constructed ingenious world to be the message.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Mar 19, 2023

The humor, though, is silly and second-rate. The googly eyes, the talking raccoon, the pet rocks at sunset, the parody of 2001: A Space Odyssey—all those work against the cast instead of with it.

Full Review | Mar 16, 2023

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Everything Everywhere All at Once review: Michelle Yeoh surfs the multiverse

The veteran action star is the best thing in directing duo the Daniels' heady, hectic sci-fi thriller.

A movie that's title, helpfully, is also pretty much its logline, Everything Everywhere All At Once (in theaters March 25) nearly explodes with its own ideas — a chaotic full-tilt multiverse of hot dog hands and flying Pomeranians rooted (just barely) in a super human performance by Michelle Yeoh .

Everything begins, without a sliver of exposition or even a pause for breath, in a shabby laundromat in suburban Southern California that Yeoh's anxious Evelyn Wang runs with her mild-mannered husband Waymond ( Ke Huy Quan ). The day ahead looks hectic, at best: Her father ( James Hong ) is due to fly in for a New Year celebration, her grown daughter Eleanor ( The Path 's Stephanie Hsu ) wants to officially introduce her girlfriend at the party, and there's a meeting with the IRS somewhere in between that will likely determine the fate of the family's faltering business.

That's Jamie Lee Curtis 's cue to enter as the scowling, square-haired Dierdre Beaubeirdra, the living embodiment of petty bureaucracy. But something odd happens at their appointment: Waymond drags Evelyn into a broom closet, clamps a Bluetooth headset on his wife's ear, and sends her hurtling into another dimension. Whatever can be gleaned from his scant, hurried explanation, it's apparently her job to fight her way out of the building or die trying. (There's also an unsigned divorce petition hanging between them, which vaguely complicates things.)

To take on Dierdre and save the world, or at least this particular world, Evelyn will have to access the infinite other dimensions in which she is a chef, a movie star, a martial arts expert, and bring those skills back to the bland cubicles and hallways of the IRS. She's not alone, though; her loved ones also have their own alternate selves — versions that can turn a fanny pack into a deadly weapon, speak English fluently, or manifest as (why not?) a sentient rock. And to win this ill-defined battle they'll need to transcend their various estrangements, if they can find a way back to one another.

Directing duo Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert ( Swiss Army Man ), collectively known as the Daniels, are clearly dedicated students of cinema: Certain scenes recall the metaphysical razzle-dazzle of the Wachowskis , others the lo-fi quirk of Michel Gondry or Spike Jonze ; one lovely scene in a Hong Kong alleyway seems like a direct tribute to Wong Kar Wai . Their ambition is palpable and their imagination seemingly unfettered; the script (which the pair also cowrote) crackles and spins and throws off sparks like a Catherine wheel, even as it rarely endeavors to make basic sense.

The risk of all that high-flying pandemonium, of course, is that when anything is possible, nothing really matters. It's a fleeting, vicarious thrill to skim through worlds where everyone has wieners for fingers or raccoons make their own soup; time in the Daniels' Madlibs multiverse isn't a flat circle, it's an everything bagel (literally), and the metaphor is apt. It's also frequently maddening, and the actors, particularly the inexhaustible Yeoh, do much of the work to ground what often feels, with its dream logic and layer-cake Inception feints, like a coded story whose secret key you haven't been invited to share. But there are no small bites of the bagel; it's all at once, or not at all. Grade: B–

‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ Review: Michelle Yeoh’s Insane Multiverse Comedy Lives Up to Its Name

Daniels return with one of the most ambitious and bonkers films in recent memory.

In Swiss Army Man , the debut film from Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan (collectively and fitting known as Daniels), Hank ( Paul Dano ) and his corpse friend Manny ( Daniel Radcliffe ) shoot out of a river propelled on the power of Manny’s farts. As they fly through the air, they sing a song to each other that goes: “You just have to remember that we’re all here for a purpose, and the Universe picks its time. Everything, everywhere matters to everything.” While Swiss Army Man only lightly touched on this idea, six years later, Daniels’ second film Everything Everywhere All At Once almost makes this verse a mantra amongst a cavalcade of insane multiverses, unlimited possibilities, and endless creativity. Daniels has given audiences a wholly unique vision that literally feels like everything everywhere all at once.

Leading this trip is Evelyn Wang ( Michelle Yeoh at maybe her all-time best), who runs a struggling laundromat with her overly-optimistic husband Waymond (an equally fantastic Ke Huy Quan ). When we first meet Evelyn, she’s surrounded by receipts, thanks to the laundromat getting audited, her husband is putting googly-eyes on bags of laundry, and it doesn’t take long for Evelyn to embarrass her daughter, Joy ( Stephanie Hsu ) when introducing her girlfriend to Evelyn’s father, Gong Gong ( James Hong ). To make matters worse, Evelyn doesn’t know Waymond has divorce papers, and IRS inspector Diedre (a hilariously wild Jamie Lee Curtis ) accuses the laundromat of fraud. As someone tells Evelyn later in the film, Evelyn is living her worst you.

But that’s not to say Evelyn hasn’t tried to escape her monotonous life. We learn she’s wanted to be a singing coach and an author, amongst other interests that became hobbies instead of life-altering careers. But Evelyn’s life irrevocably changes when a version of Waymond tells Evelyn that she is just one of many Evelyns, yet she’s the only one that can defeat a powerful villain named Jobu Tupaki, who could destroy all the universes (and there are a lot of universes).

RELATED: 'Everything Everywhere All At Once', 'I Love My Dad' Among Winners at SXSW Festival

Daniels turns Everything Everywhere All At Once a frenetic and truly ridiculous barrage of probabilities and multiverse jumping. Anything you can imagine, Daniels has also thought of and thrown into this film. Everything Everywhere All At Once is a bombardment of hot dog fingers, googly-eyes, Wong Kar-Wai homages, fanny packs incredibly strong pinkie fingers, talking rocks, the Nine Days song “Absolutely (Story of a Girl),” raccoons, the guy who played Santa Claus in I Think You Should Leave , and butt plugs. And like Swiss Army Man says: everything everywhere matters to everything.

Part of the brilliance of Everything Everywhere All At Once is the remarkable amount of ideas Daniels can cram into this story without it becoming an absurd mess. However crazy you’re thinking a story can get—triple it. There are no restraints, no stops, no idea too wild that doesn’t make it into Everything Everywhere . And while at times, the film can almost feel suffocatingly overwhelming, it’s all part of the bigger plan, an everything bagel of probabilities.

Amongst this film that flies by so fast, it should have an epilepsy warning, is an extremely touching story about the paths we take in our lives, the paths that we didn’t take, and how they lead us to exactly where we need to be. Again, this is coming from the two directors that made a guy’s friendship with a dead body a truly moving story. Daniels can make anything (and everything) happen.

Key to this narrative are the performances by Yeoh, Quan, and Hsu. With so many versions of these characters running around this multiverse of madness, these three are able to meet any challenge that the Daniels throw at them—whether a star-crossed lover-type story, a Pixar parody, or some of the most entertaining fight scenes in recent memory. As the grounding force of Everything Everywhere , Yeoh is simply incredible, as no matter what incarnation of Evelyn we see her in, Yeoh always brings that original Evelyn’s aspirations, attitude, and fears with her. Also tremendous is Quan, the gigantic beating heart of the film, who gives an earnest, hilarious, and emotional performance, and Hsu, who has to be both extremely vulnerable and one of the biggest threats to the universe at the same time—not an easy task.

With Everything Everywhere All At Once , Daniels is touching on many of the same concepts they tried to tackle with Swiss Army Man , just in a more bonkers way with a larger scope. Everything Everywhere has to be as nutso as it is to prove its point: when everything is possible, what truly matters? While the third act can occasionally seem weight down by Daniels’ script attempting to hit all the grander points they’re trying to make, it all comes together in the end if you’re willing to take the ride. On the way, Daniels explores the hopelessness of depression, the little miracles that truly make life worthwhile, how acts of kindness can be an extraordinary asset, and—most fitting to this film—how it’s OK to be a mess.

If Daniels had said they had spent the six years since Swiss Army Man filming Everything Everywhere All At Once and putting together this awe-inspiring world, it would make perfect sense. It’s rare that a film crams as much into it as this one does, yet without feeling overstuffed or ridiculous for the sake of being audacious. There’s a real determination and intention to every chaotic choice, a method to this madness that ultimately makes Everything Everywhere All At Once one of the most ambitious and ballsy films in recent years—maybe even ever. Daniels try to cram everything everywhere all at once into Everything Everywhere All At Once , and I’ll be damned, they accomplished that goal with brilliance and style.

Everything Everywhere All at Once Perfects Optimistic Nihilism

Ke Huy Quan Jamie Lee Curtis Michelle Yeoh in production still from Everything Everywhere All At Once Curtis stands...

In 2012, the legendary Twitter account @horse_ebooks tweeted, “ Everything happens so much. " Despite bordering on nonsense, the message singularly captured the feeling of exhaustion that comes with trying to keep up with the flood of inputs that demand attention every day. It is in this place of chaotic resignation that Everything Everywhere All at Once steps in to offer clarity.

Everything Everywhere , the latest from the directing duo known as Daniels ( Swiss Army Man ), centers on Evelyn (played in dozens of incarnations by Michelle Yeoh), a woman who's just trying to file her taxes to keep the laundromat she owns with her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), running. Her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), wants to bring her girlfriend to the birthday party for Evelyn's elderly father (James Hong), who's old-fashioned and won't approve of their relationship. All the while, Waymond is struggling to find the space to tell Evelyn that he wants a divorce. It's frenetically told but also unfolds like a perfectly relatable story about the chaos of life and the feeling of being pulled in a thousand directions at once. And then the multiverse opens up.

Stories about multiverses are myriad in popular culture. For proof, one need look no further than the Marvel Cinematic Universe. (Ironically, Daniels—Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert— turned down the opportunity to work on Loki , which dealt heavily in multiversal possibilities .) But rarely are they explored as in-depth and meaningfully as they are in Everything Everywhere . Evelyn's foray into her multiverse gives her perspective, a chance to reconcile her boring job, whiny husband, and troublesome daughter with versions of her life in which she's a hibachi chef, movie star, and—in a twist—a literal rock. Equal parts soul-searching and sci-fi, Kwan and Scheinert's movie takes all of this to its emotional and logical extremes. But instead of arriving at some nihilistic conclusion, it poses a more optimistic question: If there are no rules, no consequences, then why not go wild?

Absurdity courses through every scene. Navigation of the multiverse involves performing silly, random actions like eating lip balm or accepting an award, and each time Evelyn or a member of her family makes a decision, another timeline branches off. The point is that seemingly small or inconsequential decisions can lead to radically different outcomes. Throughout Everything Everywhere , characters perform ridiculous actions in order to gain new abilities, but in the end it's the minuscule and unlikely ones that ultimately change the course of the party Evelyn throws for her father.

At the onset, it's easy to see why Evelyn is frustrated with her job, her husband, her daughter. But after seeing the many ways their lives could have unfolded, the countless possibilities of who they could have become, a deeper truth emerges. If nothing matters, then the only thing that can matter is what you choose. The multiverse might contain an infinite amount of pain and heartbreak, but it also contains an infinite amount of creativity, passion, beauty, and connection.

Through that lens, cynicism itself gets distilled down to just another choice. It's not naive or ignorant to choose to value little moments, small acts of kindness. In a world where so much can feel insignificant, choosing cruelty or hopelessness has no greater value than opting for kindness and empathy. If anything, choosing destruction only accelerates entropy.

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Everything Everywhere doesn't just reject cynicism, it refutes it. And that might be its most defining value. The film takes the concept of an infinite multiverse—and by extension, the vast, overwhelming nature of our own experiences—and examines it both critically and compassionately. It, quite literally at times, stares into the void and doesn't blink as the void stares back.

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‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Review: ‘The Matrix’ Meets the Multiverse in Daniels’ Instant Classic

David ehrlich.

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Multiverses are so hot right now. And why shouldn’t they be? At a time when people can’t even look at their phones without being confronted by a seemingly infinite number of competing realities — a time which everything seems close enough to touch, but almost nothing feels possible to change, and even the happiest people you know are haunted by the endless possibilities of who else they might have been — telling a story that only takes place on a single plane of existence might as well be an act of denial.

That isn’t a problem for the filmmaking duo of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (better known as Daniels ), who once created an interactive six-minute short that could be played in 3,618,502,788,666,131,106,986,593,281,521,497,120,414,687,020,801,267,626, 233,049,500,247,285,301,248 different ways . These guys aren’t just uniquely prepared to meet the present moment, they’ve been waiting for it to catch up with them for a long time. So it’s not much of a surprise that the project they’ve been working on since 2016’s “ Swiss Army Man ” sees the crisis of living with “ Everything Everywhere All at Once ” more clearly than any other movie like it.

Not that there are any other movies like it. Here is an orgiastic work of slaphappy genius that doesn’t operate like a narrative film so much as a particle accelerator — or maybe a cosmic washing machine — that two psychotic 12-year-olds designed in the hopes of reconciling the anxiety of what our lives could be with the beauty of what they are. It’s a machine powered by the greatest performance that Michelle Yeoh has ever given, pumped full of the zaniest martial arts battles that Stephen Chow has never shot, and soaked through with the kind of “anything goes” spirit that’s only supposed to be on TV these days.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” is as overstuffed as its title implies, even more juvenile than its pedigree suggests, and so creatively unbound from the minute it starts that it makes Daniels’ previous efforts seem like they were made with Bressonian restraint by comparison (for context, their last feature was a sweet fable starring Harry Potter as an explosively farting corpse). It’s a movie that I saw twice just to make sure I hadn’t completely hallucinated it the first time around, and one that I will soon be seeing a third time for the same reason. I don’t ever expect to understand how it was (or got) made, but I already know that it works. And I know that it works because my impulse to pick on its imperfections and wonder how it might’ve been different eventually forfeits to the utter miracle of its existence.

It’s a movie… about a flustered Chinese-American woman trying to finish her taxes. Evelyn Wang (Yeoh) is being audited — first by the IRS, and then by the other great evils of our multiverse. She and her stubbornly guileless husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan, a sublime revelation in one of his first major roles since the days of Short Round) immigrated to California in pursuit of happiness after Evelyn’s overbearing father, Gong Gong (James Hong, 93 years old and yet still in his prime) forbid the marriage, but their dreams of a brighter future were soon quashed by the realities of running a small business and raising a child of their own.

The spectrum of women who Evelyn imagined she might become grew smaller every day, the possibilities burning away like joss paper until the proprietress of a failing laundromat was the only person left in the ashes. Now Evelyn’s life consists of wincing her way through racist micro-aggressions at work and beyond, peeling off the googly eyes that Waymond sticks everywhere to make objects seem happier, and acting as narrow-minded towards her lesbian daughter Joy (an inter-dimensionally great Stephanie Hsu in what should be a star-making performance) as her own father was towards her. Every parent wants what’s best for their children, but even the ones who should know better can delude themselves into thinking they know what that is. The more faith you have in someone’s potential, the harder it can be to recognize how they’re achieving it.

Maybe it would help if Evelyn could see history repeating itself — if she could remember the look that fell across her dad’s face when the doctor told him: “I’m sorry, it’s a girl.” Luckily for Evelyn, the entire space-time continuum will avail itself to her by the end of the Chinese New Year party she’s throwing as part of Gong Gong’s latest visit. And she might not even have to wait that long, as an emergency meeting with demonic IRS inspector Deirdre Beaubeirdra is interrupted by an even more urgent plea for Evelyn to save the entire multiverse from annihilation.

The hows and whys of what happens next are best left for audiences to discover first-hand, but it might help to imagine if “The Matrix” had been directed by people who grew up watching “The Matrix” — more specifically, by people who grew up watching “The Matrix,” spent their twenties pushing the visual boundaries of viral videos in much the same way as the Wachowskis broke new ground for Hollywood blockbusters, and then spent all of the cache they’d accrued on a disorientingly sweet movie about a corpse that farts so hard it can function as a jet ski. That’s what we’re dealing with here.

Evelyn soon finds herself pin-balling between “alternate life paths” in much the same way as Neo was slingshotted between the real world and a simulation. Or are they pin-balling into her? A version of Waymond acts as her Morpheus (few characters have ever been saddled with this much exposition, and even fewer have done as much with it), while bystanders like Deirdre are conscripted into a war between a parallel universe and a dimension-hopping demigod. A crucial difference soon emerges: Evelyn isn’t the One, she’s the Zero. In an infinite sea of possible Evelyns, she is the ultimate sum of unrealized potential and missed opportunities. No other version of herself has settled for less, or found so little joy in the people she loves — her daughter most of all.

Evelyn is an empty vessel, and that makes it uniquely easy for her to contain other iterations of herself. One of them is a Peking opera singer. One of them is a piñata. One of them became a Hong Kong action star after denying Waymond’s marriage proposal, and now yearns for the man who got away in a rainswept alley that’s soaked with “In the Mood for Love” ambiance and shot with flashes of Wong Kar-Wai’s signature step-printing technique (Yeoh channels Maggie Cheung, and Quan makes for a dashing Tony Leung stand-in).

This flourish, fleshed out with footage from Yeoh’s “Crazy Rich Asians” press tour, is par for the course in a movie that invites its most famous cast members to span the entire spectrum of their screen personas, as “Everything Everywhere All at Once” refracts them through the afterimage of their careers with a prismatic dynamism that mirrors the multiverse itself (“Millennium Actress” fans will find this to be one of several different elements that lend Daniels’ film the elastic essence of a live-action anime). Deirdre is a literally multi-dimensional role played by Jamie Lee Curtis — not someone I would’ve expected to star in one of the great fight scenes of the 21st century, but our universe is weird like that. Her character is often tough, sometimes tender, and always greater than the sum of her parts because of how fearlessly Curtis layers them on top of each other.

EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, Jamie Lee Curtis, 2022. © A24 / Courtesy Everett Collection

Of course, it’s Yeoh’s monumental performance that holds the multiverse together, as she skips from slapstick cluelessness to staggering omniscience as fluidly as Evelyn moves between worlds. One moment she’s trying to focus on her taxes, the next she’s looking for love in a universe where a quirk of evolution has, um, changed the laws of intimacy in a very ridiculous way. (As you might recall from the farting corpse movie, Daniels tend to use playground humor as a Trojan horse to more directly interrogate the nature of our existence than polite cinema might allow, and the fight sequence in which Evelyn squares off against two guys who have large trophies jammed up their butts — masterfully choreographed by stunt coordinator Timothy Eulich — is just the tip of the iceberg here.)

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” allows Yeoh to revisit the best kind of roles she’s ever had, shine in the kind of roles she was never given, and dive head-first into the kind of roles that have always seemed beneath her; first one after the other, and then later all at the same time. It’s no surprise that the star of “Supercop 2” still excels at balletic martial arts choreography (watching Quan decimate some rent-a-cops with a fanny pack is another story), just as it’s no secret that the beating heart of “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” can play a withering mom so well that even people in the audience might feel like they’re letting her down.

But Yeoh’s performance as the ultimate everywoman is uniquely astonishing because of how well she braids her many talents together. Evelyn is splintered by self-denial to the degree that even her subtitles fracture apart at one point, and yet the actress playing her is so locked-in to the character’s belief that her life is “wrong” that you can feel Evelyn start to reclaim her perspective when things go truly haywire. The entire second chapter of this three-part movie unfolds like an exponentially more complex version of the memory chase from “Being John Malkovich,” and yet Yeoh never allows us to get lost as she careens across the multiverse — through everything, toward nothing, and possibly back towards a new understanding of “how things are supposed to be.”

Speaking of not realizing how good we had it, it’s telling that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” deliberately evokes so many different movies from 1999 (Daniels also tap into the manic thrum of “Magnolia” in order to depict the entropy of Evelyn’s daily life, and exhume the swaggering nihilism of “Fight Club” for the villain’s self-destructive mayhem). The closest sibling to this film in terms of its anything goes, everything goes hard, DIY doomsday cult aesthetic is probably the Sion Sono freak-outs that came a few years later — Joy’s costumes are worth the price of admission unto themselves, especially the Björk-inspired white bagel dress she wears to the end of the world — but there’s no mistaking that Daniels embody a there are no rules! approach that used to be commonplace in mainstream American cinema and now feels as alien to us as the members of Evelyn’s family do to each other. It’s wild that such a visionary take on the multiverse is getting a wide release while “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is still in theaters; it would be like a top 40 radio station playing “Kid A” and Kid Rock back-to-back one night in the early 2000s just because they both technically qualified as popular music.

The filmmaking here is so bold and without boundaries that it sometimes feels out of place in such a warm hug of a movie. That push-and-pull is endemic to the nature of Daniels’ work, and the more virtuosically multi-dimensional “Everything Everywhere All at Once” becomes, the more unambiguously its vision calcifies into a small handful of comforting truths. Any film that spans from the dawn of life on Earth to the potential death of the universe itself is going to operate in broad terms, and yet Evelyn and her family are such lovably specific people that it can be frustrating when they start talking to each other in platitudes, no matter how beautiful those platitudes often are.

This is a movie animated by the friction it creates from rubbing the entire concept of human existence against one woman’s struggle to focus on some paperwork — among so many other things, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” has to be the truest depiction of ADHD I’ve ever seen — and Daniels can only hope to sustain that tension by constantly escalating the tug-of-war between the epicness of their premise and the intimacy of their characters. They have to double down on every joke and triple-underline every breakthrough just so that Evelyn’s epiphany that “we’re all small and stupid” might actually feel like the biggest thing in the world.

It does. “Everything Everywhere All at Once” is about finding something to hold onto in the midst of oblivion, and it isn’t afraid to make itself the ultimate example of how that might work. Guided by an omnipresent Son Lux score that always manages to find a measure of harmony amid the chaos, Daniels spin the tedium of laundry and taxes into an apocalyptic war against the spirit of nihilism itself. And just when it seems like their runaway imaginations are about to lead this film up its own butthole and straight into the void beyond, something reaches out to hold it down and pull it back from the abyss (an image that “Everything Everywhere All at Once” makes literal in heart-burstingly poignant fashion).

In creating a multiverse so wide that even the greatest of miracles are reduced to mere statistical inevitabilities, Daniels have made something truly special: A movie that celebrates the infinite possibilities of its medium by finding a measure of I wouldn’t trade it for the world beauty in every permutation. A movie that reconciles the smallness of our lives with the infinity of their potential. A movie that will forever change the way you think about bluetooth, butt plugs, and Brad Bird — about everything bagels and everything else. This may not be the only universe there is, but it’s the only one we’ve got. But if we’re able to see it clearly, there’s an outside chance it might just be the only one we need.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” premiered at the 2022 SXSW Film Festival. A24 will release it in theaters on Friday, March 25.

Martial arts meets surreal sci-fi

By Adi Robertson , a senior tech and policy editor focused on VR, online platforms, and free expression. Adi has covered video games, biohacking, and more for The Verge since 2011.

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Michelle Yeoh in Everything Everywhere All At Once

Perhaps the weirdest thing about Everything Everywhere All At Once , a film in which a notable plot point involves riffing on 2001: A Space Odyssey to explain an alternate reality where humans evolved hot dogs for fingers, is that it sometimes doesn’t feel that weird. Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, it lies at the intersection of a frenetic music video marathon, a slapstick martial arts comedy, and a surrealist sci-fi pastiche. But it’s anchored in an earnest family drama that’s elevated by a series of great performances, particularly from central star Michelle Yeoh.

There’s a whole lot going on in Everything Everywhere , but the basic gist is straightforward. Evelyn Wang (Yeoh) is the harried owner of a failing laundromat and a messy, unsatisfying life. Her apparently milquetoast husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) has served her with divorce papers, her perpetually demanding father’s (James Hong) health is failing, and her daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) is frustrated by Evelyn’s own snippy disapproval. A ruthless IRS worker named Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis) is auditing her for, among countless other dubious decisions, claiming a karaoke machine as a tax expense.

Then, as Evelyn is making a last-ditch attempt to save her business, Waymond’s body is suddenly possessed by a counterpart from one of near-infinite alternate realities. He tells her she’s the only person who can save the multiverse from a reality-destroying menace. And she still has to get her taxes done.

As alt-Waymond acknowledges, the multiverse’s precise mechanics are complex and not always logical. “Verse-jumpers” can use earpieces to puppet the bodies of their alternate selves, and they can osmose skills from counterparts in other worlds by performing pivotal actions that set their lives on different paths. (For unexplained reasons, most of these tasks are painful or gross, like getting paper cuts or eating chapstick.) The process opens a slight psychic link between the counterparts, and for verse-jumpers who push themselves too far, comprehending this range of infinite possibilities can lead to a devastating existential crisis.

Everything Everywhere’s multiverse opens the door to entertaining dream logic

The setup offers Kwan and Scheinert a chance to pinball between a host of mini-narratives and a truly dizzying number of colorful costume changes, and it justifies a series of eccentric martial arts sequences that essentially work on dream logic. Everything Everywhere’s fight scenes are more entertaining, more creative, and better-shot than those of many full-fledged action movies, including ones from the very cinematic franchises it’s clearly drawing on. (They’re far more fun than almost anything in the Marvel films made by the Russo brothers, who served as producers here.)

Yeoh’s main self is a pitch-perfect confused everywoman who can suddenly pull off incredible acrobatic feats tempered by goofy physical comedy, while her other personas showcase her effortless charisma. Quan shifts fluidly between his hapless primary-universe self and his hyper-competent alter-ego, with both tone and body language flipping in split-second transitions. Even Curtis, introduced as a snide bureaucrat, gets a menacing turn in one of her many personas.

Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh, and James Hong in Everything Everywhere All At Once

Everything Everywhere is full of intricate connections and Chekhov’s guns that cohere more on an aesthetic level than a narrative one. It’s constantly looping back to build extended multiverse vignettes from minor details earlier in the film, including jokes that range from mild to fairly crass. (This is a good time to mention that Kwan and Scheinert also directed Swiss Army Man , a film that starred Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse.) A few of these callbacks feel extraneous, and based on a Q&A session following the film’s SXSW premiere, that’s after at least one subplot was left on the cutting room floor. But they help sell the film’s humor by spinning cinematic references and throwaway gags — what if you put, like, everything on a bagel, man — into deadpan scenes delivered with visual flair.

What if you put, like, everything on a bagel

The dramatic elements still don’t always add up. Everything Everywhere’s sci-fi sequences can be written like they’re marking time between absurdities, peppered with expository dialogue that doesn’t gel with the more compelling and naturalistic exchanges elsewhere. The script is full of monologues about life and humanity that sound good in isolation but are shuffled around as abruptly as the film’s costumes, asserting character motivations that haven’t been well-established before that moment.

Even so, the relationship between Evelyn, Joy, Waymond, and (unexpectedly) Deirdre builds up to something sweet that stays just a hair away from being cloying. Everything Everywhere’s individual personas are largely archetypes, albeit archetypes that aren’t often seen in mainstream sci-fi movies. But the film treats them as complementary facets of a single complicated person rather than a plethora of separate entities. There’s no cheap ambiguity about whether any of the film’s events are happening — the multiverse definitely exists, and it contains people whose fingers are definitely hot dogs — but its array of worlds have the vibe of fantasies that highlight aspects of the characters’ core selves, making them more than gimmicks or weirdness for its own sake.

Stephanie Hsu in Everything Everywhere All At Once

This might be due less to the script than to the cast, who bring consistency to the most nonsensical scenarios. Quan gives Waymond a resilient vulnerability that comes through even when he’s dragging Evelyn around the multiverse. While Hsu gets less screen time as her original-universe character, she balances being viciously nihilistic and hopelessly lost as one of Joy’s alter egos. Deirdre is legitimately mean, but — like many real-world jerks — capable of kindness and affection.

And in a film evoking countless earlier movies about disaffected losers who discover they’re secretly heroes, Yeoh offers a poignant and magnetic take on the trope. Her protagonist is disappointed in life but still a functioning, mature human being surrounded by people who are flawed but ultimately decent. Evelyn’s plunge into the multiverse is foreshadowed by the way she navigates her multigenerational and multilingual family, her rapid-fire dialog switching between Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. One of Everything Everywhere’s running jokes is that its protagonist is literally the least talented possible version of herself, but the gaps between Evelyn’s selves never seem jarring — you can believe that a few decisions separate a beleaguered laundromat owner from a master chef or opera singer.

For all the bizarre stuff that’s thrown into Everything Everywhere, Kwan and Scheinert’s riskiest move is arguably picking a nearly 140-minute runtime for a comedy built around deliberate tonal whiplash, a potentially polarizing style of humor, and an exhausting pace. Everything Everywhere is a giant tangled yarn ball of a movie, and if it doesn’t work for you, that feeling will last for a very, very long time. If it does work, though, it might be one of the most charmingly ridiculous movies you see this year.

Everything Everywhere All At Once debuts in theaters on March 25th

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Everything Everywhere All at Once is a multiverse masterpiece

Daniels’ gripping, hilarious fantasy rivals The Matrix for game-changing effects and ambition

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It’s just about impossible to overemphasize the winking vulgarity of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s work together as the filmmaking collective Daniels. Their first feature film, Swiss Army Man , saw Paul Dano riding the farting corpse of Daniel Radcliffe to freedom and glory. Their best-known music video, for DJ Snake and Lil Jon’s “ Turn Down for What ,” has Kwan feeling the beat so hard that his crotch smashes through walls and ceilings, infecting the breasts and asses of everyone who sees him with similar destructive energy. In their short film Interesting Ball , a cosmic event results in Scheinert being bodily sucked up into Kwan’s rectum. Their imagery is often joyously crude, and almost always startling, as they go places most creators wouldn’t dare.

But at the same time, it’s just as difficult to overemphasize the humanistic messages their work embraces. All these projects have people finding a strangely compelling, life-affirming power in the weird, gross places the world takes them. Swiss Army Man in particular is downright startling in the depth of its thoughts on cynicism, existentialism, and the meaning of human connection. Daniels’ latest project, the wild martial-arts multiverse fantasy Everything Everywhere All at Once , continues the trend with bloody murder-dildos, weaponized snot, and a fast-paced, hilarious anal-insertion war. But it’s also an achingly honest examination of despair, cynicism, anger, and ennui, all leading up to a message that’s all the more moving because before it asserts that life is worth living, it stares deep into the abyss, considering all the reasons why people might think otherwise.

Jamie Lee Curtis and Michelle Yeoh sit wearily outside of a laundromat at night in Everything Everywhere All at Once

Everything Everywhere ’s plot is best discovered in the moment, since it unfolds with a speed and verve that converts every new revelation into a fresh jolt of electricity. It’s enough to say that martial-arts superstar Michelle Yeoh stars as Evelyn Wang, an overstretched first-generation Chinese immigrant who owns a laundromat with her amiable husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), but barely has time for him or their frustrated adult daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) amid her day-to-day business struggles.

Among other things, the laundromat is being audited by humorless IRS agent Deirdre (a thoroughly disguised Jamie Lee Curtis), just as Evelyn is trying to impress her contemptuous visiting father, Gong Gong (James Hong). Meanwhile, Joy is trying to get Evelyn to acknowledge Joy’s girlfriend Becky, and Waymond is trying to get Evelyn to acknowledge him at all. When Evelyn is informed that she’s the key to fighting a vast evil that threatens the entire multiverse, her knee-jerk response is a distracted, exasperated “very busy today, no time to help you.”

When the threat catches up with her anyway, Everything Everywhere absolutely explodes into a series of creatively staged, comically over-the-top battles, a trip through different timelines and realities, and a staggeringly fast-paced series of personal explorations and revelations. The worlds Evelyn accesses are silly, sad, or strange, but none of them challenge her as much as the things she’s missed out on understanding about herself, her family, and her own past and future.

Michelle Yeoh, in period hanfu dress, backs into a forest as an off-screen assailant points a sword at her in Everything Everywhere All at Once

This is a movie that operates at the revved-up pace of stories like Edgar Wright’s Scott Pilgrim vs. the World or the recent animated Oscar nominee The Mitchells vs. the Machines , with the characters dragged breathlessly from one manic action sequence to the next. And yet Kwan and Scheinert keep finding small, quiet pockets where Evelyn can consider how she’s let herself and other people down, what she owes them, and what she can still offer them. For a movie that frequently throws Evelyn through realities and through walls and windows, it’s admirably focused on her well-being and her understanding of herself. And more than that, it’s focused on understanding how people inevitably limit their possible futures whenever they make choices, and how meaningless life can look after a series of choices goes wrong.

Everything Everywhere ’s multiverse is a remarkably flexible metaphor. It’s suitable for expressing some common frustrations the audience may relate to, about botched choices and wasted opportunity. But it’s just as suited for setting up a series of ridiculously kickass action sequences where literally anything is possible, because the characters aren’t bound by reality or causality. Kwan and Scheinert use that central idea of the multiverse to let their characters change bodies, costumes, skills, and settings on the fly, in ways that are visually dazzling and even overwhelming. But they set it all up with a clarity of thought and intention that make it surprisingly easy — and thrilling — to follow.

Michelle Yeoh, bloody and wearing a googly eye on her forehead, grabs Glee’s Harry Shum, Jr. by the hair during a fight scene in Everything Everywhere All At Once

And even as they’re focusing on the big picture of a million universes collapsing around a single predatory evil, they’re just as aware of the smaller picture. So much of this story is told with tiny, telling details, like the way Joy nervously, wordlessly rolls her girlfriend’s sleeves down to cover her tattoos before trying to introduce her to Gong Gong. Or the way Waymond wistfully watches two older Chinese people at the IRS exchanging a demure kiss, and clearly longs for the same kind of tenderness in his life. Above all else, the Daniels trust their viewers to keep up with the story even when these kinds of grace notes are blurring by at warp speed, without explanation or underlining.

Everything Everywhere All at Once operates in a pop culture universe filled with familiar detritus for genre fans: a little Douglas Adams absurdity here, a visual quote or concept or line or mood cribbed from a wealth of other movies there. But while the Daniels quote 2001: A Space Odyssey in one scene and The Terminator in another, the movie’s biggest touchpoint is The Matrix , and not just because Evelyn discovers, to her surprise, that she knows kung fu.

In spite of a long series of Matrix sequels and re-quels , ripoffs and copycats, this is the first movie that authentically feels as surprising, daring, and outright game-changing as the Wachowskis’ 1999 original. The special effects, with that kaleidoscopic approach to shifting forms, look as radical now as bullet time was when it first arrived. The movie’s heady deconstructive philosophy of the universe feels as ambitious and radical as The Matrix ’s Gnostic take on reality did back then. And the martial-arts combat, carefully positioned between impressively choreographed and openly silly, feels as radical as it ever has in a Jackie Chan or Woo-Ping Yuen choreographed fight.

But where The Matrix is entirely caught up in its own sense of airless cool, in its humorless cybertech-Gothic aesthetic and love of kickass tableaux, Everything Everywhere has a sense of play and humor that helps make all the existential philosophy go down more smoothly. One effect of that warp-speed storytelling is that the film sometimes slingshots from pathos to punchlines, then back again, quickly enough to induce whiplash. But in this anything-goes environment, the shifts don’t feel like tonal contradictions. They just feel like an acknowledgment that life is simultaneously painful and absurd, and that the tension between the two helps define the sensation of being human.

The main cast of Everything Everywhere All at Once sits together at an IRS hearing

The cast is just stellar. Ke Huy Quan — Short Round in 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Data in The Goonies — may be the biggest revelation in the cast, with a demanding role that has him switching affects and personalities repeatedly throughout the film, while maintaining that gentle longing throughout. But the Daniels demand a lot of all of their cast, and Yeoh, Hsu, Hong, and Curtis are up to the movie’s deeply weird challenges. (Jenny Slate and Glee ’s Harry Shum Jr. also show up in minor roles that no one’s likely to forget.) Like all of Kwan and Scheinert’s projects, Everything Everywhere is distinctive, both in its big ambitions and its subversive grossness. No one else makes movies like this. Possibly no one else would even want to.

That can be a little sad to consider — even in a multiverse of endless possibility, we’re unlikely to see a movie like this again. But at the same time, it means that every moment of Everything Everywhere is an exciting unknown. There’s no predicting where a Daniels project will travel in any given moment: up a character’s ass, or off into their wildest dreams. Sometimes it’s both at once. The miracle is that Scheinert and Kwan make it all feel natural, even when they’re going places no one else could imagine.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is now playing in major cities, with a nationwide rollout beginning on April 8.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once Dizzies Itself Into Transcendence

Jobu Tapaki (Stephanie Hsu), the universe-hopping villain of Everything Everywhere All at Once , wears ensembles of escalating outrageousness over the course of the film: a matching plaid cape trench and visor set, a stylized golfing costume, an Elvis-esque rhinestoned jumpsuit. Omnipotence may saddle you with a sense of crushing nihilism, but it also nets you a fabulous wardrobe, which is why, when Jobu shows off the all-consuming object of annihilation she’s built, she does it in a futuristic riff on an elaborate Elizabethan gown. Anything is possible in Everything Everywhere All at Once , a work whose dazzling, dizzying qualities can be summed up in every one of Jobu’s impossible outfit changes. And yet the costuming choice that best explains why the film is such a knockout is a knit jacket that its heroine, Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh), wears during the Chinese New Year party that she and her husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), are throwing. It’s a perfect article of pragmatic Chinese matron fashion, selected with affection and humor — red, with floral patterns down the sleeves, and on the back, as a decorative non sequitur, it reads, “PUNK.”

Evelyn is not a punk. She’s a harried small-business owner in Simi Valley who’s having trouble paying her taxes. Around a decade ago, a now-defunct Tumblr called Accidental Chinese Hipsters used to document items like Evelyn’s “PUNK” sweater as evidence of the overlap between semi-ironic scenesterism and Chinatown granny styling. The joke was that the cool kids could only dream of matching the oblivious swagger of an elderly Chinese man in a sweater vest and a night-market beanie emblazoned with “Die Yuppie Scum.” But underscoring the project was an understanding of how unremarked upon its subjects otherwise were, considered invisible even in their ubiquity in laboring to keep the world running.

To note that Evelyn is not the kind of woman whose interior landscape gets explored onscreen is an understatement. Evelyn has all but merged into the backdrop of the laundromat that she and Waymond own, live above, and are in danger of losing, offering herself up on the altar of work out of habit more than anything. Her marriage to the happy-go-lucky Waymond is on the rocks. Her relationship with her depressive daughter Joy, whose queerness she can begrudgingly tolerate but whose professional inertia she can’t, is desperately estranged. Her disapproving father (James Hong) has arrived from China for a visit. The Wangs are also in the process of being audited by the surly Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis). On top of all of that, Evelyn keeps getting contacted by forces from another reality who claim she’s the only one who can save the universe.

Everything Everywhere All at Once is the second feature from the directing duo of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, a.k.a. Daniels, who started in music videos and inventive shorts before graduating to the 2016 film Swiss Army Man . That inventive, juvenile, and ultimately tiresome dramedy, which starred Paul Dano as a marooned, suicidal man and Daniel Radcliffe as the farting corpse he rides across the ocean back to civilization, really showed off the pair’s strengths and weaknesses. They strive for a mix of the profane and the transcendent, and also like to follow a dumb joke way past its logical conclusion and back around to a (hopefully) moving conclusion. They may have retained their fondness for things getting stuck up butts, but they’ve grown over the years, and Everything Everywhere All at Once is something approaching a maximalist masterpiece. It’s also about 15 to 20 percent more movie than it needs to be, and gets bogged down by its overabundance of ideas in the middle. The payoffs for Evelyn misremembering the concept of Ratatouille , for a universe in which everyone has hot-dog fingers, and the sentient-rock conversation would be more effective if one of them were snipped.

That said, it’s a movie with an extended bit about a misremembered Ratatouille , with a hot-dog-fingers reality, and with talking rocks. Evelyn learns, with the help of a tough-guy Waymond from another reality, to get in touch with the many other Evelyns across the multiverse, borrowing their skills as martial-arts movie stars, sign spinners, singers, and Benihana chefs in an effort to defeat Jobu Tapaki — only to realize that Jobu Tapaki is a dark version of Joy who was broken by her mother’s pressures to succeed. Snapping in bursts from universe to universe, Everything Everywhere All at Once constantly courts sensory overload, lining up the edges of surreal domestic scenes and wuxia fights and a Wong Kar-wai street-scene homage and the windowless confines of the IRS, and moving between them, sometimes too quickly to register. But for all its own garbled mythology, which it doesn’t take especially seriously, always at its core are the Wangs and the hurt they keep doing to one another in the name of love.

March has been a big month for movies about mothers, daughters, and diasporic Asian angst. Turning Red pitted a 13-year-old Chinese Canadian girl against the controlling affection of her mother, with a side of boy bands and magical pandas. Umma went for the horror treatment, with Sandra Oh as a Korean American single mom harboring secrets about the past, though it actually landed in the realm of camp. Everything Everywhere All at Once is the most sprawling of them all, a story of disappointment and miscommunication and the burden of expectations across generations, and of the three, it’s the only one to center the immigrant parent instead of looking on from the point of view of their kid. The film extends an empathy toward Evelyn that’s deeply moving and long in coming, giving consideration to her in all her shortcomings — her impatience, her callousness with those close to her, her inability to finish anything, her doubts — and then finding in her generosity and grace as well.

It’s a euphoric showcase for Yeoh, bringing the superstar down to earth and then flinging her back into space, but it’s also a poignant return to the screen for former child star Quan, who as Waymond is the tender heart of the film, as well as someone who can use a fanny pack as a rope dart in combat. Everything Everywhere All at Once may be a kaleidoscopic fantasy battle across space, time, genres, and emotions, but it’s an incredibly moving family drama first. Maybe there’s something punk about it after all.

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‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Review: Chaos Reigns – and So Does Michelle Yeoh – in Unhinged Multiverse Movie

Hyperactive directing duo “the Daniels” swing for the fences with this exhausting existential comedy, wherein a Chinese woman stares infinity in the kisser.

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

Chief Film Critic

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Way back in 1998, before Marvel made multiverses a household concept, Gwyneth Paltrow starred in a lovely parallel-realities drama called “Sliding Doors,” in which a woman’s life split along two paths, depending on whether or not her character caught a specific train. At the time, juggling these competing fates was considered to be so demanding that the filmmakers obliged one of the two Gwyneths to get a haircut, so audiences could tell them apart.

Produced by comrades in maximalism the Russo brothers, the result is a mess, but a meticulously planned and executed mess, where every shot, every sound effect and every sight gag fits exactly as the Daniels intended into this dense and cacophonous eyesore, which endeavors to capture the staggering burden of trying to exist in a world of boundless choice (an idea Jaco Van Dormael’s “Mr. Nobody” did with comparable complexity). It’s a hyperactive solution for today’s attention-deficit audiences, who’ve been bombarded by bad news — of pandemics and protests and imminent world wars — and whose real concerns boil down to the basics, like getting along with their parents or scrounging the money to pay the rent.

Scheinert and Kwan are style-over-substance directors who desperately want their films to be as profound as they are formally inventive. Their 2016 feature debut, “Swiss Army Man,” was the same way: a pageant of gonzo Michel Gondry-like invention that quieted down in the final stretch to make a sincere statement against suicide. This one looks at the intense parent-child bond in one Asian family — especially the impossible demands that the immigrant mom puts on her daughter — and argues that letting go while loving unconditionally is the answer.

There are enough ideas in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” to fuel a dozen movies, or else a full-blown TV series, but the Daniels have shoehorned it all into a bombastic, emotionally draining 139 minutes. Moviegoers with limber imaginations may well appreciate the lunatic ambition and nutso execution of this high-concept hurricane, which ricochets like a live-action cartoon for most of that duration. But less versatile viewers will emerge frazzled, like Wile E. Coyote after swallowing a stick of dynamite: their heads charred, blinking blankly as smoke wafts from their ears.

As much as narrative innovation typically excites me, I confess to falling in the latter category this time around, unable to grasp the movie’s overcomplicated sci-fi logic, which takes the red-pill mind-screw of “The Matrix” and multiplies it by infinity. It’s “The OA” on acid. Yeoh plays immigrant matriarch Evelyn Wang, who operates a laundromat with husband Raymond (Ke Huy Quan, who played Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and Data in “The Goonies,” now all grown up) that’s being audited by the IRS. As if her tax woes weren’t enough, she’s saddled with personal issues too: Nothing she does is good enough for her father, Gong Gong (James Hong), which in turn informs the way Evelyn treats her exasperated adult daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu).

Raymond has drawn up divorce papers, but instead of serving them, he’s overcome by a quivering sensation on the way to the tax office, whereby a version of Raymond from a parallel universe occupies his body. This more agile proxy performs an impromptu mental scan of Evelyn, instructing her how to access her alternate lives, unlocking all kinds of kooky Charlie Kaufman-esque possibilities. Evelyn doesn’t know what to think, but follows Not-Raymond’s directions, which allow her to “verse-jump.”

Things only get more intimidating from there, as the quantum-leaping Raymond explains the rules that an alternate Evelyn discovered. Apparently, she’s some sort of big-brain physicist in another dimension, whereas she learns “you’re living your worst you” in this one — meaning that every other possible Evelyn made more successful life choices. One became a huge Hong Kong action star (that Evelyn is closest to real-life Yeoh), others an opera singer, a maid or a teppanyaki-style chef. The Daniels present as many of these realities as possible in short, zany micro-sketches. There’s even a universe in which everyone has hot dogs for fingers, and rather than cutting to that scenario just once, the directors bring it back again and again as an extended joke. Same thing with a running gag about a world where people are mind-controlled by raccoons.

One can’t help wondering what, if anything, wound up on the editing room floor in this movie, which shifts into dark, apocalyptic mode relatively early, as a demented alternate version of Deirdre comes after Evelyn like a broke-down, Lane Bryant-clad Terminator. But the evil IRS auditor isn’t the true antagonist here. Nor are the vaguely Agent Smith-like security guards. The real threat is Joy, Evelyn’s daughter, on whom Mom has piled life’s many disappointments, to the point that Joy finally snapped. She has reinvented herself as an entity known as Jobu Tupaki, who jumps from universe to universe murdering Evelyns and leaving a trail of chaos in her wake.

Great storytellers make sense of chaos, whereas the Daniels gleefully embrace it, amplifying the headachy sensation with rapid editing and Son Lux’s broken-pipes score. “Everything Everywhere” recognizes that life can be overwhelming, that family dynamics are tricky and the world isn’t fair. It counters those challenges with an unexpected sense of optimism, even as a giant CG everything bagel comes bursting through a parallel dimension to swallow up all that Evelyn holds dear. As the Daniels riffle manically between the dozen or so worlds they’ve created, we hardly notice that perhaps only 10 principal characters populate them. By keeping the cast small, they make it slightly easier to distinguish between the various realities — including one that can’t sustain life, in which Evelyn and Joy appear as rocks — but still can’t resist the kind of meta humor that inspires the feint where faux credits roll at the 85-minute mark. (Would that this were the end!)

Reviewed at Sepulveda Screening Room, Los Angeles, March 9, 2022. In SXSW Film Festival (opener). MPAA Rating: R. Running time: 139 MIN.

Production: An A24 release of a Gozie Agbo presentation of a Ley Line Entertainment production. Producers: Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Mike Larocca, Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, Jonathan Wang. Executive producers: Tim Headington, Theresa Steele Page, Todd Makurath, Josh Rudnik, Michelle Yeoh. Co-producers: Allison Rose Carter, Jon Read, Sarah Halley Finn.
Crew: Directors, writers: Daniel Kwan & Daniel Scheinert. Camera: Larkin Seiple. Editor: Paul Rogers. Music: Son Lux. Music supervisors: Lauren Marie Milkus, Bruce Gilbert
With: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tallie Medel, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., Biff Wiff. (English, Mandarin, Cantonese dialogue)

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Everything Everywhere All At Once Review

13 May 2022

Everything Everywhere All At Once

At the exact moment Everything Everywhere All At Once is about to kick into overdrive, Michelle Yeoh ’s Evelyn reads a vital piece of advice: “P.S. Don’t forget to breathe.” Really, it’s  a missive to the audience — a necessary heads-up to, in the words of Jurassic Park ’s Mr Arnold, hold onto your butts. Because once it starts, it rarely stops — an all-out cinematic assault, a cacophony of creativity that dazzles, delights, and defies explanation with every passing second. Leaving you breathless is its entire MO.

Anyone who saw the first film from Daniels (that’s writer-director duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert ), Swiss Army Man , would expect as much. The pair’s feature debut was the infamous ‘ Daniel Radcliffe farting corpse’ movie — a film whose seemingly crass premise belied its surprisingly reflective ruminations on life, death and companionship. It’s impressive enough that Daniels have created a follow-up that, in its most out-there moments — and there are plenty of those — is just as jaw-droppingly wild; take a drink every time Everything Everywhere All At Once delivers something you’ve never seen on screen before, and you’d black out long before the closing credits. But more miraculous is that, once again, they balance the ‘did they actually just do that ?’ moments with such spectacular emotion, enriching the soul while confounding the senses. This is a Daniels film — the intersection of the profane and the profound is their comfort zone.

It is thunderously cinematic, revelling in the simplicity of filmmaking’s most basic tools, while deploying them to their maximum potential.

So much of that emotional depth comes from the fact that, beneath the multiversal mayhem, Everything Everywhere All At Once is a family story. Michelle Yeoh’s Evelyn, a Chinese-American immigrant who runs a laundromat with husband Waymond ( The Goonies and Temple Of Doom star Ke Huy Quan , back on our screens at last), is primarily a woman teetering towards existential crisis. There is specificity in her story. But there is universality in the way that she feels — overwhelmed by the relentlessness of her life, consumed by everything, everywhere, all at once. She has a business to run, taxes to file, customers to please, a father to live up to, a husband to argue with, and — most importantly — a daughter she increasingly cannot relate to. Subsequently, she’s closed off, trapped under the weight of her failed hopes and dreams, struggling to perpetuate a life she has no passion for. It’s a set-up expertly established in a claustrophobic opening reel, set in the cramped chaos of the Wang home — a taut ticking-clock of noise, motion and clashing conversations, radiating Uncut Gems -style stress.

It’s so compelling, you almost don’t want the sci-fi stuff to intrude. But when it does, it does  so spectacularly, Waymond’s ‘Alphaverse’ self opening Evelyn’s mind to alternate universes  in which she’s all the things she ever wanted to be: a singer, a chef, an action-movie star. With multiversal evil Jobu Tupaki (“an agent of pure chaos”) threatening to bring everything to an end, it’s up to Evelyn to ‘Verse-Jump’ into her other life-paths and tap into those skills to  fight back. What follows are pulse-pounding martial-arts brawls to rival The Matrix and   The Raid , gonzo expeditions into bizarro alt-dimensions (hot-dog hands, anyone?), and delightfully bonkers riffs on everything from 2001: A Space Odyssey and Ratatouille to In The Mood For Love . In its more existential second half, the film tugs deeply on those familial threads, espousing joy and connectivity as necessary forces to combat nihilism.

The magic of Everything Everywhere All At Once is in its title — within it, you’ll find every genre, experience every emotion. It’s both a reflection of, and an oasis from, the incessant overstimulation of 21st-century life. So many films would collapse in on themselves under  that kind of pressure. EEAAO never does. It is thunderously cinematic, revelling in the simplicity of filmmaking’s most basic tools, while deploying them to their maximum potential. And it is brilliantly performed — Stephanie Hsu is revelatory as the multifaceted Joy; Quan is astonishing in his cinematic comeback, an action master who’ll make your heart explode too; Jamie Lee Curtis has a blast exaggerating the monstrous physicality of a no-bullshit tax officer; and Yeoh is perfection, drawing on every skill from every role she’s ever played to bring Evelyn’s many lives to life.

This is a radical film, about radical love and radical acceptance. It’s the biggest-hearted movie you can imagine that also features someone being beaten to death with two massive, floppy dildos. You’ll goggle at the (literal) ballsiest fight scene ever committed to film. You’ll cry at a shot of two rocks. You’ll never look at a bagel the same way. Don’t forget to breathe.

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TV Series | 21 04 2023

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Everything Everywhere All At Once – Oscars 2023

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BAFTA nominations – Everything Everywhere, Banshees, All Quiet On The Western Front

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Movies | 02 12 2022

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Review: 'everything everywhere all at once' is as encouraging as it is on-point.

Bob Mondello

A Chinese-American businesswoman travels the multiverse in the comedy Everything Everywhere All at Once by the filmmaking duo Daniels, made up of Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once Is a Mind-Bending Multiverse Fantasy

Finally, a movie with infinite Michelle Yeohs

Michelle Yeoh trains with another woman outside in "Everything Everywhere All at Once"

The term multiverse has gone from a buzzword in theoretical physics to a tenet of blockbuster storytelling. If filmmakers want one Spider-Man to shake another one’s hand on-screen, or if studios need to explain how multiple actors can play Batman across different movies, then they can always lean on the notion of parallel universes. In Everything Everywhere All at Once , the multiverse crashes into the mundane, as the film uses comic-book logic to pose a question nearly everyone has asked themselves at some point: What if my life had gone in another direction?

That anxiety hangs in the air around Evelyn Wang (played by Michelle Yeoh), a Chinese American woman who operates a laundromat with her sweet, if guileless, husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan). Her relationship with her daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), is frosty, particularly around the subject of the girlfriend Joy wants to bring to a family party; Evelyn’s disapproving father (James Hong) spends many scenes glowering in the background. As her troubled business is being audited by a domineering IRS inspector (Jamie Lee Curtis), Evelyn is dragged into a closet by her husband and informed that she’s the only person who can save the entire multiverse from total annihilation.

How? Well, by tapping into all the infinite Evelyns out there, of course, and doing battle with a mysterious, cross-dimensional warlord. The version of Waymond who recruits her is from another world, one already in the middle of an apocalypse, and he demonstrates his different identity by taking on a gaggle of security guards armed only with a fanny pack. In this genre-defying new film from Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (a directorial team known as Daniels), the multiverse is an ocean of possibilities, filled with Evelyns who have collectively done and seen everything imaginable. But that fantasy premise is a double-edged sword: These other Evelyns have surprising skills to lend, but also alluring memories of events that Evelyn herself will never get to experience.

In Everything Everywhere All at Once , Evelyn learns how to shift among realities like tuning the dial on a radio, accessing abilities such as kung-fu mastery, opera singing, and extreme dexterity with her toes, every time catching glimpses of other lives. What would’ve happened had she not chosen to marry Waymond or move to the United States, or if she lived in a world where everyone had hot dogs dangling off their hands instead of fingers? Daniels stuffs the frame with flashes of memory, paying homage to different genres and mimicking specific film aesthetics; the directors hop from stop-motion animation to wuxia to a breathtaking re-creation of Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love .

The experience is overwhelming, familiar territory for Daniels, whose debut feature film, Swiss Army Man , was a charming but outrageous tale of a man bonding with a talking, farting corpse while stranded on a desert island. The premise of Everything Everywhere All at Once demands a kitchen-sink approach, but at moments during its 139-minute running time, I was begging for a break from the dense world-building monologues and montages. The writer-directors’ expansive sci-fi thinking is absolutely joyous, although the boundless scope also means the movie could just go on explaining forever, and at certain points in the slightly soggy middle, I worried it might.

Read: Pop culture is having a metaphysical moment

What keeps Everything Everywhere All at Once from falling into a black hole of sprawling thought is its wonderful central performances, and the emotional through line that Yeoh and Quan follow amid all the chaos. The film’s fantasy conceit lines up with the melancholic question at the core of Evelyn and Waymond’s relationship—would they have been better off apart? As the movie cycles through different realities, it keeps presenting ways that their bond makes some ineffable sense. This film is not a grandiose tale of love transcending all, but it does find all kinds of sweet, specific ways to portray a lasting partnership.

Yeoh initially presents Evelyn as dismissive and worn down, but as the film goes on she starts revealing her vulnerabilities, her fear of disappointment, and her aversion to commitment of any kind. Though her character is distinctive and well-drawn, her preoccupation with roads not taken is a universal one, beautifully externalized by the multiversal war she gets pulled into. Quan, who has had few major roles in film since his stardom as a young actor, gives a rich and grounded performance as someone far less troubled by his past choices, a gentle partner who’s also not as naive as he initially lets on.

The other major narrative thread of Everything Everywhere All at Once is Evelyn’s bond with her daughter, Joy, who is facing a future of immeasurable possibility, and (like so many young people) feels stuck trying to make even one choice, burdened both by family expectation and existential anxieties. I won’t spoil the masterful direction Daniels takes this relationship in and will just say that here is where the film displays its underlying maturity, amid all the hot-dog fingers and talking rocks. The multiverse is an exciting notion, and a narratively thrilling one. But it’s also a useful way of illustrating the quotidian dissatisfactions of life—feelings that anyone can relate to but that we can choose not to drown in.

Related Podcast

Listen to David Sims discuss Everything Everywhere All at Once on an episode of The Atlantic ’s culture podcast The Review :

Review: ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ is, for better or worse, exactly that

A woman stands in front of another woman and a man with her arms out, as if protecting them.

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At the beginning of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” the camera creeps slowly toward a circular mirror — an apt start for a movie that will soon whoosh its characters through one looking glass after another. Amid all the whooshing, though, try to hold on to the image of that circle, which isn’t the easiest thing to do amid all the sights and sounds, frenzied fight scenes and grotesque sight gags that Daniels — a.k.a. the writing-directing duo of Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert ( “Swiss Army Man” ) — have crammed into their latest surreal head-spinner of a movie.

Still, they do leave a trail of metaphysical breadcrumbs, or perhaps I should say bagel crumbs. That circle will recur throughout the movie, first in the glass door of a washing machine and later as an extremely literal “everything bagel,” a giant cosmic doughnut that has been sprinkled with flecks of every piece of matter that has ever existed. Is this bagel the circle of life or perhaps the Circle of Eternal Return, a concept that pops up in the work of the German novelist Michael Ende and the Ukrainian artist Valerii Lamakh? It feels more like a black hole, destined to swallow up everything and everyone because, at the end of the day, as one character puts it, “nothing matters.”

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Does your head hurt yet, or just your soul? Running a funny, messy, moving, grotesque, sometimes exhilarating and often exasperating 140 minutes, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” can be a pain and knows it; it might also be its own cure. Crammed with ideas, jokes, laments, non sequiturs and some terrific actors you’ve seen before (if not nearly enough), the movie comes at you like a warm hug wrapped in a kung fu chop: It’s both a sweet, sentimental story about a Chinese American family and a wild, maximalist sensory assault. In the end, its many swirling parts unite around a remarkably coherent purpose: to provide a rare and dazzling showcase for a megawatt performer who scowls, gasps, punches, kicks, leaps, flips, soars and finally transcends.

That would be Michelle Yeoh, who has long been one of Asia’s top action stars but — from early breakthroughs (“Tomorrow Never Dies,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”) through prestige disappointments (“Memoirs of a Geisha,” “The Lady”) to a few high-profile supporting turns (“Crazy Rich Asians,” “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”) — has never enjoyed the spectacular Hollywood career she’s long deserved. (Even “Everything Everywhere,” originally conceived for Jackie Chan before Daniels decided to reconceive the lead as a woman, nearly eluded her as well.) The agony of what might have been haunts Yeoh’s stardom, and it also looms over her Evelyn Wang, a stressed-out, desperately unfulfilled woman who’s staring down the barrel of the IRS as the action gets underway.

Four people expectantly look at someone sitting in a cubicle.

A messy tax audit of her family-run laundromat isn’t the only thing weighing on Evelyn. She’s busy planning a birthday party for her overbearing dad (the great 93-year-old veteran James Hong), from whom she’s hiding the fact that her teenage daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), is a lesbian. (And has a girlfriend, played by Tallie Medel.) Evelyn also has a patient, long-suffering husband, Waymond (Ke Huy Quan), whom she’s so used to neglecting that she hasn’t even noticed he’s filing for divorce. Then, during a visit to their cranky auditor, Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis), Evelyn is suddenly yanked out of her body — whoosh! — and transported into that of another Evelyn, and then another Evelyn, and then another Evelyn, all of them occupying their own distinct parallel universes.

Welcome, in other words, to the latest cinematic incarnation of the multiverse, in which an infinite number of parallel timelines suddenly converge in a maelstrom of controlled chaos. That concept, a longtime science fiction staple, has been repopularized of late in the last couple of Spider-Man features (and the forthcoming “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness”), which makes it all the more welcome to see an iteration that doesn’t spring from a corporate-branded property. In this one, the multiverse has come under threat from an unstoppable evil force known as Jobu Tobacky, and Evelyn — despite or perhaps because of her utterly unremarkable existence — is the only one capable of defeating it. To do this, she will have to jump repeatedly between universes and, like a video-game paladin shifting fighting styles at will, absorb the special powers of her many, many fellow Evelyns.

These include, among others, Evelyn the Peking opera singer, Evelyn the Hong Kong movie star (cue a blink-and-you-miss-it shot of Yeoh attending the “Crazy Rich Asians” premiere), Evelyn the woman with hot dogs for fingers (don’t ask) and Evelyn the teppanyaki chef. Charmingly, a lot of these adventures seem to hark back to various late-’90s antecedents: Like Neo in “The Matrix,” Evelyn is a messiah-in-training who must learn to absorb powerful fighting techniques in the trippiest possible way. And like the indecisive heroines of “Sliding Doors” and “Run Lola Run,” though to a vastly more insane degree, she must entertain multiple possible versions of her own story — all in a movie that plays at times like a very long, very surreal “Choose Your Own Adventure” novel from which the pages have been torn out and then glued back together at random.

I will leave the actual mechanics of Evelyn’s interdimensional portal-hopping for you to discover; you’ll learn most of them from Waymond, who, through one of this multiverse’s many quirks, frequently doubles as an exposition delivery machine. Suffice it to say that the constantly evolving rules often require the characters to do gross, painful and embarrassing things, like inflict paper cuts on themselves, make photocopies of their nether-regions and use trophies as butt plugs. Kwan and Scheinert clearly haven’t abandoned the giddy anal fixations of “Swiss Army Man,” a.k.a. the movie that starred Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse. (And they say auteurism is dead.)

A woman stands in a fighting pose with papers flying in the air around her.

The directors’ signature mix of frenetic silliness and disarming sincerity unlocks something especially fresh and exciting in Yeoh. Given how often she’s been typecast as a figure of serene, Zen-like composure, it’s a tonic to see her play someone who so conspicuously doesn’t have her act together, a woman with blood on her brow, anxiety in her gaze and a voice that sometimes cracks as it rises several octaves above her usual register. (She’s an oddity, and also an auditee.) The result is as passionate and exhaustive a love letter as any filmmakers have ever written to their star, and Yeoh answers it by fusing action, comedy and drama with a grace and dexterity she’s seldom been given the chance to muster.

As it happens, Evelyn isn’t the only character popping up in multiple dimensions here, and Yeoh isn’t the only actor to turn multitasking into art. Curtis brings just the right demented comic edge to her many faces of Deirdre (most of them scowling, some of them sympathetic), while Hsu piercingly registers Joy’s sadness even amid a flurry of outlandish wardrobe changes (courtesy of costume designer Shirley Kurata). Most poignant of all is Quan, whom you’ll recognize as the ’80s child star who played Short Round in “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” and Data in “The Goonies.” His subsequent, yearslong rejection by an industry that didn’t know what to do with him is subtly referenced — and even rectified — in his performance as a husband and father with his own easily underestimated reserves of strength.

“Everything Everywhere All at Once” is thus a story of redemption and reconciliation, as sweet and sentimental at its core as it is deliriously busy on the surface. (The vibrant cinematography is by Larkin Seiple, the hyperaccelerated editing by Paul Rogers and the madly inventive production design by Jason Kisvarday.) As a drama of Asian mother-daughter conflict, it would make an appropriate double bill with Pixar’s current fantasy “Turning Red.” As a movie about the roads not taken, it taps into the inexhaustible wellspring of romantic melancholy that is Wong Kar-wai’s “In the Mood for Love,” explicitly saluted in Evelyn’s most wistful timeline. Here, it isn’t just an irretrievable past that keeps flashing before her eyes; it’s all the tantalizing possibilities of a better, more fulfilling and meaningful life than the one she’s been leading.

And it is this very insistence on endless, simultaneous possibilities that leads me to render a verdict on “Everything Everywhere All at Once” that may seem inconclusive at best and craven at worst, but which I very much offer up in this movie’s endearing, maddening spirit. Is it a visionary triumph or a gaudy, overstuffed folly? Does it bog down in numbing repetition or discover, within that repetition, an aesthetic and philosophical energy all its own? Not to advance a circular argument, but yes to all of the above. I don’t know if this movie fully works in this universe, but I suspect it might in the next.

‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’

In English, Mandarin and Cantonese with English subtitles Rating: R, for some violence, sexual material and language Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes Playing: Starts March 25 in general release

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Justin Chang was a film critic for the Los Angeles Times from 2016 to 2024. He won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in criticism for work published in 2023. Chang is the author of the book “FilmCraft: Editing” and serves as chair of the National Society of Film Critics and secretary of the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn.

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“Everything Everywhere All at Once,” Reviewed: There’s No There There

By Richard Brody

Harry Shum Jr. and Michelle Yeoh in scene.

The movie world is awash in fantasy, and that’s a problem, because fantasy is the riskiest genre. There’s no middle ground with fantasy because there’s no ground at all. Even a middling work of realism inevitably rests on experience, observation, and knowledge, but a mediocre fantasy is a transparent emptiness, a contrivance of parts that aren’t held together by the atmosphere of social life. It’s the triple axel of cinema: when successful, fantasies are glorious, seemingly expanding the very nature of experience by way of speculative imagination. Some of the best movies of recent years—“ The Future ,” “ Us ,” and “ The French Dispatch ”—are fantasies, and their artistic success is doubled by their very resistance to the corporatization of fantasy in the overproduction and overmanagement of superhero franchises. But a failed fantasy is a wipeout, and that’s the simplest and clearest way to describe “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” a new film (opening Friday) by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (a duo called Daniels ). Were it not for the appealing and charismatic presence of its cast, it would leave nothing but a vapor puff that disperses when the lights go on.

The emptiness of “E.E.A.A.O.” is all the more disheartening inasmuch as its fantasy has a substantial and significant real-world premise, one that gets a flip and generic treatment for the sake of some neat-o special effects. “E.E.A.A.O.” is the story of a married couple, Evelyn Wang (Michelle Yeoh) and Waymond Wang (Ke Huy Quan), who were born and raised in China and came to the United States as adults. They own a laundromat in the Simi Valley, in California, and have trouble, business and personal. The laundromat is losing money and Evelyn and Waymond are growing distant from each other; she is demanding and peremptory, and he is mild-mannered and whimsical. Her father (James Hong), called only Gong Gong (“maternal grandfather”), is visiting from China, and the couple try to maintain a cheerful front to convince him that they’ve made a success of life in America. Their daughter, Joy (Stephanie Hsu), is a recent college graduate at loose ends; when her mother introduces Joy’s girlfriend, Becky (Tallie Medel), to Gong Gong as her “good friend”—i.e., she hides from him that Joy is queer—this failure instantly rips the mother-daughter relationship apart.

The Wangs’ biggest and most pressing problem is taxes: they’re being audited by the I.R.S. At their appointment, the auditor, Deirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis), is stern and aggressive; she threatens to seize the Wangs’ business and personal assets, giving them until six that evening to reorganize and refile their claims. But Waymond has already given Evelyn a way out: in the elevator, he transforms into someone like himself, who’s not exactly himself, and gives Evelyn a set of instructions—on the back of a divorce filing, no less—that will enable her to enter the so-called multiverse, the realm of alternate lives that she could have lived.

What’s in a name? Sometimes, all one needs to know. The auditor’s full name is Deirdre Beaubeirdra (yes, she was named according to “The Name Game”), which exemplifies the arbitrary and sophomoric whimsy that runs through the film and governs its plot and tone. The portal to the multiverse is a janitor’s closet down the hall from Deirdre’s desk. The multiverse launch involves switching shoes to the wrong feet, special scans, special earbuds, whirlwind video effects, a murder in the closet, a punch in Deirdre’s nose, a call for security, and a fight with security in which Waymond uses his fanny pack as a lethal weapon. Despite the chaos, the multiverse very quickly emphasizes one road not taken: Evelyn, instead of leaving China with that “silly boy” (as her father calls Waymond), stays home and becomes a movie star in martial-arts films. And why not; there’s poignancy and irony built into the idea. If only Kwan and Scheinert had stuck with it and developed it. Instead, Evelyn’s alt-career merely crops up intermittently amid a plethora of other transformations—a surfeit of caprices that attempt to conceal the movie’s hollowness.

Long aggrieved and newly offended, Joy becomes Evelyn’s superhero nemesis, Jobu Tupaki, a character of many costumes who has one constant. It’s as embarrassing to say it as it is to watch onscreen: she says that she “put everything on a bagel,” and she means not the flavor but the universe itself—therefore “the bagel becomes the truth,” and the truth is that “nothing matters.” (Yes, she both wears a symbolic bagel on her head and emblazons a giant rotating one at the altar of her lair.) There’s an alternate universe in which Evelyn and Deirdre are lovers, with fingers as hot dogs squirting mustard and ketchup; one in which no life existed and Evelyn is a rock on a cliff; one in which Evelyn turns into a piñata dangling from a tree; another in which security guards get their kung-fu power from trophies stuck in their asses. And the realms interact, so Evelyn fights in the I.R.S. office with these alternate tools, whether martial arts or an egg that she’d once flung as a Benihana-style chef.

Yet, through it all, the dual stories—the couple fights to save their business and their home, and the same couple realizes different lives in China—remain basic; instead of unfolding over two-plus hours, they merely lurch ahead in plot-point-y snippets. It’s here that the definition of imagination as an artistic quality emerges—negatively. Kwan and Scheinert don’t envision in detail the daily lives of a small-business owner in California or of a celebrity in China. The stories suggest an ample array of poignant and nuanced possibilities, which go unrealized. They’d be all the stronger with a sense of subjectivity, and of alternate worlds as they leak consciousnesses into one another—not just how a laundromat owner imagines life as a martial-arts star, but also vice versa, and whether and why that might even seem preferable. (Spoiler alert: when it does happen, it only delivers a deflating, generic dash of sentimental bathos. There’s no place like home.)

Kwan and Scheinert show little interest in the experiences of their characters. Evelyn is written as a vague outline whose substance is provided by the presence, the performance, and the identity of Michelle Yeoh. The other characters offer their actors even less to work with. The C.G.I. conjures rapid-fire flashes of alternate lives, but not the pathos of feeling one of them slip away. Instead of personality, the characters have problems to solve; instead of traits, they have single-factor backstories; instead of subjectivity, they spew psychobabble and aphorisms borrowed from a superhero’s whiteboard quest. For all the gyrating action, the movie lacks physicality; the characters don’t seem to be in one another’s presence, their feet don’t touch the ground. The template for “E.E.A.A.O.” isn’t the observation of life from the amplified perspective of imagination; it’s the factitious world of superheroes, adorned with the action of martial-arts movies and the dazzle of effects and gaudy costumes, filled with undergraduate late-night epiphanies and sophomoric humor.

When Waymond expounds the rules of the multiverse to Evelyn, there might as well be a flashing sign reading “Exposition” over the screen, because there’s an absolute absence of awareness that two characters are having a meaningful conversation. It’s exactly such scenes that provide a litmus test of imagination and prove its power to illuminate reality—creating a form to give experience an original and singular identity. Instead, Kwan and Scheinert deprive their characters of identity; the protagonists are universalized, stripped of history and culture, lacking any personal connection to the wider world. With its bland and faux-universal life lessons that cheaply ethicalize expensive sensationalism, the film comes off as a sickly cynical feature-length directorial pitch reel for a Marvel movie.

The photo caption on this article has been updated.

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Everything Everywhere All at Once

A middle-aged Chinese immigrant is swept up into an insane adventure in which she alone can save existence by exploring other universes and connecting with the lives she could have led. A middle-aged Chinese immigrant is swept up into an insane adventure in which she alone can save existence by exploring other universes and connecting with the lives she could have led. A middle-aged Chinese immigrant is swept up into an insane adventure in which she alone can save existence by exploring other universes and connecting with the lives she could have led.

Daniel Kwan
Daniel Scheinert
Michelle Yeoh
Stephanie Hsu
Jamie Lee Curtis
3.7K User reviews
416 Critic reviews
81 Metascore
403 wins & 374 nominations total

Evelyn Wang

Deirdre Beaubeirdre

Waymond Wang

Becky Sregor

Debbie the Dog Mom

TV Musical - Queen

TV Musical - Soldier

Alpha Jumper - Trophy

Alpha Jumper - Bigger Trophy
Security Guard
(as Neravana Cabral)

Police - Confetti

Police - Salsa
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Trivia All the VFX for this film were done by 9 people, including the two directors, with the majority of the shots being done by a core group of 5 people. None of the VFX team went to school for VFX. They were all friends who taught themselves with tutorials they found online for free.
Goofs At around 5:50 various items of equipment and crew including the boom mic operator can be seen in the reflections of the launderette dryer glass doors.

Waymond Wang : [subtitles] So, even though you have broken my heart yet again, I wanted to say, in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.

Crazy credits Whispering voices speak throughout the end credits, seemingly coming from random universes, in random directions.
Alternate versions Jenny Slate 's character was originally referred to as 'Big Nose' in the theatrical release. Due to associations with Jewish stereotypes, the character's name was changed to 'Debbie the Dog Mom' in the credits for the digital and DVD/Blu-Ray releases.
Connections Featured in Jimmy Kimmel Live!: Chris Pine/Ke Huy Quan/Wallows (2022)
Soundtracks Life Can Be So Delicious Written by Daniel Kwan , Ryan Lott and Daniel Scheinert Performed by Sunita Mani and Aaron Lazar

User reviews 3.7K

May 23, 2022
How long is Everything Everywhere All at Once? Powered by Alexa
April 8, 2022 (United States)
United States
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A Woman Tries to Do Her Taxes
400 National Way, Simi Valley, California, USA (IRS Building)
See more company credits at IMDbPro
$14,300,000 (estimated)
$77,191,785
Mar 27, 2022
$143,411,356

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Runtime 2 hours 19 minutes
Dolby Digital
Dolby Atmos

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Michelle yeoh in ‘everything everywhere all at once’: film review | sxsw 2022.

A Chinese American laundromat owner fretting over a tax audit gets pulled into a violent multiverse clash in this sci-fi adventure comedy by the filmmaking team known as Daniels.

By David Rooney

David Rooney

Chief Film Critic

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In 2016’s Swiss Army Man , gonzo auteur duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert made an aggressive bid for cult immortality by casting Daniel Radcliffe as a flatulent corpse so gaseous he could double as a decomposing jet ski. So it shouldn’t be surprising that one of the triggers for characters jumping between parallel universes in Everything Everywhere All at Once is to take a flying leap and impale themselves on jumbo butt plugs. Or to be precise, Internal Revenue Service Employee of the Month Awards unmistakably shaped like those sex toys, which doesn’t make the gag any less puerile.

Nothing if not true to its title, this frenetically plotted serve of stoner heaven is insanely imaginative and often a lot of fun. But at two hours-plus, it becomes unrelenting and wearisome. While a certain degree of chaotic maximalist overload seems inherent to any film about a multiverse rippling with a violent threat, the nonstop jumble of mad invention here sacrifices control.

Full credits

Venue: SXSW Film Festival (Opening Night) Distributor: A24 Production companies: Gozie Agbo, Year of the Rat, in association with Ley Line Entertainment Cast: Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong, Jamie Lee Curtis, Tallie Medel, Jenny Slate, Harry Shum Jr., Biff Wiff, Sunita Mani, Aaron Lazar, Brian Le, Andy Le, Neravana Cabral, Chelsey Goldsmith, Craig Henningsen Director-screenwriters: Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert Producers: Joe Russo, Anthony Russo, Mike Larocca, Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert, Jonathan Wang Executive producers: Tim Headington, Theresa Steele Page, Todd Makurath, Josh Rudnik, Michelle Yeoh Director of photography: Larkin Seiple Production designer: Jason Kisvarday Costume designer: Shirley Kurata Music: Son Lux Editor: Paul Rogers Visual effects supervisor: Zak Stoltz Casting: Sarah Halley Finn

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Why everyone's talking about Everything Everywhere All At Once

Two Asian-American women and one man in casual attire recoil from something off-camera in a warmly lit hotel room.

You might have seen people posting about it: the multiverse-hopping, sci-fi action film Everything Everywhere All At Once.

But why has the film captured our collective imagination?

When you strip back all the subplot and threads, it is — at its core — a very relatable story of a family struggling to do their taxes.

Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, the film explores an immigrant family and the inherent messiness, chaos, and opportunities that come with life when you've left your home country to start a new one.

There's Evelyn Wang, the family's matriarch, played by Michelle Yeoh, and Stephanie Hsu's Joy Wang, her daughter, who is desperately trying to get her family to accept her girlfriend.

The film mixes the immigrant experience with the impending destruction of the multiverse, leading Evelyn and her husband, Waymond, to universe hop in an effort to save it.

A new kind of hero: Waymond Wang

Waymond is played by Ke Huy Quan, the 80s movie icon known for his roles as the lovable tinkerer Data in The Goonies and Harrison Ford's sassy assistant in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

Quan says he was content on working behind the camera and stepped away from acting because it was difficult to be an Asian actor in Hollywood.

That all changed when he got the script for the film Everything Everywhere All at Once. The film marks about two decades since he last graced film screens, and is a joyous return for Quan.

"I remember reading the script for the first time and I remember it was a script that I wanted to read for many, many years, it just didn't exist before," Quan says.

He adds that a role like Waymond Wang would never have existed in the 80s, 90s or even the 2000s.

Quan stars as all of the Waymond Wangs across the multiverse, including a universe-jumping heroic version, and one who's a sweet loving father and husband, struggling to give divorce papers to his wife.

Ke Huy Quan in Everything Everywhere All At Once.

"We were never featured as the romantic lead, we were never featured as the super hero and now we're finally getting our chance to do so."

"I certainly want to play all different kinds of characters that I didn't get the opportunity to before," Quan says.

Things started changing with the release of Asian-centred shows like Fresh off the Boat in 2015 and Kim's Convenience. Then in 2018, Crazy Rich Asians was released , becoming a critical and commercial success, proving the vast appetite for and enjoyment of Asian-focused stories.

Still, in a film where literally anything is possible (including a universe where everyone has hotdog fingers) Everything Everywhere All At Once pulls out stories and threads that are multi-faceted and challenges conventional ideas, including that of masculinity.

Waymond, Quan says, is "a man that truly believes in love and empathy and kindness and respect for one another".

"And I hope that after this movie, we can have a different definition of what masculinity is. It's not measured by how big your fists are or how big your muscles are, but how much love and kindness you have in your heart."

Asian-American woman with pink hair wearing Elvis-like bedazzled white suit walks through confetti-filled corridor.

'Leans into the messiness and love'

The film also delves into themes of the generational divide and trauma, something encapsulated by the daughter Joy's character. She also doubles as the film's villain, Jobu Tupaki, who creates a blackhole-esque 'Everything Bagel' that threatens the existence of the multiverse.

"How many times have we had arguments with our parents saying, 'You have no idea what it's like to be me', or, 'I don't understand you' ... you know?" Quan says.

"It's so cool to see this brought to the forefront and yet you know it features a Chinese family so it's something that I'm really grateful for."

For Chinese-Australian food writer and cook Hetty McKinnon, the film cuts straight to the core of what it means to be a Chinese immigrant family.

"Right now, it is not enough to merely have Asian faces on the screen, to truly represent our culture, the storytelling must go deeper," she says.

"[The movie] just leans into the messiness of the love and bonds that run deep within Asian immigrant families."

Ultimately, the film is unique in that it explores the sweeping dynamics of an immigrant family going through absurd situations with a lot of humour, heart, and relatability.

"I think the outrageousness of this movie kind of perfectly encapsulates the wild-yet-loving weirdness of Asian families," Hetty says.

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Priscilla (2023)

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Talk to Me (2022)

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In The Farewell , Awkwafina stars as Billi Wang, a Chinese American woman whose family reunites when her grandmother Nai Nai is diagnosed with a terminal illness. The family decides to conceal Nai Nai's illness from her, using a number of conceits to explain their decision to stage an impromptu reunion. Written and directed by Lulu Wang, The Farewell won several high-profile awards, with Awkwafina winning Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy at the Golden Globe Awards for her performance.

The Iron Claw (2023)

Zac Efron, Jeremy Allen White, and Harris Dickinson star in Sean Durkin’s biographical drama about real-life wrestling family the Von Erichs. Raised in the world of professional wrestling, Fritz Von Erich’s sons follow in his footsteps, both finding success and meeting immense tragedy in the process. Taking place throughout the 1980s and ’90s, The Iron Claw explores the so-called “Von Erich curse” and the devastating events that led to the term being coined.

The Lobster (2015)

Yorgos Lanthimos directs this bizarre black comedy starring Colin Farrell, Rachel Weisz, and Olivia Colman. Following the breakdown of his marriage, David (Farrell) moves into a hotel for single people, which has some very strange stipulations: If residents don’t find love with another person within 45 days of moving in, they will turn into animals. While the deadline can be extended under certain circumstances, the pressure is on to find a partner and avoid a lifetime void of humanity.

The Witch (2015)

Anya Taylor-Joy made her feature film debut in Robert Eggers’s The Witch , a foreboding folk horror story about a Puritan family in New England in the 1630s. After being banished from the main settlement, the family starts to experience strange occurrences, including the mysterious disappearance of one of their children. It soon transpires that a witch lives in the woods near their farm, and satanic panic ensues.

The Zone of Interest (2023)

Loosely based on the book of the same name by Martin Amis , Jonathan Glazer’s adaptation takes place in the “zone of interest,” an area lived in by Nazi SS officers and their families on the land surrounding the concentration camp Auschwitz. The movie examines what the lives of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss and his family may have been like, as they resided next door to the grievous death camp.

Uncut Gems (2019)

Josh and Benny Safdie’s New York crime thriller netted a ton of acclaim upon release, and it’s easy to see why. Adam Sandler stars as a Jewish-American jeweler with an unfortunate gambling addiction, who ends up in a race against time to retrieve a priceless gem he hopes can solve his problems. Costarring LaKeith Stanfield, Julia Fox, and Idina Menzel, Uncut Gems will have you on the edge of your seat, screaming that Sandler should have been nominated for an Oscar . No, really.

Zola (2020)

Zola is based on a series of tweets by Aziah “Zola” King, which went viral because of the wild story they told. In the movie, waitress and stripper Zola (Taylour Paige) is invited on a weekend road trip to Tampa by fellow stripper Stefani ( Riley Keough ), who claims they can make a lot of money. Their plans almost immediately descend into chaos, thanks to the presence of Stefani’s boyfriend (Nicholas Braun) and her so-called “roommate” X (Colman Domingo). An unmissable crime caper.

Amy Mackelden is a freelance writer, editor, and disability activist. Her bylines include Harper's BAZAAR, Nicki Swift, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, ELLE, The Independent, Bustle, Healthline, and HelloGiggles. She co-edited The Emma Press Anthology of Illness , and previously spent all of her money on Kylie Cosmetics.

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If you have to watch one Tubi movie this May 2024, stream this one

Two people stand in a mountain valley in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

More than almost any other streaming service, the past lives on at Tubi . Some of that is by necessity, since the bigger streamers sweep up most of the contemporary box office hits, and almost every major studio in Hollywood has its own streaming service. While there are some modern films and TV shows on Tubi, it also has a robust lineup of movies and series that pretend like cinematic and television history began in the ’80s. These older titles need a home, and Tubi has given it to them.

It’s two love stories in one

It redefined martial arts movies for Western audiences

It has a breakthrough performance by zhang ziyi, it has a powerful and moving ending.

However, our pick for the one Tubi movie that you have to watch in May isn’t that old, relatively speaking. Director Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon caused a cultural sensation in 2000, not unlike the way Everything Everywhere All at Once did in 2022 on its way to earning Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress honors for Michelle Yeoh. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon also features Yeoh in a leading role during an earlier period of her career, and the film was also an Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Language Film, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Original Score. It was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, but came up short there.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ‘s cultural impact may have faded in the last two decades, but this is still a movie worth revisiting … especially since it’s free to watch on Tubi. But if you haven’t seen it before, here are some reasons to watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on Tubi in May 2024.

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It’s two love stories in one

The most affecting aspect of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is the understated and largely unspoken love between Yeoh’s Yu Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai (Chow Yun-fat). Both are skilled warriors and close friends, and yet also unable to speak about the desires of their respective hearts. That’s the underlying tragedy in this movie, as circumstances conspire to keep Mu Bai and Shu Lien apart, even as the audience roots for them to get together no matter what.

There is also a secondary love story between Jen Yu (Zhang Ziyi) and the bandit Lo Xiao Hou (Chang Chen). They get further along in their relationship than Mu Bai and Shu Lien, but in some ways, they’re destined to repeat the same mistakes. It’s almost Shakespearean the way that neither couple ever fully gets what they want, and only half of what they think they deserve.

Wuxia martial arts movies existed before Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon , but this film was the first one to break out with American viewers who were unfamiliar with the genre.

The story takes place in China’s past, but it’s gloriously untethered by the rules of reality. That lends an otherworldly quality to the fights that seem to defy gravity itself. Martial arts fans come these movies to see the action, and this one did not disappoint.

Yeoh and Yun-fat were already established performers when Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was made. But this was the film that turned Zhang Ziyi into an international star. Zhang’s character, Jen, had a bit more to play than the stoically heroic personas of her co-stars. Because of her noble birth, Jen had to be many things to different people. To her family, Jen was the dutiful daughter who reluctantly accepted an arranged marriage, while to her secret tutor, Jen was a warrior who may have surpassed her mentor. And when Jen was with Lo, she allowed herself to love someone else for perhaps the first time.

Zhang had a handful of roles in American movies after this, including Rush Hour 2 , Memoirs of a Geisha , and Godzilla: King of the Monsters . Although Zhang has stated that she prefers the roles that she gets in Asian cinema, she still pops up occasionally in American films, and she’s solidified her place in the history of martial arts movies.

The film’s two love affairs are intertwined throughout the movie, but especially at the end. Shu Lien and Mu Bai see some of themselves in Jen and Lo, and they’re willing to make sacrifices so that the younger couple can be happy together. As noted above, there are Shakespearean overtones to those love stories, and that also includes a touch of tragedy. Not all of the characters get what they want in this story, and it’s heartbreaking to see that play out in one of the most emotionally affecting moments of the film.

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon ultimately ends with a wish, a choice, and a sacrifice that feels like something out of a fairy tale. This story concludes, but there is a sequel, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny , on Netflix , if you want to seek it out.

Watch Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on Tubi .

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If you know one thing about Netflix, it's likely that the streaming service has more shows on it than any one person could ever hope to consume. All that content is great (even if you didn't know some Netflix shows even existed), because it means that there's something for basically everybody on the streaming service.

When you're looking for as how to watch, though, it can be a bit of a headache to actually find something interesting on the streaming service, which is where we come in. We've gathered three great shows on Netflix that you should make time for this weekend, and that cater to a pretty wide array of different tastes. John Mulaney Presents: Everybody's In L.A. (2024)

The first family movie of the summer, IF, opens this weekend in theaters everywhere. Directed by John Krasinski, If stars Cailey Fleming as Bea, a young girl who discovers she can see everyone's imaginary friend (IF). The movie should top the weekend box office, followed by Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes and The Strangers: Chapter 1.

The theater is not the only place to watch movies this weekend, however. FAST services offer thousands of movies for free in the comfort of your home. Sign up for a FAST service, watch a few ads, and start streaming a movie. This weekend, consider watching these three great movies, including a sequel to an Oscar-winning horror film, a landmark independent movie, and a thrilling adventure on bikes. Hannibal (2001)

May is an unusually quiet time for movies on Max, which typically has a long list of additions at the start of the month. For action fans, the original Mad Max trilogy is back ahead of the theatrical release of the new film Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga later this month. Beyond that, there's not much to get excited about besides The Lighthouse, a 2019 psychological thriller where Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson go stark raving mad in the 19th century.

Instead of going with that film, our choice for the one Max movie that you have to watch in May is The Florida Project, which also features Dafoe in a leading role. This low-budget drama takes place in and around The Magic Castle, a budget hotel located near Walt Disney World in Florida. But this movie is about as far from a Disney flick as it gets, and it's an all-too realistic story about the poverty that exists side by side with corporate prosperity and affluent tourists.

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

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Live Updates From the Cannes Film Festival 2024: Red Carpets, Reviews & More

There’s no other film festival as alluring as Cannes, where blockbusters and auteur-driven Oscar hopefuls alike debut for glamorous crowds along the painfully picturesque Croisette. This year, the slate features a number of buzzy premieres, including George Miller ’s Mad Max: Fury Road follow-up Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, Francis Ford Coppola ’s long-awaited Megalopolis, and Yorgos Lanthimos ’s quirky, starry Kinds of Kindness. Will one of them wind up going as far in the awards race as Anatomy of a Fall or The Zone of Interest, the 2023 festival’s biggest success stories? Only time will tell.

Well, time and Vanity Fair ’s Richard Lawson and David Canfield —who are on the ground at Cannes 2024, flitting from gala premieres to headline-grabbing interviews as they give us exclusive looks at the fest’s buzziest titles. Stay informed by checking our running live blog, where we’ll be posting constant updates on the films, the fashion, and the moments you can’t find anywhere else. Allons-y !

Maggie Coughlan

3 hours ago

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On Sunday, Selena Gomez brought a pop of color to Cannes.

The Only Murders in the Building star posed at the Emilia Perez photocall in a red off-the-shoulder custom silk dress by Giambattista Valli. To complete the monochromatic look, Gomez's stylist Erin Walsh dressed the star in a pair of Kate pumps by Christian Louboutin and nail artist Tom Bachik selected Essie's “Rock the Runway” for her manicure.

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Selena Gomez, Zoe Saldana and Karla Sofía Gascón

4 hours ago

Demi Moore's Adorable Plus One

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Demi Moore brought a very special guest to Monday's photocall for The Substance : her beloved Chihuahua, Pilaf.

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The pint-sized pooch is no stranger to cameras, as Pilaf is a fixture on Moore's Instagram account. From posing alongside her owner in high-fashion looks created by Moore's stylist Brad Goreski to taking in a Madonna concert , Pilaf has proved to be woman's best friend.

David Canfield

The Prize Frontrunners, So Far

Exactly half of the competition titles have now screened at the Cannes Film Festival 2024, so as we prepare for the homestretch: Who’s out front to win some prizes right now? Every jury is specific, but by my estimation, the strongest current Palme d’Or contenders come from three Cannes regulars: Jia Zhangke ’s Caught by the Tides , Jacques Audiard ’s Emilia Perez , and Andrea Arnold ’s Bird . (No, I don’t think a Megalopolis upset is in the cards.)

Despite his extensive history on the Croisette, Jia has thus far only won a screenplay prize, and Tides is one of this year’s best-reviewed entrants. Emilia Perez is the obvious heavyweight as it remains the top talking point around town, and comes from a past winner in Audiard—who’s showing the jurors something completely new here. Of this trio, Bird is surely the quietest, but I keep hearing it come up, and it’s a movie that stays with you—one with a stronger emotional pull than anything else in competition thus far.

Other films I could see going the distance include Yorgos Lanthimos ’s Kinds of Kindness , though it’s generally considered a relatively minor effort from the Poor Things director, and Coralie Fargeat ’s The Substance , which could start a new body-horror tradition after Titane ’s thrilling win a few years ago. Ultimately, I think both are stronger in the acting races. The Substance features a career-best Demi Moore, and Cannes jurors have proven happy to honor screen icons here in the recent past, like Julianne Moore or Juliette Binoche. And Jesse Plemons ’s nifty triptych of gonzo performances in Kindness merits serious consideration.

Moore’s stiffest competition for the actress prize so far comes from those aforementioned front-running movies, should the jury opt to honor them just a bit further down the line. Either Karla Sofía Gascón or Zoe Saldaña would make a worthy winner for Emilia Perez , or you could throw in supporting standout Selena Gomez and honor all three, Volver -style. (That film’s six principal actresses jointly won the prize in 2006.) Meanwhile, Caught by the Tides stars Jia’s longtime muse Zhao Tao, mesmerizing as ever here. In this space, I’d also watch out for the harrowing Danish drama The Girl With the Needle , which Mubi just acquired; Vic Carmen Sonne has received rapturous reviews even as the film has been more divisive.

Plemons has a bit more breathing room for the best-actor prize; only Ben Whishaw —who gives a major, risky performance in the otherwise divisive Limonov. The Ballad —would give him a run for his money at this stage. But Ali Abbasi ’s The Apprentice and David Cronenberg ’s The Shrouds premiere tonight; the former stars Sebastian Stan as Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong as Roy Cohn, respectively; the latter features Vincent Cassel as a grieving version of his director. Each has a compelling narrative to ride should the work deliver.

Festival darlings Paolo Sorrentino and Sean Baker will screen their new movies tomorrow, meanwhile, and as I mentioned over the weekend, all eyes are on late-breaking Iranian entry The Seed of the Sacred Fig after its preemptive acquisition by the Palme crystal-ball that is Neon. So while we’ve got some frontrunners to talk about, there’s also a lot of game left to play.

5 hours ago

Risk Takers

Does the idea of a cartel world-set, trans-themed musical in Mexico, directed by a French auteur, sound like the best idea? Maybe not, but somehow, the combination of Jacques Audiard and his remarkable cast— Zoe Saldaña, Selena Gomez, and Karla Sofía Gascón —has not only defied the odds but yielded the triumph of Cannes so far. In a sit-down interview on a Croisette rooftop, I sat down with the three stars of Emilia Perez for a chat about the respective leaps of faith needed to do this film right. “You fail so many times until you find what works,” Saldaña says. They did just that.

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By David Canfield

Richard Lawson

17 hours ago

Kevin Costner Returns to the West

The strangest, most dismaying thing about Horizon is that it doesn’t feel like a film at all. More in our review:

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By Richard Lawson

A Bloody Good Time

I don't feel lied to by Demi Moore, exactly, but when she told me that The Substance was going to be “bloody” earlier today, well, let's just say she was practicing the art of coy understatement. We can also consider the following the understatement of many centuries: You have never seen Moore like she is in this movie, ever before. Her body-horror film premiered as a sensation on Sunday night here at Cannes, marking an utter redefinition for the Hollywood veteran—fitting, given her massive footprint at the festival this year—and one of the best performances she has ever given, period. Margaret Qualley matches her in a tale of not swapped identities, exactly, but parallel lives, eventually colliding in spectacularly gory and provocative fashion. I had been hearing murmurs that Mubi was particularly excited about snatching the rights to this one just before premiere, and in retrospect it is obvious why: The Substance is unlike anything else at the festival, with a rising star at the top of her game and an industry icon showing us just how much further she can go. This an unconventional but strong prize contender on the Croisette. As for an end-of-year awards play? Watch the third act and tell me Moore shouldn't be in the conversation, because you will have a tough time. Just be mindful of the blood.

Demi Moore, Cannes Godmother

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Sophie Wilde, Demi Moore and Mike Faist at the Trophée Chopard Dinner.

“It feels like the completing of a circle,” Demi Moore told me yesterday of her presence in Cannes this year. The screen icon was last on the Croisette in 1997, when she filled in for Elizabeth Taylor last-minute to host the amfAR fundraising gala for HIV/AIDS research. Now she is back with her own film, The Substance , premiering tonight—and also as both the amfAR host again for its 30th anniversary, and as the prestigious Godmother of the annual Chopard Trophée dinner, which took place on Friday. There, she honored rising stars Mike Faist and Sophie Wilde, each having their own breakout moment here in Cannes. For Faist, the wild Croisette ride began at the Megalopolis premiere on Thursday night. “It could be [ Francis Ford Coppola ’s] last and my first [festival]—I don’t take it lightly, and I do not take my days for granted any more,” he said. Read more about their dizzying weekend here.

The Dream of the ’90s Is Alive in Cannes

And some of the ’80s, too. Both Kevin Costner and Demi Moore —who became megastars at around the same time, 30 something years ago—are debuting films at the festival this evening. Costner, who recently walked away from his hit neo-Western series Yellowstone, will premiere part one of his old-school Western epic Horizon this evening, ahead of its summer release in the States. It’s been 20 years since Costner—who won a directing Oscar for 1990‘s Dances with Wolves —has been behind the camera, so crowds here are more than eager to see if he can repeat past glory.

Moore, meanwhile, stars in the competition entry The Substance, the sophomore feature from Revenge director Coralie Fargeat. The film has been described as stylish body-horror, which wouldn’t sound terribly awards-y had the grimy Titane not won the Palme d’Or three years ago.

Whatever happens, this is a big night for anyone nostalgic for a past era of movie-stardom. If things go well for Costner and Moore ( Richard Gere was here just a few days ago, too), then which of their contemporaries could we hope will make their own Cannes splashes next year? Anyone but Mel Gibson, please.

What's in a Bird?

Franz Rogowski is one of my favorite interviews because, without reservation, he candidly and warmly lets you into his emotional and mental states, while smartly connecting them to the project at hand. My sit-down with him yesterday just off of the Croisette, for his lovely new film Bird , was no exception. The gist of where he is at right now? Very proud of the movie, and a little personally troubled by what he saw at the premiere of the well-received Andrea Arnold drama. “What [Arnold] ultimately would like is for me to trust her and to surrender and to give up everything that I need to be and just be who I am. And that’s terrifying because I hate myself,” he told me with a nervous laugh. “I think I need to see a psychologist.”

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Neon Makes Its Move

Coming into the Cannes Film Festival 2024, Neon had won the coveted Palme d'Or a remarkable four years in a row ( Parasite, Titane, Triangle of Sadness, Anatomy of a Fall) . Last year, the studio auspiciously bought Anatomy just before it went all the way, so all eyes were on whether it'd get into the U.S. rights game early this festival as well. And indeed, they have, picking up one of the latest premieres on the Croisette, The Seed of the Sacred Fig , a thriller set in Tehran. (It screens Friday.) Note that the company also has Anora , the new drama from festival darling Sean Baker, premiering early next week. In other words: Nenon is very much in the game once again, even if both of its titles remain sight unseen.

A French-Mexican Musical Starring Selena Gomez Walks Into Cannes...

…and allures and surprises, from the very first song. On maybe the best film in the Cannes Film Festival 2024 competition so far:

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Kevin Costner: “What If Everybody’s Wrong?”

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All eyes tomorrow will be on Kevin Costner as he finally unveils the first chapter in his Horizon saga on the Croisette. (His first-ever movie in Cannes!) The Oscar winner got candid with me in a conversation at the Carlton Hotel on premiere eve, as we got into the film's unusual structure, his priorities in getting it made, and just how far he hopes to take things, now that he is newly, officially filming the third installment in the series: “It’s harder because it’s important to me that it be better, that the story completely [works]. That’s why I’m not having to be, “Oh my God, it was successful.” I got to reinvent some story. I know what the story is, but it’s important to me that it just gets better and better.”

Read the full interview.

Ben Whishaw, Transformed

Ben Whishaw has certainly proven his range across his excellent work in the likes of the James Bond franchise, A Very English Scandal , last year's Passages , and of course, the titular role of Paddington bear. But what he pulls off in Limonov. The Ballad takes things to a whole new level. The decorated British star is unrecognizable as a radical Russian author and activist, in a film that stays true to his chaotic spirit with aggressive tonal shifts and a murky blending of fact and fiction. “I found the whole experience fairly terrifying,” he told me. “He is always reborn. He’s become something else. He creates another version of himself, and it’s energizing to him somehow, I think.” Read more about one of the must-see performances of the festival (where you can also watch an exclusive clip) below.

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Dîner Is Served

Hello from Cannes’s annual Chopard dinner, a glitzy black-tie dinner that marks one of the starriest events of the festival. Kevin Costner —who arrived in sunglasses—is currently walking the red carpet alongside Demi Moore , who’s serving as the Trophée ceremony’s godmother, or distinguished guest. That’s right: it’s the Mr. Brooks (2007) reunion you never knew you needed. Moore will present Mike Faist and Sophie Wilde with the event’s annual honors later this evening, recognizing exciting up-and-coming talent. Expect many more A-listers to attend as well.

Kinds of Kindness ... and Fashion

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Hong Chau, Willem Dafoe,Emma Stone and Yorgos Lanthimos

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Hunter Schafer, Mamoudou Athie, Margaret Qualley, Jesse Plemons, Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe

With Kinds of Kindness comes all kinds of fashion.

The stars of Yorgos Lanthimos 's anthology film were on hand in Cannes for the film's world premiere on Friday, where Emma Stone, Hunter Schafer, Mamoudou Athie, Margaret Qualley, Jesse Plemons, Joe Alwyn, Hong Chau and Willem Dafoe, all laughed, smiled and posed for photographers.

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Hunter Schafer

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Margaret Qualley and Hunter Schafer

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Hunter Schafer and Margaret Qualley

Hillary Busis

One of a Kind

Don’t expect Kinds of Kindness , which just premiered at Cannes, to remind you of Poor Things or The Favourite , the last two films directed by Yorgos Lanthimos . Instead, Richard Lawson writes, it evokes the director’s earlier work: “The film is a return to Lanthimos’s smaller-scale style, the blunt chilliness that first made him famous. Kinds of Kindness shares the same DNA as Dogtooth or Killing of a Sacred Deer , morbid little tales that verge on outright nihilism. In Kinds of Kindness , Lanthimos and co-screenwriter Efthimis Filippou stage three short stories about people desperately trying to regain control of their lives—dark and strange as those lives may have been before twists of fate came calling.”

A Family Affair

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During Friday's photocall in support of Francis Ford Coppola 's Megalopolis, the Coppola family posed for a photo that could double as a holiday card. Pictured above: Romy Mars, Roman Coppola, Cosima Mars, Francis Ford Coppola and Talia Shire.

Now, for the family tree: Romy and Cosima are the daughters of Sofia Coppola and Thomas Mars and granddaughters of Francis; Roman is Francis's son and uncle to Romy and Cosima; and Talia is Francis's sister (and mom to Jason and Robert Schwartzman ).

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Nicolas Cage, son of the late August Coppola and Francis's nephew, is also at Cannes. He posed for photos during a photocall in support of psychological thriller, The Surfer, on Friday.

The Making of a “Mind Fuck”

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The Shrouds is directed by David Cronenberg, so when star Diane Kruger calls it a “mind fuck,” it is reasonable to assume we know what she means. Not exactly; this is no ordinary mind-bender from the director of Maps to the Stars and Crimes of the Future, but rather one directly and intensely informed by the recent death of his longtime wife. Vincent Kassel plays a dead-ringer (see what I did there?) for the director while Kruger, in an impressive dual turn, portrays both his late wife and her grieving sister (oh, and she also voices an AI assistant). This required an unusually emotional process for the actors. “I felt completely naked and in this twilight zone of feeling my director reliving something that was very, very traumatic for him,” Kruger says. “I feel really proud that he chose me to play those parts. Not for nothing, I’m a huge Cronenberg fan.”

Read the full feature here.

Inside the 'Megalopolis' Press Conference

“It’s how I felt the film should be, and I was paying for it,” Francis Ford Coppola told the press in today's conference. “There are so many people who, when they die, say ‘I wish I had done that.’ When I die, I'll say, ‘I got to do that.’” Read more:

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A Mega Wait

Hello from the long line to get into the Megalopolis press conference—which starts in 30 minutes. Reporters started lining up over an hour before the scheduled start time, and with good reason—this will be the first time Francis Ford Coppola speaks publicly about his controversial, sharply divisive epic. Stay tuned.

5 Netflix movies to watch with your mom on Mother's Day 2024

H appy Mother's Day! Nothing brings the family together like a good movie. If you're celebrating the holiday with your mom this year, why not kick back with a great movie on Netfiix? We picked out five good Netflix movies to watch with mom on Mother's Day!

Even if you're celebrating mom from afar, you can start a teleparty on Netflix to watch the movie together! Sorry, guys, there's no excuse not to watch a movie with mom this year.

Let's get the list started with the most popular movie on Netflix right now, Mother of the Bride.

Mother of the Bride

Mother of the Bride is the perfect movie to watch this Mother's Day. It's a new movie with a stellar cast, a good story, and some big laughs.

The Netflix movie stars Brooke Shields, Miranda Cosgrove, Sean Teale, Chad Michael Murray, Rachael Harris, Benjamin Bratt, and more. It tells the story of Emma (Miranda Cosgrove), who surprises her family with the news that she's getting married in Thailand in one month. Her mother, Lana (Brooke Shields), isn't quite sure what to do about it, and then, she realizes her daughter's new husband is the son of the man who caused her heartache. Drama and comedy ensue!

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Everything Everywhere All at Once is the best mom movie of all time, and it ain't even close! Michelle Yeoh is incredible as Evelyn, a mother and owner of a laundromat who has to save the world.

Evelyn and her husband, Waymond, played by Ke Huy Quan, are in danger of losing their business and are well on their way to ruining their relationship with their daughter, Joy, played by Stephanie Hsu. With the fate of the universe at stake, Evelyn teams with a version of Waymond from an alternate universe to stop Jobu Tupaki, also played by Hsu, and the destruction of everything.

This is my top choice for you and mom to watch this Mother's Day!

Shrek is the pick for moms and families who are fans of animated comedies. Shrek is one of the most iconic animated movies of all time. My mom loves it! Your mom loves it! Everyone loves it!

Shrek is also one of the most popular Netflix movies right now. I don't know why Shrek suddenly is one of the most-watched movies in the world, but that's the beauty of Netflix. We can all watch it together!

Bodies Bodies Bodies

Bodies Bodies Bodies is the pick for the cool moms out there. This movie is a little bit scary, a little bit of a psycho thriller, and a lot of funny, but you have to have a very specific mom to enjoy this movie. A lot of moms are going to hate it; I guarantee it!

Bodies Bodies Bodies tells the story of a group of young adults who get stranded at a mansion during a massive storm. Unable to escape, they hunker down to ride out the storm. When the bodies start piling up, the group tries to figure who and what is killing their friends and survive the night.

Amandla Stenberg, Maria Bakalova, Myha'la Herrold, Chase Sui Wonders, Rachel Sennott, Lee Pace, and Pete Davidson star in the movie from director Halina Reijn and writer Sarah DeLappe.

I love this movie so much! If you have a cool mom, she's going to love it, too!

The Mother is the pick for action moms. Jennifer Lopez stars in the Netflix original film about a mother who must rescue her daughter after she is kidnapped.

I don't feel like I need to add more for you to understand how awesome this movie is. It's J-Lo, you know? She's kicking butt and taking names and lives.

Niki Caro directed the film that premiered on Netflix on Mother's Day weekend 2023. If you and your mom like J-Lo and action movies, this is the movie for you!

That's the list of Mother's Day movies to watch on Netflix this year!

This article was originally published on netflixlife.com as 5 Netflix movies to watch with your mom on Mother's Day 2024 .

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Everything Everywhere All at Once movie review (2022)
Chaos reigns and life may only ever make sense in fleeting moments, but it's those moments we should cherish. Moments of love and camaraderie. Sometimes they happen over time. Sometimes they happen all at once. This review was filed from the premiere at the SXSW Film Festival. The film opens on March 25th. Advertisement.
Everything Everywhere All at Once
Rated 0.5/5 Stars • 04/02/23. Everything Everywhere All at Once. In Theaters At Home TV Shows. Directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, collectively known as Daniels, the film is a ...
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That would be "Everything Everywhere All at Once," an exuberant swirl of genre anarchy directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert. The filmmakers — who work under the name Daniels and who ...
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All this Matrix-style interdimensional hopping, plus the nonstop martial-arts action and in-your-face slapstick, makes Everything Everywhere All at Once an often frenetic viewing experience, and I ...
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Everything Everywhere All At Once is a spectacle in the purest sense of the word. A sensory overload, especially in IMAX, the movie is a science fiction, multi-verse spanning love letter to family.
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Everything Everywhere All at Once. review: Michelle Yeoh surfs the multiverse. The veteran action star is the best thing in directing duo the Daniels' heady, hectic sci-fi thriller. A movie that's ...
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Everything Everywhere All At Once is a bombardment of hot dog fingers, googly-eyes, Wong Kar-Wai homages, fanny packs incredibly strong pinkie fingers, talking rocks, the Nine Days song ...
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The film is an instant cult darling whose low-key US release in March began a box office ascent fuelled by giddy, fascinated word-of-mouth. Getting people into cinemas in 2022 turns out to be ...
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A movie that reconciles the smallness of our lives with the infinity of their potential. A movie that will forever change the way you think about bluetooth, butt plugs, and Brad Bird — about ...
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Everything Everywhere All At Once Review. Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) is trying to complete her tax audit, throw a Chinese New Year party to impress her father (James Hong), navigate a possible divorce ...
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The premise of Everything Everywhere All at Once demands a kitchen-sink approach, but at moments during its 139-minute running time, I was begging for a break from the dense world-building ...
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Stephanie Hsu, left, Ke Huy Quan, Michelle Yeoh and James Hong in the 2022 sci-fi thriller "Everything Everywhere All at Once.". A messy tax audit of her family-run laundromat isn't the only ...
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Everything Everywhere All at Once: Directed by Daniel Kwan, Daniel Scheinert. With Michelle Yeoh, Stephanie Hsu, Ke Huy Quan, James Hong. A middle-aged Chinese immigrant is swept up into an insane adventure in which she alone can save existence by exploring other universes and connecting with the lives she could have led.
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March 11, 2022 7:30pm. 'Everything Everywhere All at Once' Courtesy of SXSW. In 2016's Swiss Army Man, gonzo auteur duo Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert made an aggressive bid for cult ...
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Everything Everywhere All at Once is a 2022 American absurdist comedy-drama film written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, who produced it with Anthony and Joe Russo and Jonathan Wang.The film incorporates elements from several genres and film media, including surreal comedy, science fiction, fantasy, martial arts films, immigrant narrative, and animation.
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Waymond is played by Ke Huy Quan, the 80s movie icon known for his roles as the lovable tinkerer Data in The Goonies and Harrison Ford's sassy assistant in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom ...
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