Just watched: Everything Everwhere All At Once (2022). If the only path to humanitarian existentialism is half-baked, TikTok-speed universe-jumping, I’ll take it—so long as you pave it with this level of brio and even if you insist on festooning it with so much sophomoric tinsel. You get bonus points from this Christian existentialist for including a Christ figure. Still more bonus points for putting Ke Huy Quan back in front of the camera; may his midlife resurgence make up for the quarter-century Hollywood effectively shut him out.
P.S. Thanks, State Theatre, for screening this one!
P.P.S. I will say that the obviously skilled martial arts on display here did leave me curiously flat compared to those in early-aughts Zhang Yimou films and even the closer-in-spirit but markedly whiter Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and The Matrix. A contrast of these movies’ budgets and shooting schedules probably goes a long way toward explaining the difference in my reception. The rest of it, I realize, is that I’ll take fight scenes as aesthetic events or pure spectacles over fight scenes as sci-fi premise establishment or gag delivery mechanisms any day.