Hacker Cinema
Everything Everywhere All at Once
2022 · Film · 140 min
Directed by Daniel Scheinert, Daniel Kwan
ActionAdventureScience Fiction
An aging Chinese immigrant is swept up in an insane adventure, where she alone can save what's important to her by connecting with the lives she could have led in other universes.
45 positive7 negative21 neutralfrom 73 commenters
Where to watch
No streaming data for this title.
77 comments on Hacker News
We have movies with googly eyes stones (Everything Everywhere All At Once)
There are consciousness theories which state that we primarily build a model of other agents living in natural environment and then the evolution realized that very model which tracks other outside agents can be used to track internal agent i.e. Self. So take that as you may.
I was going to the 10am or 11am screenings for years to avoid crowds and drunks who'd talk or otherwise distract from the show. I have a 4k projector so the only movies since the pan have been the Spiderverse sequel on IMAX, the Avatar sequel (regular screening), and Everything Everywhere All At Once in a small theatre with sofas and pizza and beer.
Either it's big enough to warrant a massive video and sound system (because I have pretty great ones at home already, so it has to be extravagant), or it has to be something I've heard about and want to see so much that we don't really care about the best, we just want to go. Otherwise, why mess around with high prices and rude people?
I hate to say it, but I think most theaters are gonna die.
Recent good movies, just going in release order off my letterboxd, although I have to be careful to include only "Hollywood" here:
- 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple - beautifully shot and a beautiful theme about what humanity is
- One Battle After Another - it's PTA, all his movies are good
- Bugonia - incredible dark comedy
- Weapons - fun little horror comedy movie
- Sinners - just won an oscar for the soundtrack, not a perfect movie but a fun watch with some incredible scenes
- Companion
- Nosferatu - incredibly atmospheric
- The Surfer - total trip with good old Nicholas Cage
- Love Lies Bleeding - just a fun, a bit crazy movie
- Dream Scenario - another trippy Cage movie
- Poor Things
- Oppenheimer ...
- Renfield
- The Menu
- The Banshees of Insherin
- Barbarian (same director as Weapons)
- Prey
- Bullet Train - fun action movie
- The Northman
- The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent
- Everything Everywhere All At Once
- The Invisible Man - most effective horror movie I've ever seen
- The Gentlemen
- Joker -how close can you get to looking like Taxi Driver without being Taxi Driver ...
- The Vast of Night - some scenes that really draw you in and pretty nostalgic
in 2019 now, so I won't continue, but there are plenty of good movies made nowadays, and I won't say I've seen even a close amount of them from the past few years. Of course I'm watching these at home, not in theatres, so that's certainly an argument.
Big budget films today don't take risks. They go through focus groups and oscar checklists. They are homogenized to the point of banality. Don't focus on the big budget films. If they spend a lot on marketing, it's reeks of desperation.
Those great directors you just named were nobodies at the time those films were made. You need to find movies made by the current nobodies. Those are indie films. Go find more indie films. Those are the ones you will enjoy. My favorite movie of all time is Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (2022). I just now had to look up the director and did not recognize the names.
Interesting thought-provoking movies still exist. They're just far away from regular people's comfort zone. I'll recommend you three post 2015 movies that will get you thinking:
Wandering (2022)
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
Monster (2023)
But I'd concede that maybe making movies nowadays is harder because things are turning more and more expensive and there's too much pressure for producing profitable movies. So Art takes a back sit in movies that look for profit.
Everything Everywhere All at Once was the last time I sat in a theater where, for the first half at least, I thought I was watching an instant classic.
But that movie just dragged on, and now I look back and see it as a bungled opportunity. It could've been so much tighter in the edit. They could've cut a third of the movie and made the whole thing so much better.
I don't know as of when. But I have no problem listing one movie after another for the 70's, 80's, 70's, 200x but since then it's been longer and longer between movies that stand out.
Oppenheimer and 'Don't look up' are the exceptions. Everything everywhere all at once was mentioned here but I found it pretty thin and predictable.
> can barely name one good movie a year these days
Not really.
Of the recent movies, Everything Everywhere All at Once is a storytelling masterpiece. Since you mentioned it, I personally rate it alongside Tarantino's Pulp Fiction.
I think Hollywood is well past its prime and the best films are either independent or from elsewhere.
As to a modern cult film, I think "Everything Everywhere All At Once" should make the list.
You make a fair point about cultural conversation being important. I think that conversation is happening, but the focal point shifts from one generation of creatives to the next. It's an important part of cultural dialogue, not just reaching the same targets as previous works, but finding new targets, new mediums and methods of expression.
We saw the shift toward a more fractured landscape happen in music long before movies. If you grew up hearing the Beatles on mainstream radio, listening today might feel like a cultural low point. And that feeling isn't baseless. But treating the Top 40 as the whole of music ends up missing the new developments happening outside that narrow slice.
We're seeing similar shifts in film. The Blair Witch Project and Once Upon a Time in Mexico heralded the age of accessible digital filmmaking, leading to an indie boom that's still rippling out. Everything, Everywhere, All At Once showed that ambitious, effects-heavy filmmaking is no longer tethered to the traditional studio system. Those are the high profile bellwethers -- indie bands that sneak in a radio hit -- but I think they reflect the wider landscape of passionate creatives better than, say, the new Jurassic World.
So yes, blockbusters aren't what they used to be. But judging the health of the entire medium by looking at those is like judging transportation by looking at horse-drawn carriages after the arrival of cars. It focuses on what's leaving instead of what's emerging.
Sharing some in my all-time top ratings which are not in the list (would be cool if other folks shared some of theirs as well):
- Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022): Newer than the cutoff date of the list.
- Your Name (2016): I'm not usually a fan of Anime but this newer film hit different.
- Sunshine (2007): This one I know I consider far better than most do, but it's one of my favorite variants on this kind of story for some reason. Also Cillian Murphy is my favorite actor in the modern era.
All 3 of these happen to be from after the original 2003 book from Steven Jay Schneider as well (though they aren't in the newer list either). I find he did a really good job of covering the classics, but I'm sure if I dug through my top 100 I'd hit something older I liked a lot that didn't make the cut. I'm just too lazy to :D
> "Everything Everywhere All at Once are not lowest common denominator movies"
Is too. It's a stroppy teenage girl who is lol so random[1] and has discovered teenage nihilism because her mom doesn't understand her. It's written to be relatable to the stressed mom, the middle/highschool kid, the immigrant fighting government bureaucracy, and the "I wish my life was exciting" Waymond. It's sci-fi but not good quality deep sci-fi. It's a comedy but not full of jokes or skilled physical humor, mostly 'random' silliness. It's a drama but the characters are shallow 2D people with one attribute each, all done in a Disneyfied "bagel with everything!" style.
In the way that Bella in Twilight is a placeholder for the everywoman reader[2]. Compare The Substance which is beating you over the head with "Society treats ageing women badly" but is not a movie for everyone - the topic is of interest to fewer people, the nudity and the physical body horror and gore will turn away a large section of potential audience. There's not much action or chase scenes like Everything Everywhere tries to throw in, and there's no happy ending like EEAAO either.
[1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/im-so-random-lol-so-random-so-random
[2] https://theoatmeal.com/story/twilight
Anora, Oppenheimer, and Everything Everywhere All at Once are not lowest common denominator movies. the academy has many issues but i dont think its catering to mass appeal and dumbing down
Serpell's interpretation of Anora is dismissive and shallow. the point is Disney infects the American mind and Baker's made that point across half his movies and in some cases incredibly blatantly. its implied and Serpell categorizing it under New Literalism goes to show they're probably right in many cases, but also use it as a convenient excuse to avoid analysis
Perhaps you can share some examples of the films you are referring as "mindless banter in between sex and explosions". I'm not sure that description really fits most of the films coming out recently. If you said, "Dumb comic book films", I would maybe agree with you, but there isn't typically any sex in those so I assume you are not referring to them.
Covid halted the production of a lot of movies, and changed how others were made. It also shut down theaters. So, "since covid", is really talking about before and after an era. Kind of like saying, "since 9/11", in terms of the impact on culture. A lot of creativity has moved from the movie theaters to streaming services and from films to more episodic content.
However, here is a short list of films worth seeing (imo) since covid (2019).
Zone of Interest (2023) The Holdovers (2023) Parasite (2019) Dune (2021) Dune Part Two (2024) Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) 1917 (2019) The Banshees of Inisherin (2022) The Substance (2024) Palm Springs (2020) Oppenheimer (2023) The Lighthouse (2019) Hundreds of Beavers (2022) Barbarian (2022) Flow (2024)
Isn’t that a plot point in “everything everywhere all at once”? Did she watch that movie and take the silliest element way too seriously?
Sure, there are a ton of reasons to archive. And if it's cheap to do (in terms of money, yes, but also in terms of time, effort, mental health, etc.) then I am of the mind that we should archive everything.
But, it often isn't cheap to do, and in that case, it makes sense to prioritize. The high priority items for me are the things that I might want to share, the ideas I want to amplify for my contemporaries and future generations that might examine my life. Stuff like [1] [2] and [3] which has influenced my thinking fundamentally, that I hope to build upon so that others can build upon what I have built.
I'd argue that you do this intuitively: you're mentioning a letter from your family's past because it is a high priority item--it's relevant because it was the last written words of your great-grandmother's first husband.
But, there's a lot that isn't worth keeping. My first form of archiving as a teenager was keeping ticket stubs for movies and concerts--a decade later I was going through my pile and found that I didn't even remember most of them. The better movies, I remembered--and I had them on DVD. The better concerts, I remembered--and I also had journal entries and CDs to remember the experience and the music. It's not important to me where/when I saw Everything, Everywhere, All At Once in theaters, but I have it on DVD and I can't wait to show it to my niece when she's older. And sure, I saw Amigo the Devil live, but frankly, he's not an artist you need to see in concert--the greatest impact of Cocaine and Abel[4] on me was when I listened to it alone in my room. The ticket stubs simply don't matter to me.
[1] https://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/451-500/the_last_viridian_note.html
[2] https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_the_power_of_vulnerability
[3] https://digital.wpi.edu/pdfviewer/wm117p10z
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzjtLm0G49E
EDIT: All the things linked above, I have backed up in one form or another. Notably, the Schutt paper isn't at its original URL.
2010s visual art was full of super saturation and hyperrealism due to Marvel and Instagram filters.
Sony's "Into the Spiderverse" freed itself from the shadow of Pixar, and has forever changed what high quality, mass audience, computer animated films can be, and Dreamworks has already shifted its own design towards more expressive unique cartoon language.
Also, the rising shift of A24's unique visual aesthetic in the 2010s remained quite obscure until "Everything Everywhere All at Once" 2 years ago finally brought its "freedom" of visual expression to mainstream audiences. Now, others want to capture that same visual style and I'm seeing a broad shift away from over saturation, hyper realism, and toward the more muted and mundane. I'm impressed that Marvel is already applying some of it in "Agatha All Along".
Anyway, my point still stands, artists will constantly push back against whatever is mainstream in an effort to be seen and to define their own aesthetic/brand. It's easier to be 1 of 10, than it is 1 of a million. Plus, if they're lucky enough, they get to be known for starting or accelerating the movement.
Every single decade has very clearly defined aesthetics that designers copy until something new comes along to disrupt it.
> After all, no one is being forced to watch the dubbed version of the film.
Yeah, except when we do, but it is too late then. Currently staying not in my home country and last year saw that "Everything Everywhere All At Once" was streaming. I immediately started it, only to discover that it was dubbed in the local language. So I got either local dub, or Chinese+local sub, nothing else. And my level of local language was like A1 or so. Thankfully a year later this issue has been solved, because it is not available for streaming at all today. Yay!.. :)
Some movies in various genres that I like:
* Everything Everywhere All At Once
* The Matrix
* Fight Club
* Weird: The Al Yankovic Story
* Pulp Fiction
* Shutter Island
* Inception
It's hard to pick one "best" movie.
> Blu-ray discs of movies, shows and music exist
For now. Everything Everywhere All At Once never got a physical release here in the UK. Considering it won best picture that is insane to me.
Similarly, a lot of prestige shows that are either produced by streaming companies or distributed by streaming companies outside the US never get physical releases.
I’m not saying you’re wrong—you’re dead right—but it bums me out.
I'd put Everything Everywhere All at Once on that list, depending how you define sci-fi. One of the best films of the decade, in my opinion.
> If you did find a shred of criticism, viewers either accused you of ignorance, unappreciative of art, or racism.
To be fair, the first 2 out of those 3 things are the coming go-to accusations when it comes to making a “you didn’t like this and this is why you are wrong” point. For any kind of media.
The last one is situational, and depending on the movie could be swapped with something else. So I wouldn’t worry much about those accusations.
With that said, I haven’t watched Everything Everywhere All at Once myself yet (it is on my “very soon” list), but all of my friends (who all have very different tastes in movies) ended up liking it. So I am a bit optimistic about this one.
In 2022, it seemed like every Asian American raved about how good the movie is, just like when Crazy Rich Asians came out in 2018. I believe I'm in the target demographic for Everything Everywhere All at Once.
I fell asleep halfway through the movie and I tried my best to stay awake, even after my friends woke me up. The most interesting parts of the movie existed in the real-world plot but the movie kept running away from it. Even then, all universes (real-world included) had cringe-worthy levels of cliché metanarrative. It was a chore to make it to the end.
It's even worse that any criticism of the movie was actively shut down and nothing negative about it could be found online. If you did find a shred of criticism, viewers either accused you of ignorance, unappreciative of art, or racism.
I liked the actors playing the parents. I thought Stephanie Hsu and Ke Huy Quan were good in the real-life scenes.
- Spiderman: Into The Spiderverse (slightly, seems to be in-house): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7n12kHKvesc
- Everything Everywhere All At Once (Runway AI): https://variety.com/2023/artisans/news/artificial-intelligence-runway-everything-everywhere-all-at-once-1235532322/
Two massively popular films recently that used generative AI.
I see the opposite, modern nihilism is demonstrated in the movie “Everything Everywhere all at Once”. There’s no deep, existential meaning. But there is personal and human meaning.
Eh, I mean it's hard to say if there's any correlation between bad movies and progressive movies. Some of the best movies recently are progressive (everything everywhere all at once, barbie). Some recent shows from Disney are terrific too (Andor).
Some terrible shows aren't progressive at all.
There are definitely cases that people morally blame audiences as a false cover for a bad movie, but there are also people who can't enjoy great movies if they can find any progressive meaning in them and make a career about ranting about it.
Rick and Morty was the rare quasar in a mess of warm gas.
And I say "was" because it fell off a cliff after season 2.
As for "everything everywhere all at once". Quite meh. Turned it off halfway.
Hollywod and big budget movies are not particularly great, it's true. There's a few exceptions - Dune and Don't Look Up, off the top of my head.
But there are great movies still being made. You just have to look fairly hard. The last few years have seen some brilliant films like:
* Everything, Everywhere All At Once
* Nobody Knows I'm Here
* Portrait Of A Woman On Fire
* Argentina, 1985
* The Banshees Of Inisherin
> This kind of stuff is the future of film making.
> Imagine adding "yourself" into a scene like this, moving around as you > were/are from a video you just created of yourself. As in: film yourself > walking around your bedroom with your phone. Then use an app like this to > add you and your movement (cropped from the video) to a different > background scene.
> Goodbye, Hollywood elites!
As someone working in this arena, statements like this make me chuckle.
Don't get me wrong-- I think this is really cool. I get that people are excited about new tech, and technical people always overestimate the value of technical advancements in creative workflows, but no: people being able to place a perfect hyper-realistic replica of themselves in a film wouldn't kill the film industry any more than RPG Maker + generative AI would kill the games industry. I'd wager it probably would not even leave a dent.
Firstly, there would need to be a film to begin with, and that requires a lot. A whole hell of a lot.
Secondly, characters matter. A lot. Especially main characters. Do you replace the name of the main character with your name in stories you tell? How about doing a global search-and-replace in the ebooks you read? It's not like we don't have the technical capability. I could see this being a novelty feature in some action movies, especially superhero movies, and more likely in games and porn, but one of the biggest draws a movie has is who stars in it-- and if you look at the rest of the human population, you'll notice that we're not choosing representative samples. The fact that it's someone else with a personality and back story and motives and strengths and flaws-- a character-- is a pretty important part of stories. Their appearance matters, too. Most people don't even like staring at themselves for a few minutes, let alone for an entire feature length film. In most situations, I think it would be distracting as hell. Sure, people might find it amusing to see themselves in Top Gun Maverick, but would they want to see themselves getting bullied by an IRS agent in Everything Everywhere All at Once? Getting a box cutter held to their throat in Emily the Criminal? Would replacing Jon Hamm's appearance with their own really make watching Madmen better? Do most people want to see themselves beat to a pulp in Fight Club? I'd wager that few would.
Thirdly, most people aren't particularly interested in putting in the thought and effort to customize their phones: I'm pretty sure they're less interested in putting thought and effort into customizing their passive entertainment. They just want to hit play and have a nice little escape.
So, no. As long as people will continue to seek entertainment for the reasons they've always sought it, this is not going to fundamentally change the art of storytelling anytime soon.
Oh they exist, they just have a much harder time finding work, and when they do get to make something it rarely gets the same marketing push as comic book shared universe project #87. Some great movies still come out, but you probably never hear about them if you aren't actively plugged in to the scene.
I think filmmakers like Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (Swiss Army Man, Everything Everywhere All at Once) are where Hollywood should be focusing their attention, and their sweep at the Oscars this year has me cautiously hopeful that at least a few people in power are paying attention.
I’d say that AAA are the rough equivalent of major Hollywood productions. Looking at Wikipedia for budgets and box office for a few high profile films:
Everything Everywhere All At Once had a budget in the $14M to $25M range, for a $141M box office. The Batman made $771M from a $185M-$200M budget, and Multiverse of Madness made $959M off a $294M budget.
EEAAO is a AA, maybe an A film where Batman and MoM are AAA, you couldn’t even produce The Batman or MoM with all the revenue from EEAAO. Nonetheless, EEAAO was by far the most successful of the three, both in terms of critical acclaim and in terms of return on investment.
Likewise, Hearthstone is definitely not a AAA game. It’s deliberately a much smaller product than Blizzard’s other games. Cities Skyline is the product of a tiny 30ish person company, published by a publisher famous for lower profile, lower production value games.
Paradox as a publisher is about the same tier as A24: Very successful in their respective niches, but not their industries’ 800-pound gorillas.
> Everything Everywhere had a lot of style and the potential to be a great film…
"Great" is subjective. We all experience art through our own lens, and for me it was magic. I'm glad that, sometimes, Weird Shit™ like Everything Everywhere All at Once, Swiss Army Man, etc. can somehow make it through a system that abhors risk.
It’s good that this classic has been resurfaced by its stylistic cameo in “Everything Everywhere All at Once” — a movie which has a lot to admire, but tries so extremely hard to be clever and likable that it just fell completely flat for me.
I watched it twice, and both times I just found myself wishing I was watching “In the Mood for Love” instead when the multiverse kaleidoscope spun that way.
> Without advertising, you wouldn't even know that many products and services exist.
This is a vastly positive tradeoff. The number of products which would improve my life, versus the number of products I am inundated with daily, is a negligible ratio.
> You can't rely on word-of-mouth for everything.
That's true. However, I can rely on independent review sites, and I could probably rely on search engines to find me products that solve problems when I search for them, if they weren't controlled by advertisers.
Nobody is saying rely on word-of-mouth. That's a straw man.
> Of course, so many advertisers have abused their power that blocking ads is a good choice for many reasons, but don't make the mistake of calling all advertising "evil". Without it, how do you know a new movie is coming soon, or that someone's invented and is selling a new computer peripheral, for instance?
There are a number of movie reviewers I follow, and a few friends who have similar taste in movies as me. I'm not interested in computer peripherals, but if I were, I imagine Wirecutter contains information, and there are probably other similar sites.
Advertisers are not helping me find movies to watch or computer peripherals I need. They're helping themselves, and in a way that's aligned with harming me. I never saw an ad for Everything Everywhere All At Once, which was my favorite movie last year--my friend Adam invited me to see it. I did see a ton of astroturfing for White Lotus, which was a complete waste of my time to watch two episodes of. Why would I want ads?
Stop this nonsense about how we need ads. We don't.
> The old-style small, highly-targeted, text-only ads that Google used to show alongside search results really were the pinnacle of advertising I think. They were great for learning about something that would fix whatever problem you were googling about.
God forbid Google return the solution to your problem as a search result, you know, like a functioning search engine.
This really is the most absurdly missing-the-point example you could have chosen.
Yeah, with them touting watching movies and only having "up to 2 hours" of battery, that's going to severely limit the movies you can watch. "Everything, Everywhere, All At Once", which they showed someone watching, is 2.2hrs.
Not the OP, but as an older guy, I'll throw in "Everything Everywhere All At Once". Very fast paced with incredible concepts being thrown in seemingly at random. When you reach the infamous rock scene, it feels like it's the first time in the movie you've had time to draw a breath. Also very confusing emotionally as you'll be laughing one minute and snivelling the next.
I think the movie industry can still tell good stories, I just think that many movies don't optimise for this and instead optimise for revenue (across cinemas, streaming, merch, TV, etc).
There have been some amazing films in recent years with plenty of effort put into their craft. Villenueve's Dune and Arrival come to mind in Sci-Fi, things like Everything Everywhere All At Once, Knives Out, these are all films that I think have been made with a deep appreciation for the craft, without trying to appeal too widely and lose their depth. I guess you could argue that some of these are telling from "weird angles", but I'm not sure I'd agree, and even if so I think those differences bring significant value rather than being gimmicks.
Everything Everywhere All At Once should be one of those exceptions and is arguably scifi. It's telling that such an original film didn't come from a Hollywood studio.
A24, I think, hit upon something that had been nagging at me for years in that Hollywood films are massive productions, several million dollars get poured into them. Not every film is a Marvel $250 million undertaking, but the recent Puss in Boots sequel costs about $90+ million, Dungeons and Dragons cost $150 million, heck even Halloween Ends cost $33 million (add a grain of salt for each of these figures). What's missing? $1 million, $5 million, $10 million.
This space between low budget and medium budget was, for a little while, nearly non-existent. With these budgets, you don't have to be that successful to get your investment in the black. It allows you to make riskier films, and there is clearly a market for films of depth and creativity. It boggles the mind that Halloween Ends required more budget (I assume it's mostly marketing) than Everything Everywhere All at Once, it's just about a guy killing people, in fairness one of those people was Jamie Lee Curtis.
There is a very good question about price perception there. What should be the "right" price for a cinema experience?
If you start from first principles and you compute it as "2.5 hours of entertainment in a climate controlled and comfortable environment with refreshments", it doesn't feel unreasonable to put it at 30$ (per person): that's in line with how much other comparable activities will set you back (escape rooms, paintball, whatever).
If you go from "the price has increased too much since I used to go there as a child/teen" then you are going to say that's way too much.
Some (most?) movies do feel better in a cinema than at home (at least to me). And this is without considering 3d, immersive sound/vibration or anything, just "vanilla" cinema. "Everything, everywhere, all at once" doesn't have the same ooomph on my tv.
I don't see them dying but they are endangered and niche. Bit like theatre.
Academy convention is to award older, more accomplished actors for previous work that was not awarded. Chalemet's age compared to Paul's is irrelevant. IRL, Chalemet is too young (compared to his competition in 2022) to be awarded an Oscar. Not technically, but in practice, Oscars are more like lifetime achievement awards. For example, Jamie Lee Curtis did not give an Oscar winning performance in Everything Everywhere All at Once, but they had to give it to her for her lifetime achievement and the fact that they awarded Oscars to two other actors in the film. That movie was terrible, but Michelle Yeoh deserves an Oscar for lifetime achievement. Ke Huy Kuan, 51, was certainly adequate, but the roll was nothing special. Hong Chau, 41, should have gotten his Oscar for her work in The Whale, which was a notably amazing performance. Kuan got it because of his age, even if his lifetime achievement is limited. Someone decided Everything Everywhere would sweep the Oscars, and it had everything to do with Michelle Yeoh's and Jamie Lee Curtis' lifetime achievements. The Whale was a far better film with more difficult acting that was nailed. It was just too controversial. Frasier got the Oscar even though his supporting actor Chau out-acted him, and pretty much everyone in all other movies. Her performance there was one of the best I have ever seen, and I had never heard of her. She'll be back.
I know, right? This line in particular got stuck out at me:
> They are mortally offended by the suggestion that Marvel might be somehow less good than Chris Marker, or that K-pop might be worse than Rimsky-Korasov.
Never heard of Chris Marker or Rimsky-Korasov, had to look those up. Chris Marker looks like an indie French filmmaker who 60 years ago made a 27 minute time travel film called La Jetée, using only still photographs, that William Gibson apparently considered one of his greatest influences. So yeah, this sounds like something that most mainstream people wouldn't be aware of or into and exactly the type of thing a film nerd or film hipster (who he said in the opening paragraphs were all killed because of how annoying they are) would be into.
And Rimsky-Korasov is a Russian classical music composer who's been dead for over 100 years. Someone that only a music nerd would probably be aware of nowadays, or go see a concert for.
If he didn't want to be such a hipster about it, he could have used like Martin Scorsese or Stanley Kubrick and Mozart or Bach or even Debussy or something, a name most people would probably recognize, instead of these less recognizable names, especially in an article where he's making fun of nerds for being into obscure shit (while "their" movies have been dominating the box office for well over a decade at this point).
I'm not trying to defend Marvel here either. I don't think they're the best movies ever made (I thought Everything Everywhere All At Once was the best movie I've seen since Parasite, and considering it pretty much swept the Oscars this year, and Parasite did a few years before that, critics seem to agree with me there).
Another quote that stuck out:
> The culture we produce on Planet Nerd has nothing to do with desire whatsoever. Everything is sterile, mercilessly unsexy; no eroticism, not even visual pleasure.... Nerd culture, meanwhile, is basically quite boring to consume. Instead of the sadistic fantasy of being a superhero, doing fantastic things that ordinary people don’t get to do, the Marvel movies are about nothing more than themselves.
Sounds like someone needs to watch The Boys or Invincible. You'll get your sadistic power fantasy there. (I mean, just watch The Boys episode about 'Herogasm').
Marvel can't do that because it has to get parents to take their children to see them to make all the money. You don't see sadistic power fantasies about being a wizard in Harry Potter either, or overly sensual things with any Disney movie, barring the hidden 'SEX' in flower petals in Lion King.
> The economic value of mediocre and derivative work is plummeting. But the value of truly excellent and original work will become even more unique, more highly prized.
> A chasm between the third best and fourth best script writer, graphic designer, lawyer, etc. is just starting to open. ChatGPT might write the next Marvel movie but will never write the next Everything Everywhere All at Once.
Not my words. By Eric Peters CIO of One River Asset Management
We're already seeing jobs being done by AI. Many creative jobs that would take a team a week to handle are being shopped out to a bot to handle in an hour.
VFX are going to get hit particularly hard by this. Everything Everywhere All at Once is a visually stunning film yet had a 6-member team handling graphics post. They were smart, but they also shopped out all the dull rotoscoping work to AI. Look at any Marvel film from the past decade. Hundreds of artists per title, thousands if you include costume design, storyboarding, audio, even writing.
Most of this "doomism" is people realising how quickly their jobs could be automated. A future where your once-valued skillset suddenly has no monetary value is scary.
That's is why I called it two separate axes and not two ends in a single axis. You need a base level of technical competency to understand what the limitations of your equipment are to leverage it to the fullest extent and avoid doing things that will just plain not work, and the technical features are needed to accomplish specific things, but artistry is till required. Feature films have been captured on iPhone (you can say that is little more than a stunt, but it still exists).
Not everyone is filming Barry Lyndon with f/.95 aperture in candle-lit scenes. Watching older films where both the glass and the film were subpar compared to what's available today, where the grain was high, the focus puller wasn't at the top of their game leaving characters somewhat out of focus (when looking closely, maybe not noticeable at 480p or 720p), but the films are still enjoyable. Parts of The Batman were filmed on a Helios 40-2, an objectively terrible lens when it comes to it's optical characteristics, but it can evoke a look that you can't otherwise get which helps with the mood the cinematographer was trying to capture. You won't be able to capture the vast expanses of night time scenes of Nope (filmed as day for night with infrared cameras) with subpar equipment. You need full sharpness for easier rotoscoping when dealing with VFX. You want the best cameras available to capture miniatures of spaceships like in 2001 or Interstellar to make people believe these are real spaceships. You can leverage a new technology in a new way, like 28 Days Later used new at the time digital cameras (that would nowadays be considered subpar) for easier application of effects like undercranking and lower production costs, or how they used 360 shutters in Collateral. But you can also make a film like The Man From Earth that was shot in a single room, with a bunch of actors and an camera that was average at the time, or Saving Private Ryan simply undercranking and using really short shutterns to ensure that the beach landing scene was crisp through and through. Everything Everywhere All At Once didn't have Marvel-budget level gear, but they still made one of the best movies of the past few years.
I don't fully disagree with what you're saying: better tools expand the envelope of what you can accomplish. But technology is in service of the art, not the other way around (unless you're producing marketing material for the manufacturer, I guess ^_^).
I love combing over features, and learn about the mechanics of these amazing machines, and the theory of the physics of light (even knowing how it works, it is still feels like magic that you can take a full picture of an object that is partially obstructed as long as you can make that foreground element blurred enough). I'm a shit artist, but I trust one with a point and shoot to make something better than I can with my DSLRs. I can't wait to see what new story telling tricks people will come up with new tech, like Nope did.
> When I was but a little boy, Terminator 2 had CGI and cost brazillians.
And it has very few CGI shots compared to modern movies. It only had about 50 CGI shots in total.
In comparison, Everything Everywhere All at Once which had tons of practical effects and budget constraints had 500. A modern blockbuster movie pushes the number of CGI shots beyond 2000.
> We have entire movies made with humans basically just standing in front of green screen. You cannot seriously claim it has gotten harder or more expensive.
Again. For some reason unbeknownst to me you keep assuming that CGI is cheap and easy. Especially given the amount of CGI, resoultions and the details that have to be there.
Hahaha, I expected the criticism of my comment to be that too much of what I was counting as good is "high brow", in fact. Too artsy-fartsy. Leaning too much toward "The Green Knight" and not enough toward "Jaws".
[EDIT] Here, lemme just list the 2022 movies that I think were worth a watch if you're at all into the kind of thing they were doing:
Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Glass Onion Top Gun: Maverick Bullet Train All Quiet on the Western Front Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio Crimes of the Future Death on the Nile Everything Everywhere All at Once White Noise Nope Prey The Sadness You Won't Be Alone Dual The Northman The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent (arguably just a less-exciting RRR, but hey, it makes up for it by also being shorter and non-horror comedy *is* a bit weak lately, so it gets in) Watcher Dashcam (one of the most interesting movies I've seen in a long time—you may hate it, but you'll feel *something*, damnit!) The Banshees of Inisherin
This is just ones I've seen (I usually manage, like, 1/2 of the films in a year that I want to watch, at best) and excluding a few that did in fact suck or that I didn't think quite merited inclusion (e.g. The Menu) or that are good for what they are but are pretty narrow in appeal (Violent Night). Like, I hear Cyrano is great, Emily the Criminal, Bodies Bodies Bodies, The Whale, and a bunch of others, but haven't made it to them yet (and, inevitably, I'll end up never watching some of them).
"Quite a few of those are sequels, remakes, or adaptations! White Noise was a book! Death on the Nile! One of those is a marvel movie!" yeah, I know—good luck finding an era in Hollywood when a ton of the films, and even a ton of the good films, weren't such. I reject that as, specifically, a complaint about this moment in cinema (it has more merit as a criticism of cinema in general)
I'm not saying no one uses long shots or takes anymore and they aren't totally ineffective - I just watched Mandy over the weekend and it has plenty and they are used effectively but it's also a move that seems to have people regarding it in extremes - it's really a love or hate because of the choices they make.
But what I'm trying to say is there are other tools in the toolbox now - I haven't heard anyone say that Everything Everywhere All At Once was bad, it's a great movie, absolutely full of deliberately chosen mood, and it never has to resort to extremely long shots that take the wind out of the story's sails.
> It's been used in huge movies like "Everything Everywhere All At Once".
An odd question, but I always wondered how do movie-related product developers learn about where their tool is used.
Can you tell how it happened in your case?
(The product looks fantastic.)
Art today is definitely and absolutely still made with love and passion. Films like Everything Everywhere All At Once (or the recent episode of The Last Of Us) take a popular concept or franchise and make it their own. Fanfiction is still at crazy levels, thanks to websites like AO3. The book industry still has outstanding popular modern works which stand on their own and refuse to let genre define them. (Becky Chambers is my favourite for this, with her hygge scifi). There's also a whole host of internet culture - lots of tumblr tags and subreddits - that are actively filled with sharing, passion and community, not for good art that sells, but something that lifts the spirit in its own weird way.
Anecdotes aside, at least for independent artists it may be economical effects that constrain passion and make projects feel so for-profit. Which have always been a thing, unfortunately. Given technology, maybe there is so much art to consume that making art requires forgoing distraction and the general worry that the art will be bad (which is nonsense, because some art simply has a limited audience).
In today's era, stuff like EU art grants [0] can do some good, although I have the feeling that patronage-per-capita is considerably lower than it was in the past; it would be an interesting metric to look at and try best to increase.
[0]: https://culture.ec.europa.eu/funding/cultureu-funding-guide
I disagree. The message is clear that reality is messy. But not that love is an illusion. Those two messages aren't hand in hand. In the time stop episode he explicitly sacrifices himself for love and reflects on that. Most Ricks don't seem to love their grandkids but the main Rick does. This has been a plot point since season 1.
I think Rick was frequently wrong even in early material. He was wrong about the planet being ruled by advanced males that lost the need for females. He was wrong about his relationship with Unity and nearly kills himself for it. He was wrong when he destroyed his own universe. Rick lives in a meaningless world because he's vastly surpassed its limitations. But he's not better for it.
Most plot arcs take an existing concept, writing tactic, plot, or trope, and deconstruct its assumptions to then reconstruct the juicy bits. Like the Purge episode. Rick is too powerful to be bothered by the purge. Gets bored. But ends on gleeful gratuitous violence because its kind of fun. Which gets back to what I would say is the central message of the show. Even if the world is dumb/messy/nihilistic/bad; it can still be awesome. Things can be good without a need for them to be intrinsically good.
I think this is one of the more pressing artistic idea of our times. Same for Everything Everywhere All At Once.
Sturgeon's law applies - 90% of everything is crap. 90% of movies shot on film were terrible too. Everything in the direct-to-video bargain bin in Blockbuster in the 80s and 90s was shot on film, and trust me, they were not all Tremors II.
So when more stuff gets made, more crap gets made. But the 10% that's good gets bigger too.
You want a world that contains Everything Everywhere All At Once? You have to also accept The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies as well. Sorry.
Not an American so I probably should not complain. But when I opened the page out of curiosity for the first time, I found many terms that require explanations, such as what is AGI?
The "What Is IRS Free File?" section below it explained most of my questions, so I think the "What Is IRS Free File?" section should exchange it place with the "Choose from IRS Free File" section. This allows the reader to have a clearer mind when preforming the filing process.
Just my two cents.
I wouldn't take the matter lightly though, because based on my understanding and what I've learned from the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once, IRS tax filing is a serious manner thus the tools designed to do that should be more user-friendly. I don't think getting kungfu-attacked by the IRS lady is enjoyable for any American (as well as going to jail/getting fined for misfiling).
2022 - Kimi, After Yang, Crimes of the Future, White Noise, Official Competition, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Tar, Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon
2021 - Nightmare Alley, The Card Counter, Zola, The French Dispatch, Come True, Don't Look Up, I Care A Lot,
2020 - I'm Thinking of Ending Things, Mank, The Sound of Metal, Possessor, His House
2019 - Climax, Uncut Gems, Parasite, Vivarium, First Cow
2018 - The Clovehitch Killer, Prospect, Mute, Anon, Mandy, The House That Jack Built, Cam, Sorry to Bother You
2018 had a glut of Netflix sci-fi B-movies that I think are very solidly good if not so great. I think they're underrated so I included them. I might have also messed up on the years.
These are all films I've seen. There are many others that I suspect are even better that I haven't seen.
Just a quick glance at Letterboxd....
Banshees of Inisherin
Everything Everywhere All At Once
Both Knives Out movies
Parasite
Nope (probably just in the "good" grouping, not great)
-----
That's, uh... just from the "popular this week" screen. And only the ones I've seen, so I know they're good. But I'm pretty sure all those are last five years, or close to it.
-----
Digging back to 2018 and later (we can say 2018 counts since 2023 just started, right?):
Annihilation
Sorry to Bother You
High Life
Midsommar
Uncut Gems (god it's so good)
Jojo Rabbit
The Lighthouse
The Green Knight
CODA
Spontaneous ([EDIT] It seems very dumb but wow is it a gut punch, when you start to think about what you're watching and make some connections to real life)
Red Rocket (small-scale brilliance)
RRR
Watcher
-----
I just realized I misread you as asking for 5 good ones from just one of the last 5 years, not 5 total from the last 5 years, but I think that gets the point across? Despite my leaving off a whole bunch that may be more taste-specific, not having watched even 1/3 of the films from that span I have good reason to believe are good, not exhaustively mining that timespan (I bet I could double the size of that list without changing how I was selecting them), and also omitting a bunch of more-popular movies that I think were at least decent.
[EDIT] Hell some years you could get to 2-3 good ones just by looking at what A24 produced that year, nothing else.
Given advances in technology, I'm not so sure it has to be a blockbuster for there to be a comparison. Especially given how formulaic blockbusters can be. (Eg there are 6 Transformers movies, with 2 more in development.) Drive (2011) is an indie movie, costing an estimated $20 million (inflation adjusted) compared to almost $220 for Terminator 2. Everything Everywhere All At Once cost $25 million to make, just over the threshold of "indie".
Comparing computing power is a bit handwavey, but former Pixar employee Chris Good estimated that the SPARCstation 20 render farm cluster that rendered Toy Story had only half the power of the 2014 Apple iPhone 6. https://www.quora.com/How-much-faster-would-it-be-to-render-Toy-Story-in-2011-compared-to-how-long-it-took-in-1995
The Mission Impossible films have maintained high quality despite an absurd number of sequels.
I’d also compare _Everything Everywhere All at Once_ favorably against a lot of old blockbusters.
Modern technology aside, Top Gun: Maverick feels like it could have come out thirty years ago.
Have you seen this year's "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once"? If not, I highly recommend it, it's amazing and bonkers and moving and clever. Just an utterly fantastic movie all around. The budget was $25 million—which is not small—but it still feels a lot more indie than most other movies.
I want to live life like evelyn and waymond in alpha universe in movie Everything Everywhere All at once.. connecting and experiencing to different multiverses
It's hard not to be cynical or entertain thoughts of Hollywood planning these things in case the show sucks. Because they can clearly do entertainment with diverse casting, non-white people, female leads and succeed:
- Tom Holland Spider-Man does not have a red-head MJ, Flash is Indian and the made up best friend is Filipino. - Domino in the Dead Pool movies is black. NTW doesn't seem to have the same powers and is gay. But I'm not sure what the current character status is. - Everything Everywhere All at Once - Black Panther - Shang Chi - Jordan Peele does good work: Nope, Us, Candy Man, Get Out - The Expanse - Life of Pi - Sandman swaps a bunch of stuff
Appetite for completely foreign media is much slower in English speaking countries but once in a while you get a major break through: Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Parasite.
For iconic female leads: Terminator has Sarah Connor, Ripley from Aliens, The Bride from Kill Bill, Charlize Therons character in the last Mad Max movie. Buffy. I apologize for how narrow the genres are here.
I don't think the popular media for anything I just mentioned was too negative (maybe Black Panther?). Is it really just the fans? I bet the overlap of Rings of Power watchers and watchers of the stuff I listed is pretty big ...
edit: formatting
> Multiverse of Madness has to be one of my favourite marvel films of late
I’m curious why you think that. I thought it was one of the most boring Marvel films in the franchise, and I’m surprised I was able to stay awake for the entire thing. On the other hand, its twin, "Everything Everywhere All at Once", had me deeply engrossed and interested.
Makes me think of the movie Everything, Everywhere, All At Once (it also involves parallel universes and life's failures).
A friend said the other day, tomorrow isn't written yet...
Recently:
- Everything Everywhere All at Once - The Black Phone - The Northman - House of Gucci - Knives Out - Little Women - A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood - The Shape of Water
The blockbusters are such a huge part of the cultural landscape so that it’s easy to miss all the other film out there. But there’s really a lot of it!
A24 (the production house behind "Everything, everywhere, all at Once") is one of the few shining lights as far as movie production goes these days.
Unpopular opinion: The Fugitive is not a particularly good movie and Harrison Ford is not a particularly good actor.
I mean if one wants to write an article about the good action movies of the time maybe write about Heat?
And while I agree with the observation that we are seeing way too many entirely predictable movies made by the same patterns, I would argue The Fugitive was one of them at the time.
Still from time to time something very different comes along. I just watched "Everything, everywhere, all at Once". That is definitely not your typical Holywood fare, and was extremely surprising and enjoyable.
One thing I realized from "Everything Everywhere All At Once" is that although I never heard of the directors before (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniels_(directors)), and never would have predicted that movie and it content, the moment I started watching it, I realized there was another pair of people to put on the List of People I Trust To Make Good Stuff. For example, I'd like them to go back and make Cat's Cradle, or even better, Sirens of Titan.
How many other second-tier directors who could make great films are out there not getting funded?
Marvel films have cheap, lazy cinematography, for the most part, so they leave a lot on the table in the name of (I assume) saving money. Every Frame a Painting mentions this in a few videos, especially their poor use of music and failure to do anything with mood-of-setting and, relatedly, camera work and editing (match it to the mood of the scene, contrast it to mood of the scene—little of that kind of thing at all, it's just very flat).
> (I realise TG: Maverick isn't going to be everybody's taste but it's the best film I've seen at the cinema in a long time, and the first time I've walked out of a movie feeling absolutely wowed since, perhaps, The Matrix came out in 1999.)
- Everything Everywhere All at Once
- Mad Max: Fury Road
- Blade Runner 2049
- RRR if pure, audacious, crazy popcorn-munching spectacle and a movie that's constantly saying "yes, and..." does it for you.
- Dune (the new one). Watch it on the biggest screen and best sound system you can get access to. Actually, that kinda goes for all of these.
A big step down from those in quality and they're not going to give you that "wow" effect, but still action films that are better than nearly all Marvel movies:
- Any Mission Impossible movie except maybe 2.
- The John Wick movies.
- Dredd.
- The Raid 1 & 2 (which Dredd rips off pretty blatantly, but it's decent, too)
I've heard very good things about the later Planet of the Apes (remake series) movies but have only seen the first one, personally.
Painful to limit myself to action movies. There are so many good films.
I recommend watching "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once". It highlights a philosophy that I fully subscribe to: there is no purpose of life or anything else, other than what we make of it. Someone's purpose is whatever they decide it is. As long as you're not hurting anyone in your pursuit or enjoyment of a thing, that thing can be your goal if you want. You want to be useful to someone? Go do that. You want to be happy? Figure out how to do that. You want to swim naked with sharks and try not to get bitten? Have fun! But you don't get to decide what someone else's purpose is.
(EXTREMELY minor spoilers for Everything Everywhere All At Once) .
.
.
.
.
.
.
My inner child chuckled to see 55378008 displayed on a calculator near the end of that movie.
It's not that it's ripping off the ideas, it's that that's what it's supposed to be doing. I watched the entire first season waiting for the bit when it got good, nothing happened.
If you want to take reference to old films and do something original with them, like Everything Everywhere All At Once, great.
Thank you, that give me hope, this is very meaningful work :) very minor critic: the scrolling performance is not perfect on some boards (note that my 4K screen doewsn't help..)
BTW your app just made me discover the movie "everything everywhere all at once" (yeah I must be living under a rock..) and I'm very hyped given the critics!
I’ve added some movies I love too :)
Books ‘The Alchemist’ by Paulo Coelho ‘Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress’ by Steven Pinker ‘Designing Your Life: Build a Life that Works for You’ by Bill Burnett, Dave Evans ‘Exhalation’ and ‘Stories of Your Life and Others’ by Ted Chiang
Movies ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ ‘Dead Poet’s Society’ ‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ ‘King Richard’ ‘Shawshank Redemption’ Anything Studio Ghibli
Not for nothing, Everything Everywhere All at Once was produced by the Russo brothers who directed Avengers Infinity Wars, Endgame and Captain America movies. Also Michelle Yeoh is a pretty huge star both here and in China. Just saying it's not exactly an indie film. But it was original, for sure.
As counterpoint we just experienced one of the most original movies ever, which made it to the top 3:
https://www.boxofficemojo.com/release/rl3861218049/ (Everything Everywhere All at Once)
On minimal budget and marketing
There's Dark and Altered Carbon Season 1. Everything Everywhere All At Once just came out in theatres and that's supposed to be crazy Sci Fi (not supposed to go in knowing much about it)
I just pre-ordered the movie (digital copy). I hope it is released soon. I like owning a few movies like Prometheus, Ghost in the Shell, etc. even though they are widely available on streaming services we subscribe to.
A new friend who is a director and his wife are coming over for lunch today (I got up super early this morning to rewatch two of his movies) and it would be more than great if Everything Everywhere All at Once were to be released in the next four hours so we could watch it together.
It is possible, the condition is a bit poorly named. The video of the talk by Russell Barkley that is linked elsewhere is a good primer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSfCdBBqNXY). People with ADHD can have episodes of hyper focus. However this is a bit a misnomer, it's called Perseveration and is not really a good thing, and has more to do with one's inability to task switch (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perseveration). However it also allows you to completely zone into a code base or a problem. The problem is you don't really have much control over what will catch your attention. But of course you can develop quite some deep technical expertise this way.
Now, that said, there is a new movie, Everything Everywhere All At Once, and if you take this title as a stand in for ADHD, maybe you can see that while this way of living can be overwhelming it also allows you to have a pretty good overview over systems and how their components interacts very fast. I think that's what many ADHD'ers are actually very good at, grokking code bases or the gist of things very quickly. Systems thinking in general. Also quick recall / association chains...
Also, on average, the higher your IQ, the later in your life your ADHD diagnosis will be (see this video on adult ADHD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dVDhYtQkuO8). Your other abilities can compensate somewhat for your ADHD. Also of course when battling this condition you will build many personal tools and habits that neuro-typical people will never have to do, so in that sense you also might have a leg up in certain situations.
I'd say professionally the biggest problem is not so much on a technical level, but more on an emotional / impulse control level. ADHD'ers can come off as brash, speaking their mind freely, not being able to just put that comment in when it's better to shut up.