Larkin Seiple: top related news

The multiverse martial-arts comedy Everything Everywhere All At Once takes a lot of unpacking. A lot of Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan’s follow-up to Swiss Army Man goes by at breakneck speed, with pop-culture references, goofy cameos, and effects-driven visual gags that beg for the home-video freeze-frame approach. Some of these gags are big and obvious, like a pre-history sequence involving ape-like creatures fighting to the death, inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey’s “discovery of tools” sequence. Others are relatively subtle, like the way the Daniels pattern one alternate universe after the films of Wong Kar-Wai. In a world where harried laundromat owners Evelyn (Michelle Yeoh) and Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) are rich, successful movie-industry figures, they mourn the romance that never happened between them, and the aching emotions, intense colors, restrained dialogue, and stark lighting all recall Wong films like In the Mood for Love and Chungking Express.