 This video took me so long that I'm not sure there's anything left to say, but it's also my last video, so hopefully I figured something out. Ah! Pretty wild how effective ADHD talk is at convincing you you belong there, or maybe it's pausing a 30-second TikTok about ADHD halfway through, because you remembered the name of a video that someone mentioned to you three weeks ago, so you grabbed your laptop, because if you didn't do it immediately, you know that it would go away, so you find the video and start watching, and then look back at your phone and see, oh hey, you were in the middle of a TikTok LMAO, but instead of trying to decide which of those bits of audio-visual media you should finish engaging with, you pick up your iPad and open the Shonen Jump app, only to realize that you are halfway through a chapter of a manga that you probably put down in exactly this sort of situation somewhere between 15 minutes and three weeks ago. Look, I don't know if I actually have ADHD, I've never been diagnosed, and as I mentioned in London nearly a year ago now, I was actively not diagnosed because the medications my psychiatrist first tried on me addressed a more pressing concern, and she never dug any deeper. I actually broke up with her not too long ago, only psychiatrists have ever had really, but she went way off the fucking deep end, and the last time I talked to her, she told me to buy an RF-blocking hat because of the 5G satellites, which to be clear, don't exist, let alone affect one's ability to remember the sentence they were in the middle of. Even so, I wrote her a short but heartfelt goodbye email because of how much what she had done meant to me, and she didn't respond because she's a bad person. But it would explain why I love artistic maximalism, why I find hyper-pop and the more excessive works of Sam Levinson so appealing, why I love Divine and don't love TikTok's push towards longer videos. It would certainly explain why I love everything everywhere all at once, because fun fact, the creation of this movie resulted in one half of its directing duo Daniels, the one surname Kwan, being diagnosed himself. During the writing process, it occurred to Daniels Kwan and Shiner that this central character, whose life was in constant chaos, may in fact be an ADHD case. So they did some digging, and Kwan told Salon that I stayed up until like four in the morning just reading everything I could find about it, just crying, just realizing that, oh my God, I think I have ADHD. He went to therapy, got an official diagnosis as you should in a situation like this, received medication, and now feels a whole lot better. I'm happy for him. He deserves it. He deserves everything, really, for co-creating the best movie. And it is the best movie. I've known it for over a year at this point, and my followers on Letterbox have known that that's how I felt, because it was immediate and unquestioned. I expect most of you disagree, which is fine, though if you're one of those Ben Shapiro-type contrarians who wants to pretend like it's anything less than great, I pity everyone who has to deal with your miserable existence on an even semi-regular basis. I don't pity you though, you're not worth it. I saw everything everywhere all at once three times in theaters, before it hit wide release on April 8th, 2022. It had a limited run in some big cities two weeks before to help build up hype, and I went to a packed opening night screening at the largest IMAX in the country, spurred on by recommendations from friends who had seen the premiere at South by Southwest and or pressers from earlier in the week. I was aware of their enjoyment and that it was that A24-Michel Yo! Multiverse movie, but I went in pretty close to blind. And while that was fun, it turns out to have not really mattered all that much because you can't really spoil this movie. Not with words, at least. I could tell you everything that happens and everything everywhere all at once and it wouldn't matter because you wouldn't understand what I was saying. It only makes sense when it hits your eyeballs, but when it does, ah, you immediately start singing its praises. Ah! This kind of a little... What's up guys, it's your bro Alec. I just got out of the new film by the Daniels who were the guys who did the Harry Potter farting corpse movie and it's called Everything Everywhere All at Once Guys. It is probably the most honest title of any movie ever guys, so it's about this laundromat owner named Evelyn who is unwittingly and unwillingly pulled into a multiversal battle by an alternate version of her husband, but she's bad at pretty much everything and resents the way that her life has turned out and has ignored her actual husband who was literally the nicest person in the entire universe and also she doesn't respect her daughter Joy, which is painful and painfully ironic because of how it perpetuates the damage that was done to her by her own unsupported father guys. But then she goes crazy when this other husband shows up because she starts being like, oh, I know Kung Fu and other skills that she takes from alternate timelines by doing goofy shit in order to take on what she's been told is this evil force known as Jopu Jopaki. But it turns out that Jopu is Joy guys and Joy is an evil at all. She just wants someone to understand her and it hits every gosh damn emotion that you could imagine guys. Plus it has some of the wildest shit that I've seen on a movie screen in years like a scene where a badass brought me to Boy in Blue with big boners. We love to see it from his ACAP. Sorry about that. It's funny that there was a time where I could have been one of the first people on this platform to tell you how great this movie is instead of literally the last. That there was a time when none of us knew how the film would be received, let alone that it would get a nine figure box office and become the most nominated film of the Oscars. But this video took so long that I got to see it sweep award season and win most of those Oscars. See it make it stars into the household names they always should have been and perhaps single-handedly prove that indie filmmaking outside of the horror genre can be both creatively fulfilling and commercially successful. Or not. They may have proved that in the same way that Christopher Nolan has proved that you can make big expensive blockbusters without an existing IP that push boundaries and make money, which is to say, maybe not at all. There's only one man on earth who could get Kodak to make a new IMAX film stock so they could shoot a biopic in razor sharp black and white. Like I'm hype as fuck for Oppenheimer, but I don't know if his successes really mean much for anyone else. Nor do I think anyone knows what everything everywhere's success means for anyone other than the Daniels. They recently programmed a series here in New York at Lincoln Center showing their own movies as well as inspirations and other films they just enjoy. Paris Burning, Bad Grandpa, Princess Mononoke, The Matrix. They wrote a blurb for each and I found the one for Laos Kara's Holy Motors particularly revealing. A movie we regularly rewatched to remind ourselves that the only rule of good filmmaking is don't be boring. And that ethos is felt in every frame of every Daniels project and I love them for that, but is that the only rule? Is that a rule at all? Boring is a loaded word and not one I use when referring to movies I actually like. Drive My Car was my favorite Oscar nominee of 2022 and I don't think it's boring, but I do understand why people with bad opinions might which is why I kind of reject the premise of in frame outs recent video on the importance of scare quotes boring movies while agreeing with a lot of its specific points in particular that there is a big difference between boredom as a narrative device and boredom as an unintentional byproduct even if the former can suck just as hard. I have long believed that Siaming Liang's films would be better as coffee table art books. I don't wanna be bored because when I'm bored, I disconnect. I think about basically anything other than what I'm seeing. Now my thoughts may wander from a slow piece of art but they are guided by what I'm watching because I am still engaged with the ideas. I never disconnected from everything everywhere at once on that first watch. The second and third times respectively before and then another six days later, I did a little bit but mostly because I was thinking about this video as I have every day for the past year. I know that it won't fully live up to my hopes for it because it couldn't. It is the series finale of the week I review and I have never been very good at ending things. And yes, sure, it is the most expensive video I've made and the longest but we're still talking like hundreds of dollars, not thousands and it's not two hours long. I didn't truly commit to going all out and that's a character flaw in my part so it was the maybe perverse enjoyment I get from watching artists light other people's money on fire. 2022 was a good year for that with some of the most fun buck burnings in years where the superhero slog was broken up by true cinematic events, movie ass movies, showing us shit we've never seen before in the biggest possible way. Top Gun Maverick's proving run in IMAX was the most exciting thing I'd seen in years. RRR is a true crowd-pleasing gem that fires on all cylinders in a way I'm not even sure a film from another country is capable of. An avatar way of water, has nailing whale, fuck up a boat, real goddamn good. Expensive stuff is cool, money makes it easy to show audiences something new but it's obviously not everything. Decision to leave somehow features like dozens of cinematic techniques I've literally never seen before. Barbarian has the single greatest edit of the decade so far and forever changed the way I think about tape measures. And whether you liked men or not, I think we can all agree on the originality of that birthing scene. Plus you know, there's the subject of this video. You can tell that everything everywhere all at once is not a big budget movie. It's got a pretty limited cast and not many locations and there's no one moment that makes you think, holy shit that looked expensive. But it never looks cheap either and more importantly, it never feels limited by its budget. Like take it together with all the dang VFX, I would have guessed it costs somewhere in the realm of $35 million, less than the Fableman's but more than the menu, you know? So I was pretty impressed at the widely reported $25 million number. But it turns out that number was as off from right as I was from it. According to their longtime producing partner and friend, Jonathan Wong, the film had a budget of $14.3 million. That's less than triangle of sadness. It's also less than nobody, which is a great movie and arguably better than the best in one key aspect but no one would look at the two of them side by side and think, yeah, they cost the same. The Daniels know how to make something cheap look good which is to say they know where to put the budget. Their philosophy comes down to numbers and it's one I recommend that all would be filmmakers internalize. 10% of what you're putting on screen really matters. 25% kind of matters and 65% only matters in as much as it needs to exist to fill out the world. The lighting doesn't need to be flawless in every shot nor does every pair of shoes meaningfully affect how an audience sees a character. It's about knowing when they do and really putting your resources into those moments. This is true about the VFX as well. While many effects and everything everywhere were done practically, there were 500 shots that required some sort of computer assist from wire removal to straightforward compositing to full CG mayhem. And you can usually tell but it never distracts from the experience. It is good enough and the stuff that really does matter is the stuff you don't see like the fact that these two were literally filmed on different continents. Everything everywhere had finished all but a day of filming when COVID shut down production and to finish it up, they did that thing that Marvel usually does, filming Ki Hwi Kwan on location and then compositing in Michelle Yeo who was stuck in France and so had to act on a green screen. And a team of just five people handled nearly all of it. Compare that to the literally hundreds of names that scroll by at the end of your average Disney production and you can understand why Jamie Lee Curtis said that everything everywhere in its entirety cost less than the craft services budget of Doctor Strange 2. And like, is that literally true? Probably not. But it's not an absurd claim either. This ability to stretch their dollars comes from years of making music videos which outside of K-pop, typically have low budgets and no time as well as shorts which somehow have even less return on investment. And in that space, they've really been able to experiment and develop a style all their own. Is that driving nostalgia for anyone? Dominating against them is the right of any problem. Hi. You know what? You can watch the rest of this video yourself. Enough with dunking on fascists. I want to talk about some people who I actually like for a little bit. The Daniels, you know, the filmmaking duo behind. Everything everywhere all at once. And they're the ones who did the turn down for what video and obviously I had a great time seeing that and whatever but I didn't know anything about the people who made it until the farting corpse movie. This is their actual tumbler, by the way. I fucking loved the farting corpse movie. It's this incredible needle that these guys have to thread, right? And it works. They just put a shocking amount of depth into things that most filmmakers wouldn't even consider at like a surface level. And that's why I find accusations of lol so random or whatever so intellectually dumb because nothing is ever just a gag with them. You can laugh at an image of people with hot dog fingers but context, like with context, it can make you cry. No, no, fuck you, Sarah. Look, it's not pretentious, right? You know, I'm not saying, oh, the floppiness of the hot dog fingers clearly represents Evelyn's feelings of helplessness in this chaotic new life she's found for herself or like it's a manifestation of her inability to share even the most basic intimacies with her loved one. It's funny that they're hot dogs, right? Like the hot dog fingers are funny but the important thing is it doesn't stop with the joke, right? Whether it's the hot dog fingers or her forgetting what animal is at the center of Ratatouille and that being manifested at the Hibachi spot or a universe of rocks. Like Daniel's minds that comedy for something deeper using it to tell us more about Evelyn and the human condition. When the film first released, they posted this public letter to would be audience members explaining where it came from. Writing Everything Ever All At Once was a foolish prayer to a cold indifferent universe. It was a dream about reconciling all of the contradictions, making sense of the largest questions and imbuing meaning onto the dumbest, most profane parts of humanity. We wanted to stretch ourselves in every direction to bridge the generational gap that often crumbles into generational trauma. It was an attempt to create the narrative equivalent of the theory of everything, a big data approach to mythmaking, a post-genre deconstruction of traditional narrative, a maximalist manifesto for surviving in the noise of modern life and holy shit, these two clowns named Daniels were not up for the challenge. And they were. So they've been working towards this their whole career and I want to look at some of the things that they did that led to this, right? And as much as I love their music videos, Joywave's Tongues is a particular highlight. This is going to be cross-posted to YouTube and that video alone would copy strike and agegate me, so Wurz is going to look at some of their shorts. This is the first project that the Daniels ever did together. Way back in 2009, it is called Swingers. Want to push me? Okay. These are the Daniels, by the way. That's Daniel Shiner and that is Daniel. From the outset, you can see they do weird shit that is really VFX heavy, right? And it's actually kind of interesting because if you watch Shiner's solo directorial effort, The Death of Dick Long, which is great movie, it is thematically like a Daniels project, but visually it looks nothing like it. There's not a single VFX shot in that entire film as far as I can tell. He is a much more straightforward filmmaker than Daniel Kwan, who clearly just brings these crazy zany ideas. The next one that we're going to look at is a lot more, let's call it deep. Now you're fucking hooked, right? You're like, I need to learn more about this interesting ball. He's not a loving husband. What's this? Is she having feelings? Okay. This is weird. Oh look, it's her again. Oh ew, I hate adulting braces. Oh once again, we have Daniel Shiner and here is Daniel Kwan, the directors. Oh shit. What? What the fuck? Incredible. That this is Jonathan Wong, he is the producer of everything that we're all at once. It's a sad story. Hello, this is Becky. His first name is Mike. Uh yeah, um, Mike will actually. Mike Crotch, you know, Mike Crotch, again, this is about taking really dumb ideas very seriously. They passed away. Mike Crotch is dead. Look where that ball's going. Oh look, it's a bunch of dude bros being bros. How come we never heard about it? Girls like Abanda? Don't leave guys like me, it just doesn't happen. Yeah. And Alpha, Alpha guys don't cry, but look at your face, man. Alpha guys don't cry, guys. I just need to get her back. You trust me, bro? You trust me? Kiss? Nope, nope, just a hug. That's cute. That's a cute moment. What the hell is happening? Ball's back. Ball's in the hole. What's happening? It's getting really gay. It's getting really gay. You know, Power Rangers shit, a bunch of men, just dudes being bros, right? Like, and they come together literally for a common cause. Men are bad and they do bad things. I should have just let her go. Everything happens for a reason, guys. This is funny. That's the thing. Taking ridiculous, stupid things and then making them mean something. They put his butt in his friend's face, you know? Actions have consequences. Honestly, this has more consequences than John Wick 3 does. If the universe is as infinite as they say it is, then these weird things that are happening aren't just possible, they are inevitable. So, this idea of a massive, infinite universe, they don't use the term multiverse here, but he's functionally talking about that same idea about how in a world where everything is possible, inevitably everything must happen. Everything must be. So, this is an idea that obviously they have come back to several times. Not this predated Infinity War by three years. They were doing multiverse shit years before. Daniel, remember when we used to joke about drinking Kool-Aid because I didn't want to die first and you didn't want to die first? So cute. So wholesome. If the universe is infinite as you say it is. Wait, I didn't finish my guilt. Oh, I didn't finish it. I can't believe it, man. I'm sure it's all right. Yeah, what am I supposed to do? Go catch it? No. If it wasn't, then you should let him go. Then you and me are inevitable. I'm gonna sell them. Absolutely willow taking fisting to the extreme. This is art with every single letter capitalized. Lastly, we're going to jump to something that is both like half this long and also like four times as long. And it is a project that is radically different than anything else that they have done. And arguably anyone has done. Like I said, they've been thinking about like multiversal stuff for a long time. And in the early 2010s, they worked on a pair of interactive films. Xbox Live Entertainment asked them to make something like Game of Thrones but interactive. And they said, absolutely not because the logistics of something like that were just impossible. And they pitched a few other things. And then this is the one that got made. It's called Possibilia. So what's a girl like you doing a place like this? Where are you going? I'm going. Yeah, you're gonna go? I'm going now. Now you're going. Now is the time that I get. What? What did you say for a second? What did I say? If I stay, we're just gonna do this again. Again. I'll take it. I don't believe. I don't believe that. So you're gonna go? The other thing that's important to know about this is that the script is exactly the same in every single one. How are you doing? No, no, I can't go. Why not? I'll see it's the same house. I can't go. I hate that. An interesting one. Once again, I can't read your mind. So why don't you tell me? It'll work actually. But I'm not gonna let you. I'm not gonna let you in things all blah, blah, shitty like that. Okay, Rick? Oh, shit. What are you doing? I need to do something. Because I need to shake this shitty feeling in my stomach because I don't want to leave you. So you're hitting him? So you're making out there? What am I doing? I don't hate you, Rick. You know that I don't hate you. Do I? I feel like I don't know anything right now. You just give me nothing. You're over here. This is, this is the fucking boss. Yeah? Yeah. Every time we have an intense conversation. Oh, God, this is only making my stomach feeling, feeling, feeling a bit shittier. Yeah, I'm gonna be great, Paul. Yeah, this is wonderful. Thank you. This is wonderful news. Don't worry about Rick here. Don't worry about the four. Don't worry about Rick here. Don't worry about the four fucking years he just wasted. Don't worry about all the emotional energy he just put into coming out of here. Yeah, it's utterly pointless. What? What are you laughing at? You're the one that broke up with me. It wasn't pointless! I also like to have this guy. You know, the different pieces are all... I don't see a lot of good stuff right now. Present. Simultaneously, you can see. Oh my God. I can't do this. What kind of mess-up will I have to make through cable? Hi! You can stroll in memory right now. When I look at you, I get so... I feel like I know you, but every now and then, I look at you and I feel like I see something completely new. And it makes me feel like I have absolutely no idea what to do about us. I guess I'm just glad that we have all of this shit or else we would have none of it. You know, it just wouldn't have been us. You know what I mean? I don't know what you mean. And now it loops back at the beginning. I want to grow like you doing a place like this. I mean, what I really like about it and what I think makes it so interesting isn't the way it branches, which is very cool, obviously, but the way that the branches collapse because, you know, there are many things that can happen between the beginning and the ending, but you always start and end in the same place. And that's what Daniels thinks makes it an interactive movie as opposed to a game. And I think that this understanding of the multiverse shapes everything everywhere all at once, you know, because there's that Wong Kar-Wai-inspired scene between Evelyn and an alternate version of her husband, Wayman, but this one never became her husband. And in that world, he tells her that he would have been happy to have chosen the other life that she has been trying to get away from throughout the entire movie. In every universe, Joy, her daughter, is looking for her mother. There is that defining motivation that exists regardless of what choices they make that are always pushing them towards this singular conclusion. And no matter how far a field we get, we always end up going to the same place. And I think that's really cool. Oh, Jesus Christ, has this been up the entire time? I'm sorry, guys. I don't, I don't know what's going on with me today. Anyways, while the multiverse is existentially kind of terrifying, it is an exciting opportunity creatively. So it makes sense that the Daniels would be drawn to it. There's really no limit on what you can do when you commit to a world where everything can, will and has happened. It's a balancing act of not getting too caught up in the possibilities while still taking advantage of the opportunities and what makes everything everywhere so successful is how it has these wild and wacky alternate worlds, but it focuses less on the multiverse itself than the inhabitants. I mentioned before how small everything everywhere's cast is, and at first I thought that was a shame because it makes this ostensibly massive story feel small. The fate of the multiverse hangs in the balance, but only a handful of people across all of these universes actually care. Seems weird. Until I realized, duh, this is a small story because the fate of the multiverse doesn't hang in the balance. When Alpha Wayman tells Evelyn that it does, he's wrong. There's actually a deleted scene where a different Alpha Wayman who isn't in the final cut says this explicitly, and I'm glad it was deleted because the scene makes the movie clearly worse by spelling out something that the audience doesn't need spelled out, but I appreciated watching it anyway because it was funny to see what Ki Hui Kwan would look like with a bunch of different facial hair options. It's cool to see another version of that character, to see how that version interacts with the characters that we are familiar with because that's where the film really shines. Now, I don't think that I would have enjoyed the original 240-page version of the script, but I do like the idea of spending more time with everyone because this cast is incredible. There is a reason that four of the five most prominent performers received best actor nominations in a year chock full of great performances. Only 38 movies have ever had four acting nominations at the Oscars, and 2022 had two of them, Everything Everywhere and the also impeccably casted Banshees of Inna Sharon. For those wondering, no movie has had more than four acting nom since Network in 1976, and Everything Everywhere is the first film with three wins since that year. And admittedly, they're kind of cheating, right? Because virtually everyone is actually playing at least two characters, so they get to flex their range and make it pretty dang obvious how good they are at being one thing when the contrast of a radically different performance is right there in the same movie or scene or in the case of Quan, often even the same shot. Like the way that he transitions from Waymond to Alpha Waymond and back again is never not absolutely fucking delightful. And it makes the fact that Quan has been shut out of Hollywood for so many decades, all the more infuriating. And I know every single person has said this, but like we could have had more of him this whole time and casting directors thought, nah, that's not what anyone wants to see. But now he's got an Oscar, accepted with a wonderful speech that reflects the America many of us would like to live in and less and less the one that we do. And I have more to say on that, but what's so depressing is that you can't see this performance and not wonder how many more Kiwi Quans are out there who still haven't or never did get the opportunities they deserve. The work that they as actors have been denied and therefore the performances that we as audiences never got to see thousands for sure. At least Nepo baby Jamie Lee Curtis is keeping things interesting, right? Like no shade, I think she's genuinely great in the movie. Not the right pick for the Oscar, but I'm not complaining too much because I think it's cool that she lent her weight to a project like this. Considering some of her costars, kind of sad that she was arguably the biggest name on the bill at least beforehand, but she was a massive cheerleader for the project and for her collaborators and it's great to see. I really loved the way that they accepted the ensemble award from SAG, how each of them just set a sentence or two so that they could give James Hong time for a type five. Hong has nearly 500 performances under his belt at this point. The history that man has seen and can speak to. It's a shame that he wasn't as widely recognized as the rest because he's fucking great in this movie. And despite being the only acting nominee from the film to not win her category, I think that Stephanie Xu's performance is the film's best. Joy is a fairly straightforward character. Happy relationship with her girlfriend Becky and unhappy relationship with her mother who doesn't really accept her for who she is in no small part because of her girlfriend Becky. And there's a lot to unpack there, but it's a pretty normal dramatic performance. As Joby Tupaki, however, Xu has to ground someone who can travel the multiverse in an instant, walk through one police officer and turn the next into a dancing partner who can beat another nearly to death with a pair of dildos while wearing an ever-changing array of dazzling outfits and then turn around and deliver a searing monologue on the meaninglessness of existence as represented by a bagel with everything on it. And she fucking nails it. She makes Joby Tupaki feel human. She hits every fucking beat across the entire spectrum of emotion and experience. And the only thing crazier than the fact that she pulled it off was how much of it was there from before she even got the damn part. Like, have you seen the clips from her audition? She put it all out there. It helps, of course, that her background is in experimental theater because that's what you do in that. You put everything out there. You show people something that they haven't seen before. It makes her a perfect companion for the Daniels, really, and it is truly a breakout performance for the ages. And it kind of feels that way for every person in this cast, whether we are seeing them for the first time or have been watching them for decades, which, of course, brings us to Michelle Yeo, Academy Award winner, Michelle Yeo. Got quite the ring to it. What makes Evelyn unique in the film is that she doesn't really play other versions of herself. Outside of the brief timeline setups and flashbacks, she's always the same Evelyn we started the movie out with, but she is the same Evelyn reacting to all of the other Evelyn's who she isn't but could have been. We don't see what movie star Evelyn is like or chef Evelyn or sign spinner or blind singer or any of the other Evelyn's. And honestly, thank God, because trying to keep track of that would have been too much. But we see our Evelyn being thrust into these roles and all the weight that comes from these experiences. It is super fun as an audience. And I'm sure it was super fun for her as well, because over the years, she has been able to be a lot of things, but she's never been able to be all of them. And certainly not all at once. Ah, this is a part that only Michelle Yeo could have played. So it's pretty crazy that she wasn't even the first choice. Ah! In Michelle Yeo's new film, Everything Everywhere All At Once, she plays Evelyn Wong. A laundromat owner who finds herself in the middle of a multiverse spanning action epic involving a mysterious figure named Jobu Tupaki. But while Yeo has been rightly praised for her complex, layered performance, she was not directing Duo Daniel's first choice to lead the film. They've stated in interviews that the original idea had been to cast Jackie Chan in the role, but he turned it down. Something Yeo would later tease him for after the film became wildly successful. Texting him, your loss, bro. That playful rivalry harkens back to nearly 40 years of history between the two stars. Fans of the popular Hong Kong action series, Police Story, know that they worked together in Stanley Tong's 1992 classic third entry, Supercop. But did you know that Jackie Chan was actually present for Yeo's first ever performance as Girl trying to win his affection in a 1984 Guy Laroche watch commercial? That same year, she appeared in Samo Hong's The Owl vs. Bumbo, which is quite different from the fight-focused films most Westerners know the director for. Released three months after Hong's beloved Jackie Chan vehicle, Wheels on Meals, The Owl vs. Bumbo puts fight scenes in between dance numbers, some truly terrible rom-com scenarios, and Yeo in a purely dramatic role as a teacher trying to help troubled children get ahead in life. Unfortunately, Yeo exists mostly as an object for men's creepy overtures that she ultimately comes around on because it's a Samo Hong movie and that's what happens with these sorts of things. But she does a serviceable job and clearly Hong saw something more in her because the next year he gave her a brief cameo as a judo instructor in Twinkle, Twinkle Lucky Stars. The leap from school teacher to martial arts instructor may seem strange, especially since Yeo had no fighting experience, but action choreography is closer to dance than a true street brawl and Yeo had been training as a ballerina since the age of four, making her a perfect fit for a forthcoming action subgenre that would explode in popularity over the next decade, Girls with Guns. Yeo, who was performing under the name Michelle Khan at the time, helped kick off the movement in 1985 and would star in several of its most beloved entries. This, despite a five-year retirement from the screen right in its center after her 1987 marriage to Dixon Poon, the head of film distributor DNB Group, which produced her early hits. In any case, it has been a wild career and one that can be celebrated any number of ways, but today we're taking a look back at her time in the country where she got her start, breaking down Michelle Yeo's top five Hong Kong action movies. Number five, Yes, Madam. The progenitor of the Girls with Guns subgenre remains a worthy watch all these years later. Yes, Madam features Yeo in her first starring role alongside the debut of American actor Cynthia Rothrock and these ladies sure do kick some ass. It's easy to see why this film was a hit and why so many other filmmakers wanted to get in on the action. Yeo dons her first of many police uniforms and joins Rothrock supposedly British inspector to take down an international crime syndicate, but their real target is the patriarchy. The only constant in this film is that men underestimate their abilities and suffer greatly for it. Something relatively unique in this early entry as the capabilities of these heroines become increasingly assumed and accepted by other characters in the films to follow. But here they had to prove themselves and their strikes come in fast and hit hard, resulting in some exceptionally painful stunts by performers whose commitment to their work frankly dwarfs that of your average lead. The movie would later be canonized alongside Yeo's arguably superior second Girls with Guns flick, Royal Warriors, though in reverse chronological order as part of the In the Line of Duty series, which would see multiple true entries starring not Yeo, but Cynthia Khan, a.k.a. Yang Liqing, a Chinese actor given Rothrock's first name and sharing Michelle Yeo's D&B-provided surname. The In the Line of Duty films are fine enough, but only the second, i.e. fourth entry co-starring Ip Man himself Mr. Donnie Yen is worth seeking out. Speaking of Donnie Yen team-ups, number four, Wing Chung. It is likely that Hong Kong filmmaker Yuan Wuping will forever be known in the West as the fight choreographer for The Matrix Trilogy, which were an obvious and acknowledged inspiration for Daniel's latest project. But the man had a long and storied history before the Wachowskies tapped him, getting his start alongside Jackie Chan directing Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and Drunken Master, then working with more and more stars in the ensuing decades before finally connecting with Yeo in the early 90s. They did two projects together. 1993's Tai Chi Master, which saw her team up with Jet Li and 1994's Wing Chung with Donnie Yen. While both films are great, Wing Chung is more fun. Tai Chi Master's fights are virtuosically designed, but they're also just better versions of fights you'll see elsewhere. But the introduction to Wing Chung, Michelle Yeo uses a stick to puppet a man into fighting off a group of bandits without him even realizing it. Shortly thereafter, she has to keep some baddies from smashing a block of tofu. It's a combination of sheer technical talent being used for character comedy that modern audiences can barely dream of, but Yuan Wuping made it look easy decades ago. And sure, Wing Chung turns more serious as the film progresses, but it never loses its flair. I mean, using a bow for a horseback duel set against a blazing backdrop, so cool. Number three, Magnificent Warriors. It's odd that Royal Warriors was added to the In the Line of Duty franchise when director David Chung was clearly trying to make his own little sub-franchise of Yeo vehicles with warriors in the name. But where Royal Warriors was a gritty modern tale, Magnificent Warriors is an action-adventure throwback with a protagonist whose style is inspired by Indiana Jones. The film tells the story of rebels trying to take down Japanese colonizers and a smuggler who gets caught up in their fight. Yeo, of course, being that smuggler. The Involuntary Revolutionary is a classic trope and Magnificent Warriors breaks no new ground, but its story is functional enough to get you from fight A to fight B, where you'll be delighted by some of the most inventive action of Yeo's career. Fok Mingming is basically superhuman, taking on truly absurd numbers of bad guys with a wide array of weapons and tactics, all leading to a bombastic final battle against the invaders that escalates in ever more exciting and dramatic ways. There's even an aerial dogfight. What more could you really want? Other than perhaps a better story. Number two, Police Story 3 Supercop. Now this is how you stage a comeback. After her divorce from Dixon Poon, Yeo returned to acting with her true breakout hit. Police Story 3 Supercop sees her finally teaming up with Jackie Chan in earnest as he reprises one of his most iconic characters from one of his most iconic franchises, and she easily holds her own as one undercover cop helping another. This was the first Police Story film without Chan in the director's chair, but Stanley Tong grabbed the torch and ran with it, expanding the story beyond Hong Kong's borders, and in doing so giving Inspector Karkui a partner who's genuinely on his level. Yeo's mainland inspector is a fun new element to the franchise and it's nice that there's no attempt to put them in some weird love triangle with Karkui's long-term girlfriend, played by Maggie Chung, who appears in two other movies on this list. Of course, Police Story 3 is more of a Jackie Chan showcase than a Michelle Yeo one, though her character would get a dedicated spin-off with Stanley Tong's also great project S the following year, but it may well be the best movie of this era and the one that really gives Yeo the chance to show what she's capable of. It lacks the emotional depth of something like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, or everything everywhere all at once, but we've got a solid script that gives her the chance to flex her comedic and dramatic muscles alongside her. Regular ones. And we certainly see those too. The five years away from the silver screen did nothing to blunt her skills and she performed some of the most death-defying stunts of her entire career, with the dirt bike jumping onto a moving train car really standing out in particular. If you're trying to get someone into this era of cinema, you can't do much better than Supercop. And yet, but before we get into the number one spot, let's shout out a couple of honorable mentions. Honorable mention. Holy weapon. Almost certainly the dumbest film in Michelle Yeo's catalogue, Holy Weapon, needs to be seen to be believed. Just one of nine films released by director Wang Jing in 1993 alone, Holy Weapon is everything you would expect from the controversial filmmaker. Violent, over-the-top, funny, cheap, occasionally problematic, and a little bit titillating, though not particularly sexy. The film whose original title translates to the more appropriate but less fun Seven Princesses of Wuzha follows a bunch of women and a handful of men as they get wrapped up in the coming battle between the big bad Super Sword and the formerly good until his mind was broken by the greatest drugs, Heaven Sword. Sound confusing? Well, here's a list of other things that happen in this movie. A proud rapist gets caught in the web of a literal spider woman and is eviscerated. A woman eats a green-haired vampire's eye and falls in love with it. A man drinks wine that turns him into a woman any time he gets wet. Most of the characters are pricked with the root of a flower that turns loving thoughts into agonizing pain. And a group of women do one of those power rangers combination moves where they all lock together. Unfortunately, the fights themselves are pretty uninspired, likely resulting from the whole nine movies a year thing. Actual choreography is largely replaced by a lot of spinning and flying around in flowy robes mixed with sound effects that give the illusion of action without much really happening. And it's fine, perhaps, but compared to the rest of this list, it is a clear step back. Honorable mention. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once. Everything, Everywhere, All at Once, a 2022 American film, does not qualify for this list of 80s and 90s Hong Kong releases. But even if it did, it wouldn't make the list because the action in Everything, Everywhere, All at Once is easily its weakest facet, especially when viewed through the lens of its star. For an American movie, it's pretty good. While it's hard to justify this weird leg raise slash maybe kick, the choreography is typically solid and well performed. The use of everything from fanny packs to butt plugs to riot shields keeps the audience guessing and ensures it's never boring. But it all feels a little less cinematically exciting than it could be, which likely comes down to production priorities. Daniels shot this multiversal sci-fi epic in 40 days on a budget of $14.3 million, meaning they couldn't dedicate the days or even weeks that can be needed to hone a single fight scene to perfection, knowing exactly which setup is best for which series of moves and running them until they're just right because if any piece falters, it all falls apart since there are no other options. This is the objectively correct way to shoot action, whether figured out on location the way a classic Chan production did or after extensive pre-visualization like you'd find from the folks at 87 North. While the Everything Everywhere stunt team, which included the extremely talented folks behind the Marshall Club channel here on YouTube, did some of this, particularly for the first action sequence, the Daniels largely relied on shooting wide masters with multiple cameras, plus some grandmaster-inspired insert shots, a functional but not exactly exciting style that is much better than the over-edited mess of Yo's last American action film, Gunpowder Milkshake, but still less than it could be. Even so, Everything Everywhere All at Once really comes into its own in the finale when the acts of violence are replaced by acts of kindness. It is a true twist on the formula, something wholly Daniels, and it makes for a sequence learning to fight like you that transcends all of these concerns to create an action scene that is truly incredible. 10 out of 10, no notes. Do you know what else is incredible? Number one, The Heroic Trio. The quintessence of late 80s, 90s Hong Kong action cinema, The Heroic Trio sees director Johnny Toe in classic form, shooting his eminently combustible sets from a low, wide angle, blasting high-powered lights through rear windows and hallways into hazy interiors. There is crazy wire work, death-defying stunts, pop songs played over montages, and of course, that titular trio. Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Chung, and Anita Mui are all legends in their own right. How could a team-up movie be anything less than legendary? The dark and dirty superhero tale, The Heroic Trio sees the invisible woman, thief-catcher, and wonder woman go from enemies to allies as they team up to take down the monstrous evil master who has been ordering the theft of literal babies from their cribs, a crime initially cared up by Yeoh herself before she turned to the light. It is buck-hacking wild and a veritable feast for the senses, one that you appreciate more the deeper you go into the genre. As a first-timer, it honestly may be a little too out there, but once you have dialed into the vibe of the era, you will find that The Heroic Trio has anything and everything you could possibly want from a Hong Kong action movie. There's even a bizarrely bleak, but still pretty great post-apocalyptic sequel called Executioners. It is all absolutely bananas in the absolute best way, earning it the top spot on this list. Academy Award winner, Michelle. No, ew, what? Academy Award winner, Michelle Yeoh, is one of a fairly small group of actors who has played multiple parts in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And I imagine it's an interesting call to get, you know, because there are clear tracks that you get put on. If you're a star, an Avenger, or what have you, you have got years of guaranteed work in movies and shows that will be seen by ever dwindling but still substantive crowds. You may also be a mid-tier recur, who's got some relevance if you dig deep enough into comics history and so could end up being somewhere, but you probably won't. And then, of course, you could just be one of the many, many bit parts in a show or movie and never be seen again. Most of everything everywhere as primary cast has been in the MCU, but never as a star. And perhaps unsurprisingly, mostly in Shang-Chi, where Yeoh plays the title character's aunt, Xu plays his lawyer friend, and Marshall Club brothers Brian and Andy Lay are just doing their thing. Kevin Feige apparently reached out to Ki-Hui Kwan directly about his admission into the MCU, so we'll see where that goes. But given its dwindling relevance, I'm not convinced that the Star Trek is as appealing now as it must have been 10 years ago. Especially for newcomers, it can be very difficult to transition out of blockbusters and into more serious performances. And I imagine it must be kind of disheartening for the performers in the current phases to see just how little people seem to care. Ant-Man did an objectively terrible job at setting the stage for phase five, and I have never been less interested in Marvel's vision of the multiverse than I am now. And I wonder if Daniels could have changed that. They had the opportunity, maybe. While prepping for everything everywhere, they had some early conversations with Marvel about being involved in Loki, arguably the most multiversal production to date. And while they passed on it, I'm sure they weren't stoked that this thing they'd been thinking about since 2010 and writing in earnest since 2016 was on track to be riding a wave instead of making one. They'd already been beaten to the punch by Rick and Morty, which made the show difficult for them to enjoy. But I don't know. Rick and Morty's a show for nerds that only ever reaches mainstream discussion for bad reasons, like the McDonald's Szechuan fiasco or recent allegations of domestic abuse made against the co-creator and voice of both title characters. The MCU, on the other hand, really seemed like it might not just be for nerds. It sure does feel like we're headed back that way fast, though, huh? And so it's the real reason that the multiverse, which is a concept that dates back to 1895, is now a thing that all of us have in our minds. Because the second highest grossing movie of all time made it the narrative centerpiece. But while we may understand the idea of the multiverse, Disney hasn't done much to make us think about what it could mean. Because in the MCU, the answer is kinda nothing. Like, for a superhero franchise, the multiverse is a convenience. The only way to get bigger than a universal threat is to be a multiversal one. It also is a get out of jail free card, should anything happen that might harm a franchise's profits. It lets you bring back characters who died in your primary timeline, a la endgame, or kill off characters who haven't without impacting Feige's plans, a la Doctor Strange. It also lets you bring together a bunch of different versions of a character for maximum nostalgia. Spider-Man No Way Home, of course, is the ultimate form of that. Daniels didn't know that when they had Alpha Wayman, quote, nine days turn of the century, Bob absolutely parentheses story of a girl, that the big multiversal release to proceed it was going to be the most overt nostalgia bait you can find outside of a JJ Abrams Star Wars film. But the irony is palpable. Your clothes never wears well the next day and your hair never falls in quite the same way. You're in for the good old days. Let me show it to you. Make you feel good and safe. But we know that Alpha Wayman is wrong. The movie tells us this. And the sinister side of nostalgia shows itself. Our institutions are crumbling. Nobody trusts their neighbor anymore and you stay up at night wondering to yourself, how can we get back? And if you remember the year that I said they started writing this film in earnest, that's right, Alpha Wayman voted for Trump, that motherfucker. He sees the multiverse in the same way Disney does, a way to fix things, to bring back the good old days. Is his story much different than the Avengers in Endgame? It's basically the same as Kingpin's in Spider-Verse. But only some of those understand why it's bad actually. No way home tries harder than Endgame does, but Peter Parker learns the exact opposite lesson from his trials and tribulations as Evelyn does in everything everywhere, which ain't great. He chooses to disconnect from humanity, to be alone and a loner, and he does so in active defiance of his loved one's wishes. There is nothing noble or heroic about what he does. It's just sad, but it's so easy to get caught in a trap. I mean, Evelyn does too right. See what I taste. What's up guys, girls and everyone off the binary. Welcome to Taco Tuesday. But instead of tacos today, we're gonna talk. Oh God, that was awful. I'm sorry to my regulars and I'm pretty sure I just scared away any newcomers, but please hear me out. I saw the craziest movie last weekend, everything everywhere all at once by the Daniels. And I just can't get it out of my head and I need to talk about it with someone and y'all are who I've got. Is that sad? I don't know, let's not think about it. Anyways, today we're gonna play with our food a little bit. As you can see, I have got a plain bagel with avocado. I have also got pretty much every single spice in my kitchen cabinets. And we're gonna put these onto this and make our own inevitably awful everything bagel. So the bagel is a bagel, but it's also a metaphor. I am not a native New Yorker, but I've been here long enough to have opinions about these sorts of things, about our water making them both superior and unique. I sacrilegiously prefer the crunch of a light toast on all but the freshest of bagels like these, but I'm sufficiently snobby about where they come from. This is from Absolute Bagels in Morningset Heights, which is my favorite spot in the city. And maybe for me, there's a little bit of nostalgia in that I used to live around the corner, so when I take a bite, I can think back to simpler times when I was in college, when I could grab a bagel on a way to an early morning press screening, the blissful time before I'd have to face any real consequences for my choices. That's a dangerous road to go down and frankly, the good old days are overrated, like avocado, which too is both food and metaphor. You don't need reminding that I am a millennial, what with my eyes sunken by 9-11 forehead wrinkled by the 2008 financial crisis and politics radicalized by the same 2016 election that defined this movie's conflict. But is there anything more quintessentially millennial than avocado toast? I never intended to eat this on YouTube because fun fact, I eat it basically every day for breakfast and I don't like it very much. This channel is about good food and avocado toast really isn't good food. So why do I eat it? Spite, I guess? Cause I wouldn't do it if boomers hadn't decided to blame it for all of my problems. I eat avocado in defiance of its abject blandness because it probably is true that I will never own property but the avocados have nothing to do with that. The boomers who blame society's ills on them, they're the reason, or a reason at least. If only we could put them on the bagel, huh? Imagine if eating the rich was that simple if all you had to do to rid the world of problems was put them on a sliced ring of boiled bread. Everything everywhere all at once considers a world at least adjacent to that, one where a girl named Joy puts everything on a bagel, her hopes and dreams, old report cards, every breed of dog, every last personal add on Craigslist, sesame, poppy seed, salt. And it created something like a black hole, an abyss that reveals the truth that nothing matters. And I think that is the reaction most people would have upon learning of the existence of a multiverse because it shatters everything that people tell themselves about themselves. The infinite multiverse is an existentially terrifying concept because it puts you in the passenger seat of the arbitrary button presses that make up your specific path. Nothing you do matters because another you did something else. You are not a unique individual but an atom-sized branch on a galaxy-sized tree. How could it not break you? It turned Joy into Jobu Tupaki, the world's most powerful being, able to move across the multiverse with a gesture to pop a cop's head like a balloon, turn bullets into sprays of organic ketchup and quick change into wild outfits that perfectly express her essence in each moment. She is Thanos with the reality stone, Neo with a flashier wardrobe unconstrained by the social or physical norms of the matrix. And people don't take that well. One of America's great tragedies is that it has prioritized individualism over individuality. We are a country that believes each person should be self-reliant without authentic self-expression. And when people do express themselves in a way that bucks against the normiest of our puritanical norms, they are shunned. And I'm not gonna pretend like I'm any different. The way that suburban New England has shaped my view of how people should look and act is something I will probably never fully shed. And that anger is built on a foundation of jealousy and fear. I wish I could be like Jobu. I've got some of her nihilism, but none of her fashion sense. Try as am I to diversify my wardrobe and be more interesting. I still default back to these basic bitch blankties and a haircut I've had since doing background on a TV show set in the 1940s, which is a second level of metaphor for this plain bagel I am trying in vain to make something more of. I don't know if what you see is who I am, but it's the only one I know how to show. This, despite the fact that the kind of people whose validation I actually crave, would love it if my style was more unique. And the types who judge me for it mean less than nothing, but let's not pretend like freedom is truly free. Yeah, joy in disconnecting from the matrix finds herself alone, searching seemingly in vain for someone she can connect with. Jobu has acolytes, sure, but they mean nothing to her. In a shot deleted from her introduction, she makes one of them jump from a balcony without another thought. But when Jobu tries to share herself with a version of her mother Evelyn, it literally blows that Evelyn's mind, killing her instantly. Which is why Jobu is hunted, because her ideas are too big, too scary, too dangerous. I doubt I'll ever be any of those things. Sometimes I wonder if I'm just another mediocre white man who has only gotten anywhere at all because I'm relatively handsome. Sure, some things have just kind of worked out for me, but at least as many didn't, mostly in the creative spaces that matter to me, my good looks didn't get me where I hoped they would on this platform and have gotten me nowhere on plenty of others. The fact that food is the niche I found is kind of fucked up considering how much time I spend staring at the mirror, hating what I see. I have claimed that I could be genuinely objectively successful in some other medium if I would just commit to it wholeheartedly, but I don't know if that's true. I don't know what I'm good at, or if I could really be excellent at any of the things I care about, so I don't try because if you don't try, you can't be disappointed. Or at least that's the theory. I can't really say that it's worked out in practice. I want to be better, but I'm paralyzed by the prospect of self-improvement. How do you set a path when you can't envision a future? So I've felt some kinship with the Evelyn at the center of everything everywhere all at once. Who is uniquely inadequate? The most mediocre option who made the wrong choice at every step and so found herself with a lifetime of disappointment. She has nothing to offer any multiversal alternate who might want to borrow skills using something called burst jumping, which is basically a wackier take on downloading a skill from the matrix. But her lacking her own skills makes her shockingly adept at taking on others. A silver lining in the cloud. You need to find those. Jobu has been searching for one. She doesn't really care about the people hunting her. She just wants to be understood. And so she keeps on searching for a version of Evelyn who can understand. And she finds this one who is deeply unimpressive and can handle the truth and then pulls her over to the dark side. But as the audience watches two rocks silently mull over humanity itself, Jobu wishes that there could have been another way. Daniel's first film, Swiss Army Man opens with a man preparing himself for suicide. He's wearing a rope around his neck and ready to jump. He stops when he spots a corpse wash up on shore and that dead body ultimately saves his life by showing him another way to be. Jobu needs that, but she doesn't see it. She made the bagel as a way out. The only thing in the world powerful enough to destroy her. I've been there, an 18 year old seated on a psychiatrist's couch saying I didn't want to be alive anymore telling her that I couldn't see past the feeling that I couldn't imagine being okay again. She chuckled because this was something that she had heard many times before and I'm sure many times since. She said I'd be all right. And ultimately, oh fuck, I guess I was. Sometimes I start to spiral and I have to remind myself of that, but I am still here. Oh my God, fucking Christ. Fortunately, Evelyn's descent into nihilism is counteracted by the kindest force in the entire universe, her husband. Wayman Wong doesn't have a mean bone in his body and he continues to be kind and preach kindness no matter how much shit life throws at him. When Evelyn is at her literal darkest, he is able to bring her back to the light. He pushes her and us as the audience to see the good and to strive for it. Because quite frankly, the cosmic question of whether any of this matters doesn't fucking matter. We are here, we exist, and that existence behooves us to be the best that we can be to make the world a better place for other people who also exist. Losing yourself to nihilism is a cop-out. We are all we have, but we are not nothing. We can at times be pretty great, especially since the collective we includes Ki-Hui Kwan, a man who seems every bit as kind and genuine as his character. A man who kept his dream alive for decades in the face of abject indifference and who ultimately succeeded from a refugee camp to Hollywood's biggest stage, the American dream. And when he called that out in his Oscar acceptance speech, I couldn't help but wish that were true. There's stories like his could be the rule and not the exception because I don't like being in the George Carlin frame of mind. Why is it called the American dream? Because you have to be asleep to believe it, but it's fucking hard to believe otherwise. A few weeks ago, I saw the jungle at St. Anne's Warehouse in Brooklyn. The play is set in an actual refugee camp in Calais, France that existed from January 2015 through October of the following year. A place where refugees and other immigrants from across the Middle East and Africa came before attempting to cross into the United Kingdom where they would then file for asylum protection. The jungle is equal parts inspiring as we see how the camp develops and infuriating as we see France's response to the makeshift city in their midst, among other, we'll call them setbacks. Though I didn't know it until the following day, this performance took place mere hours after the United Kingdom announced its stop the boats policy, which would authorize the immediate removal of anyone who came into the country illegally, even if they were there to request asylum. The ending that all of those characters who were inspired by real people who passed through the jungle were hoping for was in the middle of being legislated out of existence. Now, that policy almost certainly violates international law, but that aside, it's an awful combination of genuine evil and utter short-sightedness. Evil for obvious reasons, a society turning away people it is capable of helping is bad, period. And short-sighted for, frankly, equally obvious reasons. Who and what are they depriving themselves and their citizens of by pushing back against refugees? And immigrants in general. Imagine if America had turned away Ki Hwi Kwan's parents. Imagine how much worse the world would be for that. When I said that there were thousands with stories like his, I was massively understating it. Hell, you don't even have to leave his family to find another one. Kwan met his wife, Echo, on the set of One Car Wise 2046, but despite working with one of the most acclaimed directors literally ever, she couldn't get work in the American film industry. But she never gave up hope, nor did she let her husband. And so when Daniels met her and realized who she was and what she was capable of, they immediately brought her on as the onset translator where she could ensure the authenticity of the non-English dialogue. And in a film with this much non-English dialogue, that's really gosh damn important. Kwan tweeted that she was the secret soul of the set and I believe it because everything everywhere all at once is an immigrant story. Strip away all of the chaos and you find two people who came to this country, started a business, had a kid and got stuck in a rut. It is a deeply human story and one that I can feel even if I can't directly relate to. Look, there's just some things I'm never gonna be able to talk about, but oh no, where's this going? Ah! Hey guys, Alec Covis Meyer here, favorite film? Hey, Alec. Hey, how's it going man? I'm pretty good, how you doing? Good, so I've been thinking about starting a YouTube channel. I have the exact same idea. Are you, yes? You know what, you should take my idea. I think you'd be better at it. Are you sure? I'm 100% sure. Okay, it's called The Week I Review. Hello, anyone, everyone and welcome to The Week I Review. My name is Hubert Bajila and today I wanna talk about the latest film from the Daniels, everything everywhere all at once. A lot of my Asian friends said they felt seen after crazy rich Asians came out. Forget all the conspicuous consumption that we will never enjoy. The mere fact of the film was uplifting. Seeing someone who looks like you means you are worth seeing. Kiwi Kwan felt something similar. That film brought him back to acting. Seeing so many Asian actors on the big screen made him feel like he was missing out. Funny enough, younger Asian actors told him that data and short-round made them feel seen. Inspiration can be circular. Seeing yourself in someone you inspired and feeling inspired by them. There are other Asian actors who helped pave the way for the surge of representation. Michelle Yeo and James Hong, obviously. There's Jackie Chan, too, who in an alternate universe is the star of everything everywhere all at once. Keep that in mind the next time someone tells you we're in the darkest timeline. There's Bruce Lee, Jet Lee, Margaret Cho, Lucy Liu, George Takei, Pat Merida, Anna May Wong, Jack Sue. Despite a century of Asian trailblazers in American film and television, everything everywhere all at once is still an anomaly. It's not just because of the way the Daniels up and their toy box of influences to merge lo-fi sci-fi, slapstick minimalism, Hong Kong action, and the intimacy of auto fiction. Everything everywhere all at once could probably work in a quadruple feature with Michelle Gundry's Be Kind Rewind, Steven Chow's God of Cookery, and Lulu Wang's The Farewell. No, the movie still feels out of place because stodgy whiteness remains the default in so many American mediums. Think of propriety as the homeowner's association of art, and too often it feels like we're stuck in the shitty suburb of cinema. So what is it about everything everywhere all at once that makes people feel so seen? Well, at a deeper level, being seen means your feelings and experiences have been shared and understood by someone else. Being seen is not just the act of looking, but an act of empathy. That's what Jobu Tapaki and Joy want, someone who could see what they see and feel what they feel. I'm showing you who I am. Please tell me you can see me. Please tell me you can understand. And I see so much of myself and my brother and my immigrant parents in that film. For the record, I'm Filipino, but a lot of people ask if I'm Chinese. Asian people ask this too. When my brother and I were toddlers, my mom and dad made circuit boards at the same company. Dad worked the graveyard shift and mom worked mornings. There was only one car. Before dawn, my mom would bundle us up in blankets and carry us into the back seat. She'd drive to work where dad was waiting in the parking lot and they'd tag out for the day. Dad drove us back, carried us inside and tucked us in. One time when mom ended her shift and dad was about to start his, we had a Taco Bell picnic on a patch of grass in the parking lot. My brother and I ran back and forth on it like it was a field. The cars on the expressway made it sound like we were near the shoreline at twilight. I can see the Wongs having parking lot picnics. Honestly, that might have been the happiest I felt when I was four years old. But there's another type of being seen if you're a member of a minority group. Feeling conspicuous. Take my brother. Nevermind that from certain angles he looks a little like Henry Golding. That didn't prevent a complete stranger from coming up to him and his children at playground and telling him they weren't welcome. My parents experienced a lot of racism when they first came to California. The house got agged and toilet papered repeatedly. Someone spray-painted our minivan. Once one of the neighbor kids waited until the middle of night and stood in our driveway so my mom couldn't back out and go to work. Assimilation seemed the best way to keep my brother and me safe. My parents didn't teach us Ilocano or Tagalog because they feared we'd develop an accent and wind up in ESL. We'd never look like we belong, but we could sound like we do. And yeah, I don't have a Filipino accent, but I also lack a tongue. How do those neighbors see us? Do they think about how shitty they were? And why do I care what they think? Which makes me think about being seen but not heard. I visited some friends upstate a few weeks ago. They're both a few years older than me and have a kid. One of them is white, the other is of South American descent. During a drive they asked if I'd seen Raya and the Last Dragon. They thought it was great for Asian representation. I said I hadn't, but I had seen everything everywhere all at once, which had a surprising amount to say about the Asian American experience. For some reason, one of my friends that casually asked, what do you think about anti-Asian hate? Super nonchalant, like it was only the weather. I said I was worried about my parents and my brother. And then, as if I hadn't said anything, I got a lecture about what it's like to be Asian by two non-Asians. They talked at length about documentaries on Asians and other Asian-inflected children's movies they'd seen. They gushed about a local news story about an Asian valedictorian and they offered a checklist of positive Asian stereotypes that were reductive and condescending. I could barely get a word in. It felt like they were trying to get me, their token Asian friend, to tell them they've been good liberals. And I kind of fucking lost it. I can't remember what exactly sent me off. I think it was a combination of phrases like, what's wrong with being good at math? And I think we made Hubert angry. And then they started laughing. I barked at them, why are you laughing? Am I invisible? Why aren't you listening to me? I guess my anger was startling because they pulled over out of shock. I regret losing my cool like that. They apologized and so did I, but it still felt like they weren't listening. All afternoon, they kept repeating, Hubert, remember, we're your allies. Like villains in a Jordan Peele movie. I tell my Asian friend he's very wise a third time, if I could, et cetera. I realize now how upset I get when I'm seen, but not heard by people who say they care about me. I feel invisible, which leads to depression and wishing I could just disappear and everything bagel collapsing in on itself. After a few more watches of everything everywhere all at once, I see a better model for expressing such intense feelings. It's Waymond, not Alpha Waymond, who operates almost entirely through violence. That's the discourse suited for his dystopian action movie world and not the real one. It's also why they can't just hug it out on the fury road. And yet I secretly wish that all my problems could be solved with a meteor hammer fanny pack. Every other Waymond we see is not afraid to speak his mind. He also demonstrates a resilience that I lack on those days. Evelyn shatters a window. Waymond sings a song while sweeping up the mess. If everything is kung fu, so is kindness. His kung fu is strong. But going deeper, it's not just Waymond who's the model, but Kiwi Kwan himself. The alternate Waymans of everything everywhere all at once show us the Kiwi Kwan's we never got. The Tony Leung leading man, the Jackie Chan action dynamo. The film also showcases the vulnerability of Kiwi Kwan, forged by decades of feeling rejected, frustrated and invisible. What a joy to see him again and as his best self. I've rarely rooted this much for a stranger. He's been candid about his career setbacks and struggles to stay positive. He's talked about losing his passion for something he loved. He mentioned his brother checking in on him every day to make sure he's taken care of himself. I see a model in his brother, which reminds me. Hi Tim, I hope you're doing okay. I hear my dad's talk of greener pastures when he mentions the American dream. I see my mom's exuberant quirkiness whenever he's being goofy in an interview. I see my brother and me in middle age wondering what's next. I see someone who's not afraid to cry. I see someone who made me feel seen as a child. I see a good person who makes me want to become a better man. Looks like something Hubert would wear. There will be ripple effects from everything everywhere all at once's success. But as I alluded to earlier, it's difficult to say what they are. I hope, beyond hope, that it gives filmmakers license to be unique, to go for wacky new ideas and not just chase trends. I hope it tells studio heads that personal stories are often the most universal and that audiences reward that. I hope it reminds all of us that cinema going is an exercise in empathy until it becomes an act of apathy. And too many films these days feel like the latter, which is infuriating when there are a nearly infinite number of ways to make an audience feel something new and real. And as Nicole Kidman says, every time I sit in the theater, powerful. The Daniels have proved this time and again through all of their works, movies are magic. They are the best thing and everything everywhere all at once is the best one of them. That's where I should end the video. We all know how it ends, even if it wasn't obvious, from the lead up the score has been posted on the week air views now complete, I guess, leaderboard for over a year. But when I say it, it's the end. And the closer I have come to this moment, the more I've been paralyzed at the prospect. For pretty close to five years now, I have had this in my life, in my daily thoughts, an idea that didn't get discarded like so many others, but one that I went and fucking did. My life is full of failed projects and the week air review isn't one of them. It's rarely been exactly what I imagined. No video is faultless. This one very much included. But I am proud of what I've made, of the videos that succeeded in saying something worthwhile. There are some gosh damn bangers in my archive and really just a handful of duds. And while I was certainly not successful beyond my wildest dreams, I reached nearly one and a half million views across the channel. That's wild. Something like a million people saw my face in a thumbnail and willingly clicked. And with an average view duration of five minutes and 46 seconds, that's a heck of a lot of face that has been on screens all over the world. And nearly 16,000 of those people saw something that made them subscribe. A number that is only a few hundred shy of the population of my hometown and puts the week air review somewhere in like the top 10% of YouTube channels. At least two people told me I shouldn't end the channel based on that alone. How can you give up that audience they asked? And that question has haunted me a little bit. Like the last five videos have all in various ways been about the end of the channel with the entire third verse of the sick passenger review lamenting this exact thing. Because the end of the week air review isn't the end of my time as a creative. Indeed, I hope that I can use the time I'm getting back to work on other projects to grow as a writer, a filmmaker, an artist of any and maybe every sort. But does it matter if no one knows about it? If a sculptor curves up a tree in the woods and there's no one around to review it, is it even art? Art requires an audience and I will probably never get one this big again. And who knows, maybe in a year or two I'll take this all back in return. But for now, this is goodbye. I give everything everywhere all at once. A 10 out of 10. Thank you so much for watching and thank you one last time to my patrons. Forgive me for being a little indulgent here but many of these folks have been supporting me for literally years and I have to give them their due. Thank you to my mom without whom I literally would not be here. My dad also but he didn't back me on Patreon. He probably would have if not for my mom so thanks to him. My cat of course except my cat doesn't have any money and it's actually been my girlfriend Danielle the entire time. Her support and help was particularly critical in the early years when she would help me set up and run camera and when I needed the camera to move she has been the one to help out begrudgingly perhaps but this channel could not have been what it is without her. Thank you to Kat Sarakata, my first true fan who started watching and regularly commenting less than two months into the channel's life. And Benjamin Schiff who came not long after and has always been incredibly kind. Anthony Cole, Elliot Fowler and Greg Lucina I haven't talked too much but their support at the highest level for basically the entirety of the Patreon's run genuinely means the world to me. Thanks to Kojo who helped me get the venue for last year's London show and is just an all around standup guy. And Phil Bates, he's the only member of the bourgeoisie I actually like. Thank you of course to Willow, a wonderful young woman who I share exactly zero demographic traits with but somehow became my number one fan and merch designer and I'm only sorry that more people didn't get to wear her dove designs. Thank you to Sebastian a.k.a. I am the sort of very learned gentleman who has taught me a whole lot of things about a whole lot of things and Werner von Alfen who is a genuinely fantastic photographer and all around deeply passionate guy. Both of them braved the EU-Britain border crossing to come see me last year and that was so awesome. Similarly, Claire Bear offered me their home as a potential quarantine zone when I was going to Canada in case the country didn't find my proof of vaccination and negative tests sufficient when I visited in 2021. Thank you to Taylor Lindies who has made me think more about the importance of accessibility in art than all of the YouTube videos in the world. And Timmo gets to stand in for the several Brazilians who I hope will remain in the Discord after this channel is gone. You're all great. Thanks also to Amber Talamasca who I've always enjoyed talking to during the video hangouts. And Hubert Vigilla who is one of my favorite writers and I am really glad that I got to work with him on another video all of these years after leaving Flixist. If you liked what he did here, you'll like what he's done everywhere else. Check out his stuff. It's great. Also thank you to Stefan Heimer, Christopher Gald, Happy Cyclops, Adam Cole and Skamunculus. Again, I haven't spent much time with them but thank you to them and thank you to the names that came and went over the years. Liam Knaip, Claudia Medina, Magnolia Denton, Maddie Zimmerman, Andrew Madison Design, Jacob Alexander, Red Hot Silly Peppers, Tomatown One, Nicole Bailey, Shayna, Jonathan Gibbs and also to everyone who supported at lower tiers as well. I truly would not have made it as far as I did without all of your support. I will never forget it. Whether this was your first time on the channel or if you've watched the whole archive a dozen times, I hope that you've gotten something out of my work, that it's helped you think more critically about art or maybe just kept your mind off things for a while. As I said before, I am not done making things and there's a decent chance that this channel will eventually get rebranded and just become a place for me to post whatever it is I'm doing without the pretense of a format. I don't know but I will definitely keep up the discord for as long as people show up so maybe I'll see you there. But if not, that's okay too. Whoever you are, anyone, everyone, take care of yourself. I can say with confidence that if you've made it all the way here, you are worthwhile. You matter and the world is better because you are in it. Never forget that. Good night and good luck.