Your Weekly Dose (4/5/22)
This week’s prescriptions include a film that shouldn’t exist, a book about a film that shouldn’t exist, and a TV series that I’m glad exists. As always, thanks for subscribing and sharing.
FILM
Everything Everywhere All At Once
I’ll say it again, this film shouldn’t exist. An original script with a mind-bending plot that dances on a razor blade, an older Asian female lead, and two directors with precious few features under their belts (at least at this level) aren’t exactly the stuff of mainstream theatrical releases these days. But thank the multiverse for the Russo brothers and A24 for helping bring us Everything Everywhere All At Once, the latest from Daniels (filmmakers Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), whose last film featured Paul Dano piloting around Daniel Radcliffe’s farting corpse, and, yes, if you haven’t seen Swiss Army Man, you read that right.
Everything Everywhere All at Once stars Michelle Yeoh (!) as Evelyn, an overworked immigrant wife and mother who is working (poorly) to keep her family’s laundromat afloat and to maintain (even more poorly) a relationship with her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan) and daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu). On the verge of losing her business, she and Waymond meet with an IRS agent with the greatest name in the universe, Deirdre Beaubeirdra (Jamie Lee Curtis in one of her best performances in years). Here, Evelyn is thrust into a multi-universal fight for survival. An alternate version of her estranged daughter has constructed a weapon that could destroy all universes, and only Evelyn can stop it. The problem is, the version of Evelyn that we know isn’t good at ANYTHING. To prep her for the fight, an alternate version of Waymond instructs her in the ways of “‘verse jumping,” tapping into the alternate versions of herself and employing their unique expertise to combat Deirdre and other baddies and to ultimately confront Joy.
If this sounds like a jumbled mess, trust me, it’s not. The film works on every single level, even with its potentially confusing plot. While I was certainly ready for a fresh, sci-fi romp through a new multiverse, I wasn’t at all prepared for an intellectual, emotionally rich meditation on self-sacrifice, parenting, empathy, depression and suicide, and reconciliation. While the film drags a bit towards the end of the second act, it comes roaring back in the third, culminating in one of the most beautiful, inspiring, and heartfelt endings you’re likely to see in any film this year. Oh, and the homage to In the Mood for Love?? What an added bonus!
Everything Everywhere All at Once is a rare gem, and, if you want to discover more of these in the theater, then you should pony up for a ticket, which I highly recommend doing. Don’t wait for this one on a streaming service. You won’t be disappointed. I can’t adequately describe how much I adore this film.
Everything Everywhere All at Once is playing in theaters nationwide. Follow this link for theaters and showtimes in your area.
TV
Slow Horses
I love Gary Oldman. Who doesn’t? In the class I co-taught last week, we (re)watched The Book of Eli. I love how he chewed the scenery in that film as a crazed, would-be post-apocalyptic religious leader. He’s never not fun to watch, and in the new spy series, Slow Horses, I love how he completely gives himself over to a character that absolutely doesn’t give two shits about what anyone thinks of him. But brewing beneath that gruff exterior is hard-earned wisdom and a keen awareness of everything that’s going on around him.
Slow Horses, unlike other heroic spy series, focuses on a bunch of screw ups that have been ousted from MI5’s main headquarters and now work in the purgatorial Slough House. When a British-Muslim college student is kidnapped by a white nationalist group, both the head of Slough House, Jackson Lamb (Oldman), and former golden boy River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) suspect a larger conspiracy at work, one that could involve MI5 director Diana Taverner (Kristen Scott Thomas).
I can’t say much more about the plot as only the first two episodes are available, but I love the overall tone of the series thus far. It boasts stellar performances that should make it worth the investment, primarily from Oldman and Olivia Cooke, here playing an intelligence agent at Slough House, whose appointment might not have been a demotion. While it’s all very British (for which I am a glutton), the evil at the heart of the series is one that is plaguing countries around the world, the rise of nationalist movements and their accompanying violence.
New episodes of Slow Horses premiere on Apple TV+ on Fridays.
Blood, Sweat, and Chrome: The Wild and True Story of Mad Max: Fury Road
Like Everything Everywhere All at Once, Mad Max: Fury Road is a film that should not exist, and it will only take you reading the first few pages of Blood, Sweat, and Chrome to understand why. Perhaps my favorite reaction to Fury Road is Steven Soderbergh’s: “I don’t understand how they’re not still shooting that film, and I don’t understand how hundreds of people aren’t dead.”
Author Kyle Buchanan spins out his 2020 New York Times feature on the oral history of the making of Fury Road into a full-on, nearly 400 page account with insight from hundreds of crew, cast, critics, and other celebrity fans of the film. The result is a rousing history that had me re-watching the film over the first couple of nights of reading the book. It’s a celebration of director George Miller’s singular vision and the sacrifice and dedication on the part of over 1,000 cast and crew members over two decades to bring that vision to life.
Unlike its superhero action film counterparts, Fury Road used limited CG effects and opted instead for real car crashes and death-defying stunts (those Pole Cats swaying back and forth…all happening in real time). The production took place in the Namibian desert and lasted for nine months. The two leads, Charlize Theron and Tom Hardy, were frequently at odds with one another and nearly came to blows. My money would’ve been on Charlize (if you know her upbringing, you’ll understand why). Miller and his crew also had to endure several attempts on the part of the studio to shut the production down altogether. All of this—on top of all the normal challenges of making a film—makes Fury Road’s existence nothing short of a miracle.
If you love Fury Road, film in general, or the history of film, you’ll definitely want to grab a copy. It’ll certainly be one of the best books on film this year. And to think, we still have Furiosa to look forward to, which, apparently, is set to outdo Fury Road in both style and action. A tall order to be sure, but after reading Blood, Sweat, and Chrome, I’m not putting anything past Miller and his crew.
Blood, Sweat, and Chrome is available wherever books are sold, but consider purchasing your copy from Los Angeles’s The Last Bookstore.