Everything Everywhere All at Once is a visually thrilling, inter-dimensional absurdist comedy about a middle-aged laundromat owner trying to save what’s important to her through a series of unbelievable adventures. The Golden Globe Award-winning movie will be screened by cineSarnia at Sarnia Public Library Theater on Sunday, Jan. 22 at 2 pm and on Monday, Jan. 23 at 7:30 pm
The 2022 film, which is generating Oscar buzz, was directed by Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert and has already picked up over 180 awards at film festivals around the world.
Everything Everywhere All at Once stars Michelle Yeoh (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, Crazy Rich Asians) as Evelyn, a Chinese-American woman in the midst of a mid-life crisis.
The wife, mother and small business owner – who frequently daydreams about what her life could have been like if she had made different decisions – is not only being audited by the IRS (the agent, Deirdre Beaubeirdra, is played by Hollywood legend Jamie Lee Curtis ), but is also watching her marriage to her husband Waymond (played by Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’s Short Round and The Goonies star Ke Huy Quan) fall apart while her relationship with her live-in grandfather and daughter are in shambles.
Overwhelmed by her mounting troubles, Evelyn is suddenly thrown into a series of mind-bending adventures, playing versions of herself in parallel universes, which become more absurd and irrational as the film goes on.
While the action becomes dense and the onscreen scenarios that Evelyn encounters appear more and more preposterous (including a world where people have hot dogs for fingers), the themes at the core of the film keeps everything somewhat grounded: the importance of family, parenthood, love, dreams, disappointment, belonging and empathy.
Though at times the film delivers sensory overload, audiences looking to see cutting-edge filmmaking will thoroughly enjoy Everything Everywhere All at Once said cineSarina’s Daniel DeVries.
“It may be fair to say that this film is discombobulating entertainment, a wild ride where nobody seems to know what’s going on, whether they’re in the film or watching it,” he said. “Some critics have said that it can be overwhelming … but most others said it’s just pure Hollywood pop to a disorienting extreme, it’s a real roller coaster of a film.”
“(Yeoh) is a very talented actress, she was in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon twenty years ago,” he added. “There are some nods to that film and there are also an awful lot of Matrix references in the film as well. It’s like the craziest scene from Moulin Rouge mixed with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the Matrix.”
Everything Everywhere All at Once will be playing at the Sarnia Public Library Theater on Sunday, Jan. 22 at 2 pm and Monday, Jan 23 at 7:30 pm
Rush tickets are available at 1:45 pm on Sunday and at 7:15 pm on Monday for $12.
Individual tickets and winter season passes are available at www.cinesarnia.com.
The elevator for the library will be working on Sunday from 1:15 to 2 pm and on Monday from 6:45 to 7:30 pm
For more information about upcoming films, visit www.cinesarnia.com.