What’s new to theatres and streaming: April 1-3, 2022

March 31, 2022Radheyan Simonpillai

Everything Everywhere All At Once

(Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert)

Imagine sitting through DJ Snake’s Turn Down For What music video for two-and-half-hours. If that sounds good, boy do I have a movie for you. Everything Everywhere All At Once has all the spastic energy, phallocentric humour and visual wit directors the Daniels brought to that Lil’ Jon video about bodies gyrating with seismic force, but with one extra and essential ingredient: Michelle Yeoh.

At its best the movie is a love letter to the Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon actor’s legacy and multifaceted talents, which are spread across a head-spinning multiverse narrative. And the multiverse drama here has a nice way of resonating with that feeling that you’re being pulled in all kinds of directions, or rather, simply existing. Yeoh’s Evelyn is overwhelmed with running a family-owned laundromat, explaining her delinquent tax forms to an IRS agent (Jamie Lee Curtis), being tiger mom to her inconvenient queer daughter Joy (Stephanie Hsu) and more.

But then her husband Waymond (Ke Huy Quan, or Short Round from Temple Of Doom) becomes a dimension-hopping version of himself, explaining to her that existence depends on her unique ability to channel the various versions of herself to fight a nefarious force ready to consume everything, everywhere. Enter Evelyn the martial arts expert or movie star (loving nods to the actor playing her), or Evelyn the woman from the universe where humans have wiener fingers, which is one of many ideas that should have been left on the cutting room floor.

The Daniels, unfortunately, are too in love with every clever but immature gag or never-been-done before idea. There’s so much here that is witty, exciting and genuinely hilarious, along with a beautiful and moving mother-daughter journey. But those things tend to be overwhelmed by the movie’s exhausting asides.

A heavy pair of scissors and Everything Everywhere All At Once could have realized its potential as the DJ Snake remix to Being John Malkovich and The Matrix. 140 min. Some subtitles. Now playing in theatres. NNNN (Radheyan Simonpillai)

You Won’t Be Alone

(Goran Stolevski)

Stolevski’s stunning, surprising and stomach-turning feature debut starts off like an arthouse horror movie but becomes something entirely different. Imagine Tree of Life but from the marginalized perspective of a bodysnatching witch.

That witch is Nevena (played at first by Sara Klimoska). She lives in seclusion after being cursed as a child to live out eternity by feasting on blood. Nevena can also become the animals or people whose intestines she consumes, which is how she ends up embedding herself among unsuspecting villagers to learn what it is to be human. The premise is basic enough, but You Won’t Be Alone gets you in your feelings. It’s a brutal and beautiful coming-of-age story about discovering cruelty, toxic masculinity and the mysterious ways that human connection and affection keep us going. 108 min. Subtitled. Now playing in theatres. NNNNN (Radheyan Simonpillai)

The Bubble

(Judd Apatow)

This comedy about making a movie during the pandemic is not the only cringey thing writer and director Judd Apatow put on the internet this week. See his eager and exaggerated tweets about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. Apatow was certain Smith could have killed both the comedian and comedy. Those tweets have since been deleted.

It’s unlikely The Bubble will meet the same fate. Though it can be ignored.

In it, Karen Gillan, Leslie Mann, Pedro Pascal, Keegan-Michael Key and others play the various actors and filmmakers quarantining on a British estate to shoot a CGI-heavy franchise sequel. Apatow evidently felt the idea of narcissistic and noxious celebrities forced into a Big Brother situation so that they could continue making millions during a global health crisis was inherently funny. His movie doesn’t add much by way of jokes. Instead it simply leans on its self-satisfied premise and a cast willing to embarrass themselves for pratfall chuckles for more than two deathly boring hours.

The Bubble is sharp enough to recognize that it’s telling a story of privileged people whose problems aren’t really anyone’s concern during the pandemic. But it doesn’t have the self-awareness to recognize that it has nothing to say or offer that couldn’t have been covered in an SNL skit. 126 min. Now streaming on Netflix Canada. N (Radheyan Simonpillai)