Happy 2024!

Happy 2024, everyone! This year's film watching was a lot of fantasy, adventure, and some excellent new shows and seasons. Probably my favorite film I saw this year was Oppenheimer. Favorite show was Ahsoka.

Other highlights were Everything Everywhere All at Once, watching nearly the entirety of Columbo, The Mandalorian Season 3 and Loki Season 2.

My goal for 2024 is to revisit more 1920s and 30s films, specifically the box-office successes (less critically acclaimed films), Marx Brothers, Shirley Temple, and silent era classics.

Best wishes!

Oscars 2023: The Results

And the winner is... Everything, Everywhere, All At Once! And in so many other ways. I'm so happy that long-time actors and writers finally got validated for their work!

Everything, Everywhere All at Once

Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, 2022)

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Rating: Q=7, P=6 / Can't Get Enough

Scale 1=4, Scale 2=3, Scale 3=3, Scale 4=3

Action, Adventure, Comedy, Philosophical

I've often thought about what my life could have been like IF I had gone away from home for college, IF I had not gone to Australia to study abroad, IF I had not met certain people, etc. And also about how the little, seemingly unimportant decisions could have made a difference, too: what IF I had walked one the other side of the street or chosen to put my socks on before my shirt... Everything, Everywhere All at Once is a fantastic voyage into this world of "what ifs" and it plays with the multiverse theme (which has kind of gotten out of hand recently) in a new way that I found refreshing and wonderful. This film is mesmerizing and chaotic and lightning fast. It is hilarious and poignant and beautiful. It is the perfect representation of what our human lives really feel like--a miraculous and ridiculous mess.

At the heart of this action-packed, fantasy sci-fi story, is reality. Evelyn and her family are real people with real problems, however mundane or typical. They live a noisy life that's pulled them apart and left them unhappy. In those moments of unhappiness, people wonder what they've missed or what they could have been in different circumstances or by making different decisions. If I had only done this I would be happier now... wrestling with these thoughts, diving head-first into the emotions can help bring us back. This film definitely leaps into our heads and pulls out the thoughts and daydreams right before our eyes. It's spectacular.

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