I wish I had made Everything Everywhere All At Once

  Usually when I write about shit on here I have something to say, I don't believe in making it feel like homework; pumping out reviews of the latest whatever for the sake of 'keeping up.' I don't think too hard about it, I don't make an outline, I just have a central thought and go with it. Or, sometimes, like in the case of The Batman, I didn't write about it because I didn't have anything to write about it. I mean, yeah, sure, I have shit to say but I don't have anything to add. It's a movie with such specificity to it that anyone who says all the right shit up top pretty much nails it for the group.
 

  That group discourse is MASSIVE so I see my opinions everywhere I look; chiming in would feel masturbatory, especially when it's not a polarizing work - people generally love it and I agree with them on what works and what doesn't. It reminds me of a David Lynch quote that I occasionally agree with, "I don't like talking about movies after they're over; watching the movie is the conversation." This is especially true since I went into it with a fuckton of hype and a list of 'criteria' I wanted Reeves to meet. Watching it was me putting checks in boxes; it did this, it did that, it did this, it did that, etc. All the hype was right: This is a Batman-as-Detective movie. Yay!

  But then comes EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE, a movie with unbelievable hype. Every review wasn't just saying it was One Of The Best Of The Year or even One Of The Best Of The Decade but...One Of My Favorite Movies Ever or, in some extreme cases, My Favorite Movie Of All-Time - this shit was constant. I'd watched the trailer and, yeah, I got excited for it. The hype was both dwindling my excitement and nurturing my curiosity, mostly so I could have an opinion on it. I wanted it to give me something to say. It's high-concept, lowbrow science fiction comedy - but even that feels diminutive. I struggled writing anything about it because I didn't want to box it in. I didn't want to make it seem 'small'. I can't do it justice because it's just so huge, so fun, so.......tiny puny wordswordswords jadfksrnhdmkltgdzfhondgklf. I plan on watching it over and over until I die - there, another hyperbolic review.

  Now, digging deeper, I also kept seeing in those reviews how influential EEAAO is gonna be. Talk of how it's gonna inspire a whole generation of filmmakers to make movies, it's gonna inspire a slew of young moviegoers to fall in love with going to the movies, etc. But...for me...it makes me wanna give up that pipe dream - in the best way possible. I used to wanna make movies but I wanted to make a -contribution- that said something no one else was saying. It's a movie that communicates not just existential philosophies I believe in (optimistic nihilism) but artistic ones as well (radical absurdism). There's an embrace of stupidity and almost Dadaistic extremity that no other modern movie has quite nailed down for me - it does for crowdpleasing family adventure movies what The Eric Andre Show did to Late Nite Talk Shows. I felt like that was missing from the mainstream and my hubris convinced me that I would be the one to make that kind of disruption. My number one rule with a new movie/show is 'show me something I've never seen before' and so I wanted to put my money where my mouth was and make something that no one had ever seen before. Everything Everywhere All At Once is that kind of contribution; it does everything that my dream project would have done and much, much, much more that I could ever conjure up. Instead of dwelling on my massive jealousy, I fully embrace it because there's a feeling much bigger than that: I'm content. Every time I watch it I can't believe it exists and that's an amazing feeling.