‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ Gets Enthusiastic Response at Academy Screening

I gave “Everything Everywhere All At Once” a rewatch over the weekend. It still completely loses me once the kung-fu action kicks into high gear. For a 45 minutes it works very well and then it just completely falls off the rails.

With that being said, a screening for Academy members occurred this past weekend and the film played like gangbusters with the voters in attendance. Matt Neglia reported:

At an Academy screening for “Everything Everywhere All At Once” and there are a lot of big names here who haven’t seen it yet. HUGE applause at the end especially when Yeoh, Quan & Hsu’s names came up during credits. Lots of laughter throughout & sniffles could be heard during the parking lot scene at the end. Reactions of “Wow” & “That was incredible” heard coming out.

Fact of the matter is that I don’t think the film will be winning any Oscars, but you can bet it’ll be nominated in a bunch of categories. I don’t have any confidence in it winning Best Picture, it’s not Academy fodder, pure and simple. Can you imagine any of the older voters actually warming up to EEAO’s frenetic ADD-enhanced mayhem? Of course not.

Regardless, I’ve never seen this many actors/filmmakers gushing over a film this decade. Industry superfans of EEAO include Miles Teller, Riz Ahmed, Sian Heder, Guillermo del Toro, Anne Hathaway, Scott Derrickson, Colman Domingo, Sam Rockwell, Edgar Wright, SZA, Andrew Garfield, Reese Whitherspoon, Kogonada, Keke Palmer, Barry Jenkins, Lilly Wachowski, Florence Pugh, Jodie Foster, The Russos and Mike Flanagan.

As it stands on 10.09.22, of all the film screened so far, Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans,” Martin McDonagh’s “The Banshees of Inisherin,” and, yes, Joseph Kosinski’s “Top Gun: Maverick” are the frontrunners. This is why we so badly need “Babylon” to deliver come December.

On a side note, another thing I learned over the weekend: Jordan Peele’s “Nope” plays better on second viewing, it’s still not a great movie (the pacing is off), but Peele’s vision is truly contagious.