It’s always a joy to watch the Criterion Closet’s segments on YouTube. The latest one has “Everything Everywhere All At Once” filmmakers Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan showing up to pick their favorites.
An embarrassing moment has Scheinert picking up Spike Lee's masterful “Malcolm X” in his Criterion Closet and referring to it as his "favorite crime movie." Ha! Yes, it technically has some “crime” elements, mostly the assassination of Malcolm X, but it’s a straight-up spiritual biopic of a black leader. Crime? Not really.
These are the time-stamps for The Daniels’ other picks: 0:10 The Before Trilogy (Linklater) 1:20 Police Story 1 & 2 (Jackie Chan) 2:14 Godzilla 1954 2:47 Tampopo (Juzo Itami) 3:37 Malcolm X (Spike Lee) 4:30 Repo Man
These guys are actually the favorites to win Best Director. Before “Everything Everywhere All At Once” they were mostly known for their mildly amusing farting corpse movie “Swiss Army Man.”
If they had cast Jackie Chan in the Michelle Yeoh lead role, which was their original plan, this film would not have gotten any of the accolades that it’s received. Gone would be the female empowerment themes and what you’d mostly be left with is a multiverse kung-fu movie, potentially without the lesbian daughter either. The stars aligned quite well for The Daniels.
