‘Everything’ comes up roses: Everything Everywhere All at Once completes historic sweep

As forecast, Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert’s comic sci-fi drama Everything Everywhere All at Once had an historic night at the 95th Academy Awards, winning seven statues, including Best Picture. It is the most awarded Best Picture winner since Slumdog Millionaire took home eight awards in 2008. The film also became just the third movie in history to win three acting awards, with Michelle Yeoh taking Best Actress and Ke Huy Quan and Jamie Lee Curtis winning their respective supporting categories. The Daniels, who also won for Original Screenplay, became just the third duo in history to win Best Director. The film also won Editing.

Brendan Fraser completed his comeback, winning Best Actor for The Whale and seeming genuinely overwhelmed by the moment. His speech, if we’re being quite honest, was a little rambling and incoherent at times, but it came from the heart, and there was no one watching who didn’t understand what he was feeling.

The loss for Austin Butler completed a shocking night for Elvis, which I and others had predicted would be a major winner. Instead, the Baz Luhrmann film was one of five Best Picture nominees to go home empty-handed, joining The Banshees of Inisherin, The Fabelmans, TAR, and Triangle of Sadness.

Another thing the Butler loss did was contribute to the end of the BAFTAs as an all-important bellwether. Long live the Screen Actors Guild. Every winner at the SAG Awards repeated at the Oscars this year, which meant not one winner at the BAFTAs pulled off the double. More shocking, perhaps, is that SAG and BAFTA did not align on a single award this year, but that’s a discussion for another time.

The one place BAFTA did end up having some predictive power was in the below-the-line categories, where Edward Berger’s All Quiet on the Western Front cleaned up. The powerful World War I adaptation won awards for Cinematography, Production Design, Original Score, and International Feature, making it the second-biggest winner of the night. Just an observation: The tradition is for the orchestra to play the score of the winning film to accompany the winners’ walk to the stage, and that now-famous three-note section of the All Quiet score sets quite the mood for an Academy Awards speech.

The Whale won for Makeup and Hairstyling, making it the only other multiple winner of the night, besides Everything Everywhere All at Once and All Quiet on the Western Front. The other below-the-line winners included Top Gun: Maverick for Sound, Avatar: The Way of Water for Visual Effects, and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever for Costume Design.

Original Song deservedly went to “Naatu Naatu” from RRR, and as predicted, the performance of that song was the high point of the ceremony. Kudos to the Academy for staging it well and putting it right in the middle of the show. It was a perfect burst of fun and energy at the exact moment the broadcast, which ran about 3 hours and 40 minutes, needed it.

Netflix had another fine night, with The Elephant Whisperers winning in Documentary Short, giving the streamer its third victory in seven years in that category. Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio triumphed in Best Animated Feature for Netflix, as well, becoming just the second non-Disney/Pixar winner in the last 11 years and the second stop-motion winner ever. Along with the four wins for All Quiet on the Western Front, Netflix walked away with a healthy six Oscars.

But, no studio could touch indie upstart A24, which distributed both Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Whale, giving it a haul of nine awards. The studio swept Best Picture, Director, Original Screenplay, and all four acting awards. Since its inception, A24 has catered to the cool-kid crowd, and the victory for this weird little sci-fi movie will only enhance that reputation.

My favorite win of the night came in Adapted Screenplay for Sarah Polley’s superlative work on Women Talking. The victory was well deserved, and hopefully, Polley will get as much money and freedom as she wants to make the next thing. At the very least, the best movie of the year is an Oscar winner.

Another of the night’s great, if somber moments, came in Best Documentary, which went to Navalny, a portrait of the jailed Russian opposition leader. Director Daniel Roher brought Alexei Navalny’s family on stage and gave up the last portion of his speech to Navaly’s wife, Yulia, who preached a message of resilience and perseverance in the face of fascism and oppression.

All in all, the speeches were powerful and poignant. The back-to-back victories for Quan and Curtis to open the night got the tears flowing early. Though they were not my picks, it’s hard to begrudge either a moment in the sun. A sweet moment came when An Irish Goodbye won Best Live Action Short Film, and the filmmakers informed the crowd that it was co-star James Martin’s birthday. The whole crowd joined in singing “Happy Birthday.”

The show itself felt stripped down to mostly nuts and bolts, which was a refreshing change from the maximalism of last year. Jimmy Kimmel delivered a solid monologue at the top, nothing groundbreaking but charming enough to get laughs and prime the audience for an upbeat evening. The show was given over primarily to the awards and to speeches, which is how it should be. Only a couple folks were played off. One wishes that never had to happen, but less is better.

The only missteps came in promoting a trailer for the upcoming live-action Little Mermaid remake and in presenting a package dedicated to the 100-year anniversary of Warner Bros. that curiously included a number of MGM clips. Warner Bros. owns the MGM library now, but the company sure as hell had nothing to do with The Wizard of Oz or a number of other classics included in the package.

Regarding the trailer for The Little Mermaid, presented by stars Halle Bailey and Melissa McCarthy, yes, it was self-serving and tacky to show an ad for a Disney movie on an ABC broadcast. But, the folks getting up in arms about it seem to forget that the whole origin of this ceremony is to promote the great product Hollywood is selling. To suggest it undermines the integrity of the awards or any such thing is to misunderstand what everyone is gathered to do in the first place. You have the largest single audience of movie lovers you will ever get at one time – by all means, sell ‘em some movies.

While still off from pre-pandemic heights, this was the second straight year of growth in the ratings, which has to ease some minds at Disney/ABC. It’s half of where the numbers stood in 2015, but 18.7 million viewers is nothing to sneeze at for a live broadcast that isn’t the Super Bowl. One has to imagine it helped having two of the highest grossing movies of all time (Top Gun: Maverick and Avatar: The Way of Water) in contention for Best Picture. If the viewership creeps back up into the 20 millions next year, there may be hope of saving this thing after all.

And, that’s it. A lot of folks in the industry and media are attempting to paint the victory of Everything Everywhere All at Once as some kind of sea change for the Academy and the industry at large. We’re a long way off from that, even if it were to happen, and I’m not buying it. Remember the last time these folks awarded Best Picture to a “weird” movie was as recently as 2017, when The Shape of Water triumphed. The next year, the top prize went to a Driving Miss Daisy retread.

Progress comes in fits and starts, and awards seasons come in cycles that loop back around on themselves. This year’s progressive pick can easily lead to next year’s bafflingly regressive choice. The good news is The Shape of Water is at least 10 times as transgressive as Everything Everywhere All at Once, so maybe the pendulum won’t swing back as hard next year.

On a personal level, one frustrating year can’t sour my love of this show and its place in movie history. I’ve been pretty spoiled lately by Moonlight, Spotlight, Parasite, the aforementioned Shape of Water, and a bunch of other great winners. So, they get it wrong sometimes. If that bothered me, I’d have stopped tuning in after the second show I remember watching with any intent, when The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King swept everything. If that couldn’t stop me, nothing will. Let’s do it again next year.

Countdown to the Oscars: Best Supporting Actress

We’re counting down the days until the Academy Awards! We’ll be here, breaking down each of the 23 categories, talking a bit of history, and trying to figure out who is going to win all those gold statues. So check back throughout the next three weeks for Last Cinema Standing’s Countdown to the Oscars.

Best Supporting Actress

The nominees are:

Angela Bassett in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever

Hong Chau in The Whale

Kerry Condon in The Banshees of Inisherin

Jamie Lee Curtis in Everything Everywhere All at Once

Stephanie Hsu in Everything Everywhere All at Once

This is a mess this year – a big, beautiful, glorious mess. As someone trying to make predictions with at least a little authority, I hate it. As a fan of drama and surprises at the Academy Awards, I love it. I’d normally save this next bit for the final analysis section down below, but it’s just too juicy to wait. Here’s where we stand right now:

For a long time, Angela Bassett was the presumed frontrunner, splitting a lot of the critical accolades with Kerry Condon. But, Bassett is a legend, and there has been a feeling that this is her time. Then, she won the Golden Globe and everything seemed on track. However, Condon came along and won the BAFTA, which as you may know, is my favorite predictor of upsets in the acting categories. So, I was ready to go that way. 

But, the Screen Actors Guild Awards arrived and threw another curveball. Jamie Lee Curtis won. Like Bassett, Curtis is Hollywood royalty and has been doing this thing forever. It wouldn’t be beneath the SAG membership to give an award for a lifetime of achievements, but if that were the case, why Curtis and not Bassett? For what it’s worth, Stephanie Hsu just won the breakthrough performer award at the Independent Spirits, so she’s not out of it either.

The wild card in all of this is that Everything Everywhere All at Once peaked at exactly the right time. It won an unprecedented four SAG awards right as ballots were about to be sent out. It got the WGA and dominated the Indie Spirits with ballots in hand. It looks like a big, historic winner, and nobody doesn’t want to be on the side of that. The problem is: Will Hsu and Curtis split votes? I don’t know. Nobody knows, and it’s great.

Jamie Lee Curtis in Everything Everywhere All at Once – I like Curtis a lot. She was a major part of my childhood in movies like Halloween, My Girl, and House Arrest. She’s wonderful in Prom Night, Knives Out, and the Freaky Friday remake. She seems like a fun, funny presence in interviews and when giving speeches. All around, an easy person to root for. I don’t think she’s particularly good in this movie.

Now, she is saddled with playing a humorless IRS agent, a kind of cult enforcer, and the hot dog-fingered lover of Michelle Yeoh in one universe. It’s all pretty thankless. That said, she’s also overdoing it in every single one of those characters. One could say she is matching the tone of the film around her, and that would be correct, but it doesn’t make it good.

Kerry Condon in The Banshees of Inisherin – Sandwiched between Colin Farrell and Cate Blanchett at the top of my list of the performances of the year would be Kerry Condon as Siobhán. Condon is working in every part of the emotional spectrum, bringing dignity, grace, and common sense to the character who serves as the rational center of this wild story. Such characters can often be drag to play, but Condon’s wit and intelligence make Siobhán just as fascinating as the characters that orbit around her.

It’s not just in the big, showy moments we all saw in the trailer, although she nails those, too. Condon wows in the quiet, sad moments that might otherwise fly by under the radar but which add up to a whole character. The first time she heads down to the pub, intent on grabbing a sherry and being a part of the community, there is a spring in her step and a shy smile on her face. The way she turns down Dominick (Barry Keoghan) for a date is so gentle and honest. There are a dozen little moments like these throughout the film, and they never stop impressing each time they crop up.

Angela Bassett in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever – Bassett knows how to command a room. Ryan Coogler is a magnificent director who knows how to give Bassett the space to shine, but that doesn’t work if Bassett ever gives less than her all, if she ever takes her foot off the gas once. Queen Ramonda must command the respect of every single person in the room at all times, and Bassett accomplishes this through sheer force of will.

A lot has been made of Bassett being the first acting nominee from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. I would argue it’s more remarkable that this recognition is coming for a performer playing a hero. Villains always tend to stand out in comic book movies. They get to have more fun. They’re bigger, bolder. That is why both Heath Ledger and Joaquin Phoenix won Oscars for playing the Joker and no one has ever been nominated for playing Batman. Heroes tend to be too one-note in comic book movies. They are stoic, determined, and representative of a moral certitude that may work in battling evil but doesn’t offer an actor much in the way of range. Bassett cuts through all of that to find depth and layers in a monarch beset on all sides by enemies and standing up to protect her family and her kingdom.

Stephanie Hsu in Everything Everywhere All at Once – Speaking of villains that get to go big, Hsu swings for the fences as this film’s central antagonist, Jobu Tupaki. In a different universe, we are meant to have sympathy for her as Joy Wang, daughter of a chilly, withholding mother. Hsu seems to have a perfect read on both characters, and for all the dumb things the movie makes her do, we at least believe in the characters underneath it all.

You might know Hsu from The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon or from Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, but this performance was really the first time I took notice of her. Her strength, spirit, and intensity all jump off the screen, and I can’t wait to see what she does next.

Hong Chau in The Whale – I have not had a chance to see the Kelly Reichardt film Showing Up that premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last May. If, however, it is as good as I have heard, then Chau truly had one of the great years in recent memory. In addition to having Showing Up at Cannes, she had a major role in box-office hit The Menu and garnered this Oscar nomination for The Whale. And though The Whale has not been particularly loved by critics, Chau has received nothing but plaudits for her work.

She plays Liz, a kind of nurse/caretaker to Brendan Fraser’s morbidly obese Charlie. She is protective of him but never coddles him, always urging him to get to a hospital and get his life together. As the film goes on, we learn the depth of their connection, and Liz’s actions take on more meaning and nuance. Chau plays all of this beautifully, matching Fraser’s energy in scene after scene. When she breaks down, Chau makes us feel the wait of her burden and all the pain it is causing her.

The final analysis

Okay, so what are we doing? Let’s look at the recent history of each of the major awards bodies and see which is most vulnerable and which seems right on the money. We’ll use 2010 as a cutoff:

Golden Globes – They have matched with the Oscars nine of the past 12 years. The three they missed were 2020 when Youn Yuh-jung won the Oscar but was not even nominated at the Globes (Jodie Foster won for The Mauritanian in an all-time strange victory); 2015 when Alicia Vikander won the Oscar for The Danish Girl (the Globes went with Kate Winslet in Steve Jobs, who beat Vikander who was nominated for Ex Machina); and the historically close 2013 race when Jennifer Lawrence won the Globe but Lupita Nyong’o memorably won the Oscar.

Screen Actors Guild – The guild has matched the Oscars 11 of the past 12 years. The only miss came in 2018 when the Oscar went to Regina King, who was not nominated at the SAG Awards. The guild went with Emily Blunt for The Quiet Place, a performance that was not even nominated at the Academy Awards.

BAFTAs – The Brits are spottier. They have matched eight times in 12 years. They missed in 2010, going with Helena Bonham Carter for The King’s Speech (eventual Oscar winner Melissa Leo was not nominated). They missed that 2013 race, also going with Lawrence over Nyong’o. They matched the Globes in 2015, going with Winslet over Vikander, who was again nominated for Ex Machina, not The Danish Girl. And, in 2018, like at the SAG Awards, King was not nominated, clearing the way for Rachel Weisz in The Favorite.

Going back to the beginning of the SAG Awards in 1994, only once has a performer won the Oscar without winning at least one of these major awards first (that was Marcia Gay Harden for Pollock in 2000, a performance not even nominated anywhere but the Oscars). So, we can safely eliminate Hong Chau and Stephanie Hsu, though if Hsu wins on the wave of Everything Everywhere All at Once momentum, we shouldn’t be surprised.

The Golden Globes are a weirdo organization, grasping at straws to regain their relevance, and as great as Angela Bassett is, I think she’s running in third place. There may also be an element of MCU bias here, as well. It would be tough to imagine voters getting over that, though they’ve never minded rewarding actors playing the Joker in Batman movies.

So, Curtis or Condon? Well, over more than a decade, the SAG Awards have been the more accurate predictor in this category compared to the BAFTAs, so I’m forced to predict Jamie Lee Curtis. I’m at peace with that. If she wins, I will be right. If she loses to Condon, I will be happy to be wrong. If anything else happens, well, I was never going to get it anyway. That’s it. Curtis. Final answer.

Will win: Jamie Lee Curtis in Everything Everywhere All at Once

Should win: Kerry Condon in The Banshees of Inisherin

Should have been here: Claire Foy in Women Talking

A note about my favorite snub: I mentioned this in my Adapted Screenplay piece, but Women Talking should have been up for a lot more Oscars than the two for which it is nominated. That it received no acting nominations for an ensemble that could easily have made up the entirety of this category will forever baffle me. I could have gone with anyone from the cast in this spot, and Jessie Buckley in particular was brilliant, but if I have to pick one, it’s Claire Foy. Her speech about protecting her children is one of the great movie moments of the year and will stay with me long after this Oscars season has passed.

Next time: Best International Feature

31 Days of Horror: Halloween

A scream queen is born in Jamie Lee Curtis as she battles Michael Myers in Halloween.

In addition to our regular programming, every day this month, Last Cinema Standing will be bringing readers recommendations from the best of the horror genre as we make our way to Halloween. This should not be treated as a “best of” list but more as a primer. You can read the full introduction to Last Cinema Standing’s 31 Days of Horror here, and be sure to check back each day for a new suggestion.

Day 14: Halloween (1978)

I may be jumping the gun a bit on this one, but if we are going to talk about masked killers stalking promiscuous teens, it really starts with Halloween. Victor Miller, a co-writer of Friday the 13th, has said this was the movie he was trying to emulate, and for low-budget, high-value thrills, you cannot beat this John Carpenter masterpiece.

If we measure a film’s impact by its legacy, Halloween has an enviable resumé, and this one movie gave us three indelible icons of horror: Scream Queen Jamie Lee Curtis, the villain Michael Myers, and John Carpenter’s pulsating score.

The daughter of Psycho star Janet Leigh and Some Like It Hot star Tony Curtis, this was Jamie Lee Curtis’ first feature film. To this day, her performance as Laurie Strode epitomizes the virtuous teen forced to confront some form of enduring evil. She is the ultimate “Final Girl” – that old horror movie trope that says after everyone else is dead, there will be one girl left to take on the killer. Curtis may not have been the first to tackle this kind of role, but her mix of vulnerability and resiliency defined it.

And for every hero, there must be a villain, and to a lot of minds, it is hard to top the relentless, ghostly presence of Michael Myers. His blank face, famously a William Shatner mask painted white, has haunted dreams (and sequels) for more than 35 years. It is an image anyone who has seen the film can conjure up in the blink of an eye. As real as he is, there is nothing human about him, no reason, no compassion, nothing but the glowering face of a pitiless void.

Then, there is the maestro, Carpenter, who put it all together with co-writer and producer Debra Hill. Carpenter had successes before and after Halloween, but nothing he has done matches the pop cultural resonance of this little horror movie. This is the movie people see in their nightmares, and when they do, there is a good chance they hear the music as well.

As much of a collaborative process as making a movie is, one thing Carpenter can take sole credit for is the score. The same way we know the Jaws music means lurking danger, we know the Halloween music means maniac. It is instinctual. It is a look-behind-you melody, instantly recognizable and endlessly evocative.

The power of symbols and icons such as these has a tendency to dilute over time. Overuse and misappropriation have that effect. But all the sequels, remakes, and parodies in the world cannot dim the brilliance of this gold standard of horror.

Tomorrow, we check in with the third and final entry in our series on teen slashers with my favorite horror movie villain.