It is striking that maybe the two best pieces of television and film of the past 12 months feature, at their core, black holes that threaten to devour every element of their surroundings. One of those, Christopher Storer’s The Bear, sees a man imploding with grief at the death of his brother. The other – Everything Everywhere All at Once, which leads this year’s upcoming Oscars with 11 nominations – stars an antagonist whose inner torment is so overwhelming that it literally consumes time and space.
Everything Everywhere, written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert and starring Michelle Yeoh, is a thing of wonder: it is both ferociously smart and outrageously fun. It is the story of Evelyn Quan Wang, a middle-aged laundrette owner going through a divorce. She regrets her life choices, and is suddenly told that the fate of the multiverse relies on her going back through time and making braver ones. Everything Everywhere is a relentless technicolour carousel. It carries the viewer along at bewildering speed and then abruptly stops, shattering you with tenderness.
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