‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ Earns Five Awards, Including Best Film, from St Louis Film Critics Assn.

‘Everything Everywhere All At Once’ Earns Five Awards, Including Best Film, from St Louis Film Critics Assn.

The wild action, sci-fi and comedic adventure “Everything Everywhere All at Once” has been named Best Film of 2022 by the St. Louis Film Critics Association.

Writer-directors The Daniels’ chaotic tale of an overworked Chinese immigrant’s multiverse journey won five awards overall, including Michelle Yeoh for best actress. She plays Evelyn Wang, whose business is struggling, her marriage is on the rocks, and she has complicated relationships with her daughter and father.

As Evelyn’s milquetoast husband, Ke Huy Quan won supporting actor while Paul Rogers won for editing and The Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert), who directed, were named in a tie for best original screenplay.

SLFCA announced its awards in 23 categories on Dec. 18, with honors spread out among 13 films.

“The Banshees of Inisherin,” “Elvis” and “Women Talking” each received three awards.

 Martin McDonagh tied with the Daniels for original screenplay, for his pitch-black comedy “The Banshees of Inisherin,” which is about friends at an impasse, who live on a remote Irish island in 1923, while Kerry Condon won best supporting actress as the smart and feisty Siobhan, sister to Colin Farrell’s Padraic, and Ben Davis won for his moody and rugged cinematography.

This is the third year the group has selected a woman for its director award — Chloe Zhao, “Nomadland,” in 2020; Jane Campion for “The Power of the Dog” in 2021; and now, Sarah Polley for “Women Talking.”

“Women Talking,” about the women in an isolated religious community deciding on what action to take after a series of sexual assaults in 2010, also won for best ensemble cast and for Hildur Guðnadóttir’s acoustic music score that taps into community and hope.

Catherine Martin won for designing costumes and with Karen Murphy for production design on her husband Baz Luhrmann’s electric “Elvis” biopic, which was also singled out for best soundtrack.

For best actor, Brendan Fraser was selected for his bravura performance in “The Whale,” playing a 600-lb. recluse grappling with loss and guilt while trying to reconnect with his daughter.

The regional critics group announced its annual nominations Dec. 11, with “The Banshees of Inisherin” leading with 11 nominations, followed by ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ with 10; ‘Women Talking’ and ‘The Fabelmans’ earned eight each. Those nominations are listed here: http://www.stlfilmcritics.org/awards.

For Special Merit recognition, the St. Louis Film Critics selected three people for the honor:  imprisoned Iranian director Jafar Panahi, whistleblower actress Ashley Judd and posthumously, influential musician-actor David Bowie.

SLFCA President Jim Tudor said the group wanted to recognize filmmaker Jafar Panahi, who was sentenced to six years in prison by the Iranian government for inquiring about the arrests of his fellow filmmakers Mohammad Rasoulof and Mostafa Al-Ahmad.

The international film community has denounced his imprisonment as unjust. His latest work, “No Bears,” was shown at the Venice Film Festival and New York Film Festival this fall.

Jafar Panahi

The SLFCA statements on the three Special Merits:

Jafar Panahi

“In recognition of the courage of imprisoned Iranian director Jafar Panahi and all those film professionals confronting political oppression in the pursuit of free speech, human rights, and artistic expression.”

Ashley Judd

“We recognize Ashley Judd for the bravery and courage she demonstrated in portraying herself in ‘She Said.’”

David Bowie

“After nominating the experimental documentary “Moonage Daydream,” we want to also honor the expansive and continuing cinematic presence of singer-songwriter and actor David Bowie, whose life and music continues to permeate and enrich the cinema landscape.”

Here’s the list of our 2022 SLFCA Awards winners and runners-up:

Stephanie Hsu, Michelle Yeoh, Ke huy Quan of “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

BEST FILM

Everything Everywhere All at Once

Runner-up Women Talking

Best Director – Sarah Polley, “Women Talking”

Runner-up: The Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) , “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

Best Actor – Brendan Fraser, “The Whale”

Runner-up: Austin Butler, “Elvis”

Best Actress – Michelle Yeoh, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

Runner-up: Danielle Deadwyler, “Till”

Best Supporting Actor – Ke Huy Quan, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”
Runner-up: Brendan Gleeson, “The Banshees of Inisherin”

Best Supporting Actress – Kerry Condon, “The Banshees of Inisherin”

Runners-up: (tie) Angela Bassett, “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and Janelle Monae, “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery”

Women Talking

Best Ensemble – Women Talking

Runner-up: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Best Adapted Screenplay – She Said Rebecca Lenkiewicz; based on the book She Said by Jodi Cantor and Megan Twohey, and on the New York Times investigation by Jodi Kantor, Megan Twohey, and Rebecca Corbett

Runner-up: Women Talking – Sarah Polley, adapted from book by Miriam Toews

Best Original Screenplay – tie “The Banshees of Inisherin,” Martin McDonagh, and The Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

Runner-up: “The Menu,” Will Tracy and Seth Reiss

Best Cinematography – Ben Davis, “The Banshees of Inisherin”

Runner-up: Greig Fraser, “The Batman”

Best Editing – Paul Rogers, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”

Runner-up: Matt Villa and Jonathan Redmond, “Elvis “

Best Production Design – Elvis, Catherine Martin and Karen Murphy 

Runner-up: “Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery,” Rick Heinrichs

Best Costume Design – “Elvis,” Catherine Martin 

Runner-up: “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” Ruth E. Carter

Best Visual Effects – Avatar: The Way of Water”

Joe Letteri, Richard Baneham, Eric Saindon, and Daniel Barrett

Runner-Up: Everything Everywhere All at Once

Best Music Score – “Women Talking,” Hilda Guðnadóttir

Runner up (tie): Carter Burwell, “The Banshees of Inisherin”;  Michael Giacchino, “The Batman” and John Williams, “The Fabelmans.”

Best Soundtrack – Elvis

Runner-up: Moonage Daydream

Best Action Film – Top Gun: Maverick
Runner-up: RRR

Best Comedy Film – Weird: The Al Yankovic Story

Runner-up: Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery

Best Horror Film – Nope
Runner-up: X

Best Animated Film – Marcel the Shell with Shoes On

Runner-up: Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio

Marcel the Shell with Shoes On


Best International Feature – Decision to Leave

Runner-up: RRR


Best Documentary Feature – All the Beauty and the Bloodshed

Runner-up (tie): Good Night Oppy and Moonage Daydream


Best Scene – Sam Fabelman meets one of his idols on the studio lot in “The Fabelmans”

Runner-up: Iceman meets with Maverick in “Top Gun: Maverick”

Founded in 2004, the St. Louis Film Critics Association is a nonprofit organization of professional film reviewers who regularly publish current and timely film criticism, support local productions and festivals, and enhance public education, awareness, and appreciation of films. Vetted members are affiliated with qualifying media outlets in the St. Louis metropolitan region. (Note: PopLifeSTL.com critics Alex McPherson and Lynn Venhaus are members).

For the awards, eligible films are those that opened in the greater St. Louis area or had an online premiere during the 2022 calendar year – including those film that were given awards-qualifying runs in 2021 but were not available to all SLFCA members until 2022. Films slated for release in early 2023 are also eligible if a press screening, DVD screener, or screening link was provided to all SLFCA members.

For more information, visit http://www.stlfilmcritics.org

In addition, follow us on Twitter (@stlfilmcritics) and “Like” our Facebook page.

The Banshees of Inisherin

Bloated ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Is Shiny But Dull Spectacle

Bloated ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ Is Shiny But Dull Spectacle

By Lynn Venhaus

Looks 10, story 3. Regardless of its visual splendor from state-of-the-art effects, “Avatar: The Way of Water” is a bloated, confusing mess of a story.

Cinematographer extraordinaire Russell Christopher, who did “Titanic” and “Ant-Man,” and a team of hundreds of animators. motion-capture artists and graphics wizards make this sci-fi world fantastical, but a pedestrian plot can’t muster enough excitement to sit through 192 minutes of a curiously uninvolving scenario.

In a fierce battle to protect their home, the Na’vi must face a familiar threat on the extrasolar moon Pandora. Big bad military = evil territorial bullies, noble blue people = at one with nature.

With some nods to his previous mega-hits “Titanic,” “Aliens” and “The Terminator” franchise, director James Cameron has built a stunning panorama of flora, fauna, and water, lots of water. He’s also showing off in 3D and high-definition rate.

For all his excess, the man knows how to corral a team to create magic. However, his self-indulgences hamper smooth sailing in storytelling. He could have trimmed the film by half, and it would be far more engrossing with less repetition. (Four editors!).

A tribal plot involving family and loss offers nothing new – and five people came up with this unremarkable story that seems to have recycled some familiar “Lion King” beats (Come on! “Circle of Life”? Really?).

The monotonous video-game like screenplay, by Cameron and the husband-and-wife team of Rick Jaffa and Amanda Silver, whose work includes “Jurassic World” and the “Planet of the Apes” reboots, has this smug self-important air, and lacks even a smidgeon of wit.

Even superhero movies in the Marvel Cinematic Universe have some chuckles, and I’ve seen cartoons that are far more entertaining. Why so serious?

While we weren’t exactly waiting for a sequel to the highest grossing film of all time, it’s been a long time in coming – 11 years. Since 2009, technology has created even more worlds of wonder, and real-world problems of climate change and political colonialism have been added for relevance.

“King of the World” Cameron has planned three more sequels, with principal photography already completed for “Avatar 3,” which may happen in 2024, and others expected in 2026 and 2028. Whether it will be a global phenomenon like the first remains to be seen, but if they are as insipid and interminable as this one, don’t bother.

With the wow factor, this sequel seems headed to only earn Academy Awards nominations in the technical fields. The original won Oscars for art direction, cinematography, and visual effects out of nine nominations. The intricate makeup and hair work is also award worthy.

If you can’t remember much of the first one, here’s the condensed version: It’s the 22nd century and humans are colonizing Pandora, a moon in the Alpha Centauri star system, because they want to mine unobtanium, a valuable mineral. That threatens a local tribe’s existence – the Na’vi is a humanoid species.

Here, an avatar is a genetically engineered Na’vi body operated from a human brain in a remote location, which interacts with the natives.  

Is this making your head hurt? Second one recaps how protagonist Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) fell in love with a Na’vi woman Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), and converted to that culture. They went on to live a blissful sparkly life and have four children – two boys and two girls.

Because he crossed the line, from being one of the military ‘sky people’ to a sympathetic outsider, his former Marine commander, Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), seeks revenge, but the motivation is murky. With a target on his back, Sully has endangered the Na’vi, and the Metkayina clan leader, Tonowari (Cliff Curtis), is not too happy about this turn of events. And neither is his snarling pregnant wife, Ronal (Kate Winslet). (Before you think, Kate Winslet is in this? It’s merely a voice-over).

Yet, an army of mighty warriors are ready to double-down, riding on some primordial-looking sea creatures. Only Quaritch has brought a force that look like the Na’vi. Good luck figuring out who are the good and bad guys, for it’s not always clear.

Clan leader Tonowari

The kids get in all sorts of scrapes, but telling them apart is tough, too, especially the two sons—Neteyam (Jamie Flatters) and Lo’ak (Britain Dalton). Kiri is the offspring of Sigourney Weaver, and they are her guardian. The youngest daughter named Tuk is designed to be the cute little charmer (Trinity Jo-Li Bliss). And then there is Miles, aka Spider (Jack Champion), a human who was left behind, and is like an adopted son.

Lots o’ macho posturing, women fretting, outsiders vs. natural-born, and kids being scolded for putting themselves in harm’s way. For three hours and 12 minutes, no intermission.

It is only epic is scope, not in any captivating way, for the imagination seems to have stopped at the art direction. Pretty pictures of ethereal thingamajigs floating in the water, and creatures plugging into energy sources that light them up for some reason are dazzling, so are the skies full of stars, and wavy tendrils that wrap themselves around various shapes, with different results.

Things blow up in spectacular fashion and gigantic whale-shark-looking hybrids, feared for their viciousness and sheer magnitude, wreak major havoc. The battle scenes, with Down Under-accented enemies, are well-executed – wait, did I just see New Zealand comic treasure Jemaine Clement?

With the avatars and Na’vi appearing so similar in looks and expressions, performances fail to register. The characters are one-note without much depth. Outstanding actress Edie Falco is wasted as a general and I’m not sure who ace character actress CCH Pounder plays.

New age-y dialogue is cringe-worthy, sounds like something from blacklight posters in the ‘70s. “The way of water connects all things. Before your birth, and after your death,” one son says. Whatever that means.

For all its posturing as an event film, “Avatar: The Way of Water” is unnecessary. It’s a gussied-up mash-up of ahead-of-his-time genius Jules Verne’s “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea” and “Journey to the Center of the Earth.” And I would like four hours of my life back.

Kiri, under water

“Avatar: The Way of Water” is a 2022 action fantasy film directed by James Cameron and starring Sam Worthington, Zoe Saldana, Stephen Lang, Sigourney Weaver, Cliff Curtis, Kate Winslet, CCH Pounder, Jack Champion, Britain Dalton, and Jamie Flatters. It is rated PG-13 for sequences of strong violence and intense action, partial nudity and some strong language and runtime is 192 minutes. It opens in theaters Dec. 16. Lynn’s Grade: C-.