Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

How did this movie ever get made? I have no idea, but I'm so glad it did.

The Daniels follow up their breakout film, the wildly inventive Swiss Army Man, with a movie that is not bound to a single place and time, and simply exists on its own terms. A laundromat owner gets caught up in the multiverse while attempting to do her taxes. What follows is a mind-bending journey into the unknown, which borrows liberally from martial arts movies, slapstick comedies, Marvel superheroes, Pixar, anime, Wong Kar-wai, Fight Club and The Matrix. One of the most fiercely original, beautiful, contemplative, wacky, irreverent, soul-purifying and consciousness-expanding movies I've ever seen. Not only the best to come out of 2022, but also of the past five years. 

Have I managed to do this film justice? Not even close.

6 googily eyes out of 6 (in the universe where 6-nutters exist)

SWISS ARMY MAN [2016]

Writer/directors Dan Kwan & Daniel Scheinert produce the most beautifully bizarre film of the year with the wilderness buddy drama Swiss Army Man.
A suicidal man stranded on a desert island discovers a body washed ashore, that develops the power of speech (and flatulence) which helps him see his problems with a great deal more clarity.
With such a simple story, it's astonishing just how much is going on here that at times is hilarious, tragic, heart-wrenching, hopeful and "fuckin' crazy".  With each of it's main stars fully committed to the outlandish scenarios they're given to play in, the film is graced with a bizarre dreamy realism that acts as if it were Charlie Kaufman directing his own version of Weekend at Bernie's.  When all is said and done, the film has all sorts of functions and purpose but you're oddly unsure yet ultimately satisfied with what you collected from it.

4 bus rides out of 5