ONLY TEN DAYS UNTIL SCI-FI SHENANIGANS!

Geekgasm moment: Rick and Morty meet Dungeons & Dragons onscreen!

Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)

Honestly, it's next to impossible to summarise what's going on in the mind-bending Everything Everywhere All At Once without attempting to spell out every single moment of this gorgeously crafted movie.

Michelle Yeoh is Evelyn Wang, a middle-aged Chinese immigrant buckling under the pressure of running a launderette, filing her taxes, and coping with family drama.

Unbeknownst to her, her gentle husband Waymond Wang (Ke Huy Quan) wants to divorce her, but first they must report to the Internal Revenue Service for an audit by the officious Deirdre Beaubeirdre (Jamie Lee Curtis).

However, that's also when Evelyn unexpectedly learns of the existence of the multiverse and the fact that she's the only hope for saving all of reality from erasure... by drawing upon the unique skills of other versions of herself from across the infinite planes of existence.

Written and directed by Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert (as Daniels), Everything Everywhere All At Once is simultaneously unlike anything you've seen before and yet comfortably familiar to genre fans.

Superficially it is The Matrix meets Doctor Strange In The Multiverse of Madness with a shot of Rick and Morty thrown in for good measure.

But mix in talking rocks and apocalyptic bagels amidst the frenetic wuxia martial arts and reality-bending and suddenly Everything Everywhere All At Once is also a cerebral art house flick as well.

Once the action begins, it's pretty much non-stop (I couldn't help but be reminded of Mad Max: Fury Road in that respect) with a visual assault of chaotic images that often comes at you faster than your brain can process, almost certainly necessitating a repeat viewing.

Yet, for all the cosmic, existential, threats, at its heart this is a film about family, handled in a way that rings true without getting overly mushy.

Ultimately, though, no mere words can do it justice. Everything Everywhere All At Once is a film that has been to seen - experienced - rather than read about.

Clear Your Schedule! New Rick and Morty Is Almost Here!

My Favourite Rick and Morty Quote About RPGs

"Rick is a power gamer. He plays D&D like it’s a maths problem. Like it’s a race he’s trying to win. Me? I don’t need to be the smartest wizard. I’d rather play someone brave, clever and charming. Someone interesting… someone who always knows the right thing to do. That’s the beauty of D&D. Sometimes it’s nice to pretend you’re someone different for a little while…"

- Jerry, from Rick and Morty vs Dungeons & Dragons Part III: Reality Bites (for 3d6+1)
by Patrick Rothfuss & Jim Zub (2018)

The sentiment, of course, applies to all roleplaying games, it's just that Dungeons & Dragons is ubiquitous and has a recognition factor with the general - comic book reading - public that other games probably don't.

Check In To Netflix's Haunted Hotel This Friday

After inheriting a hotel from her late brother, a single mom moves in with his good-natured ghost — and high-maintenance guests who will never check out.

What if The Shining was a comedy from the mind of Matt Roller, a former Rick and Morty story editor? Season one of the Haunted Hotel manifests itself on Netflix this Friday (September 19).

Vivarium (2019)

Given the weakness of the the most recent series of the Twilight Zone (I must confess I've only managed about half the episodes), I'm reticent to make the comparison, but Vivarium is a classic Twilight Zone-style story.

Young couple Gemma (Imogen Poots) and Tom (Jesse Eisenberg) are looking to buy a starter home and are taken by a strange estate agent, Martin (Jonathan Aris), to an out-of-town development of identical homes on identical streets.

Martin leaves while the couple are looking around Number Nine... and suddenly they discover there's no way out of the, otherwise unpopulated, estate.

Wherever they go, they end up back at Number Nine.

Then a parcel is left for them: containing a baby, with a note telling them to raise the child and they will be set free.

Time passes; bland, tasteless food is left for them and their rubbish is taken away by unseen hands.

The couple are trapped there for days, weeks, months, and the baby blossoms into a creepy young boy (Senan Jennings), with an oddly deep voice and a habit of screaming like a banshee if he doesn't get what he wants.

If the static clouds in the perfect sky don't give it away, the clue is in the title, as they say.

Segueing swiftly from a dream-like idyll to nightmare fuel, Vivarium follows Tom and Gemma's life as they try to figure out what is going on, while coping with the demands of a freakish cuckoo in their familial nest.

With all the hints that are dropped along the way, there is only really one explanation for the goings-on that makes sense, but the script takes the bold step - given that it is so clear to anyone versed in this kind of weird storytelling - of not actually spelling it out.

Which is probably quite frustrating for the casual viewer.

But, in all honesty, Vivarium isn't a film I could imagine many casual viewers opting for.

However, for those of us that love this style of obtuse, almost surreal, art house, paranormal mystery and psychological horror, it is magnificent.

Twisting the conceit of nightmarish, suburban conformity way past its logical ends, Vivarium is a British spin on '50s American sci-fi horror mixed in with an almost live-action Rick and Morty level of stark brutality about the unfolding events (I was reminded of one episode in particular from the first season, but I can say no more as it would give away a bit too much!)

The performances, across the board, are mightily impressive - as we would have expected from Poots and Eisenberg - with Senan Jennings' turn as the strange child being memorably unnerving and peculiar.

After a single viewing, I have to say I have already become rather a champion for this little gem, written by Garret Shanley who shares credit for the story with director Lorcan Finnegan.

I know Vivarium will only appeal to a small percentage of the movie-watching audience, but for me I was hanging on every clue that our protagonists acquired about their "captors", trying to piece together my own ideas of who was "on the other side of the glass".