One Battle After Another movie review

 

I saw the trailer, the posters, and the wildly positive reviews from nearly all the most known movie critics. Long and short of it, I wanted to anyways, but seeing the critical reception I thought best to go to the cinema and see the latest Paul Thomas Anderson movie One Battle After Another, featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, as soon as possible, before I heard too much about the movie. 

The trailer was confusing to me. It seemed like some kind of gonzo revolution story with a lost and haggard looking man, Leonardo Di Caprio as the main protagonist, possibly fighting The Man, capital M. Difficult to get much else than that general vibe, though it certainly sounded intriguing to me. 

I don't particularly enjoy spoilers so this review won't contain any, I won't even go into much more of the actual storyline or events unfolding. I am pretty much as enthusiastic as most of the positive critics reviews, and recommend you watch it and make up your own mind. It's probably the best movie I've seen at the cinema this year. The one I saw before was Ari Aster's Eddington that I didn't write or post about, and funny enough while different I feel there are similarities. They both take place in mostly remote places in the United States southwest near the Mexican border, for example. There's more, but some of the landscapes are similar, at the very least. The photography is gorgeous.

One Battle After Another's vibe feels both gonzo and alternate enough that one wonders if this is meant to be a slightly different parallel universe, or a slightly secret or fictional layer to our own. Themes are similar enough to our world that I'm tempted to go with the second option, though they're arguably similar enough to maybe not matter. One way or another it mirrors struggles related to inequalities and the concentration of power and money. The movie is also frantic, with enough slow and tense scenes for the faster paced ones to shine.

Both famous and lesser known actors are fantastic. Teyana Taylor, Sean Penn, and Benicio Del Toro play characters I feel are very anchored in their own factions and worldviews, while Leonardo DiCaprio's Bob quickly feels like a pinball being shot from one side of the board to the other with little agency of his own.

I loved it, but some might think it is a little long, an affliction of many movies these days. And the gonzo level might not be to everyone's liking. I enjoyed the chaotic ride, but without going into much detail, some might think it is a bit lacking in consistency. There is a little bit of "what did I just watch?" feeling at the end, though arguably less than for Eddington – for me at least.

Invitation to a Banquet: The Story of Chinese Food book review

 

I invited a group of ten friends to have a big Chinese Sichuan Sunday lunch for my birthday this past summer, as a result one of my friends who had heard of this book got it as a gift for the occasion. I absolutely loved it; one of my favourite reads in a while. This is just to preface that I'm completely biased: if the title sounds even remotely interesting, you can stop now and just go buy it. Suffice to say I highly recommend reading it

Invitation to a Banquet by Fuchsia Dunlop is an expertly and lovingly cooked non-fiction book blending the author's personal experiences of eating and cooking Chinese food, with a sweeping cultural and historical account of food in China. 

I've been enchanted with the structure of the book, organised in four sections titled hearth, farm, kitchen, and table. Every chapter is like zooming in a kaleidoscope called "Chinese food," representing an essential ingredient or component to explore for the reader. Every chapter is also like a snowflake, uniquely different yet broadly following the same structure: a personal story, a time and place, a dish to illustrate the aspect being examined (may it be about rice, roasting with fire, or a mind-boggling extensive vocabulary of cooking techniques), along with historical and cultural references.

Fuchsia Dunlop's writing is as delightful as it is mouth-watering. I've had the chance of traveling in mainland China twice (and Hong Kong a couple more times) but it was already a long time ago now. Reading, I was fondly reminded of some of my best food and travel memories. I want to learn to cook more of these dishes now, and I'd love to go back, see more of China, and eat at the Dragon Well Manor restaurant one day.

The academic and professional cooking references and stories are compelling. The chapter titled "The Power of Steam" opens with the author mentioning "the Banpo village near Xi'an, one of China's most important Neolithic archeological sites." A little further she adds: "More than six thousand years ago, at the very dawn of the Chinese civilisation, people here were already using steamers to cook their food." A page later, she references a paragraph from a writer who travelled to Beijing in 1793 and who didn't seem too happy with steamed bread. I added several other books from the same author, and from the bibliography, to my reading list. 

I believe, and it is pretty much stated, that the intention is to give readers an appreciation of the richness and sophistication of Chinese food culture in all its possible forms over time. As a result, I went out to order and eat several of the dishes I was reading about, classics I love like Sichuan Mapo Tofu or Yuxiang "fish fragrant" aubergines. I prepared a quick and simple broth for lunch before writing this. I stopped at the Asian grocery shop on the way back from the gym, to add ready-made pork dumplings, pak choi (bok choy) that I quickly cut and blanched, some carrots slices I had in the fridge, topped it all with chopped scallion and a dash of sesame oil. Bon appétit!