HE commenter Mike Shea: “Die, My Love definitely feels like a new subgenre: the tired, frazzled, going-insane, new mother experience. I thought Amy Adams was great in Nightbitch even as the story chickened out by the end. There was last month’s If I Had Legs I’d Kick You. There was also Jason Reitman‘s Tully. And now this.”
In this Die, MyLovecorner, N.Y.Times film critic Alissa Wilkinson. On the ring’s opposing side, Hollywood Elsewhere’s Fearless Fosdick…Jeffrey Wells, I mean.
Sepia-amber tint vs. stark black-and-white.
In essence, the alleged joys of sisterly solidarity and mad Lawrentian immersion vs. instinctual lemme-outta-here plus an honest, elemental fear of being chomped down on.
My “Die, Yuppie Scum” T-shirt was still considered timely apparel when this snap was taken in the spring or early summer of ‘90. “Yuppie” had been a curse word for a good four or five years. A few months earlier Mike Figgis’s InternalAffairs openedtheatrically. Inthefinalscene Richard Gere’s Peck, a corrupt cop, angrily taunts Andy Garcia’s Raymond Avila by calling him a “fucking yuppie.”
Jett was nearly two; Dylan was five or six months old.
…and tripping on LSD is not what anyone who knows anything would call a “stoned” excursion — it’s more like the intoxication of sailing clear-headed on the Long Island Sound under marmalade skies.
And I think Grant stopped tripping when his daughter Jennifer came along in ‘66.
At the 1957 Oscars Grant accepted Ingrid Bergman’s Best Actress Oscar (Anastasia) on her behalf.
“And therefore, being completely post-partum-depressed and hating my dreary motherhood existence and unable to generate any further interest in writing, I am lock-and-load determined to descend into feral madness as well as drag my husband and the audience down into the very same hell-pit….aaaagggghhh!”
HE to JLaw’s “Grace”: “You’re deeply unlikable, as in spitty, sputtering, hell-bent, self-loathing…Jesus.
“If I was in RPatz’s shoes I wouldn’t want to fuck you either. Hell, I wouldn’t even want to receive oral pleasuring from you because you’re in a crazy enough space to abruptly bite into Mr. Happy…I would honestly be afraid of you drawing blood or leaving teeth marks.”
“While I respected Lynne Ramsay‘s Die, My Love and what it was on about (i.e., “aaagggghhh!”), the Debussy journos didn’t go for it. Too grim, too downish in a one-note sense, no plot pivots of any kind….just a downward swirl into the gathering storm of Jennifer Lawrence‘s postpartum derangement….down, down, down.
“Then again it’s presented in 1.37…boxy is beautiful, bruh.
“What is Die My Love really about?
“Just as Alfred Hitchcock‘s The Birds wasn’t so much a restrained horror film about malicious winged demons as an indictment of social complacency, Die, My Love isn’t so much about JLaw’s descent into self-destructive madness as a portrayal of the dull horror of doing almost nothing with your life while caring for a child…an indictment of middle-class, stay-at-home-and-burp-the-baby-while-baking-cookies momism.”
Well, guess what? HE loves the idea of sitting through a two-and-a half-hour Oscar bait flick from that electric season of George Bush-vs.-Michael Dukakis-vs.-Willie Horton-vs.Lee Atwater. I really like “competent and watchable”!!
And yet Sony Pictures Classics, the film’s distributor, has been playing a little bit of “hide the ball” as far as screenings and streaming access is concerned. We all know what that means.
Ironic “Nuremberg” Nudge to MAGA Slowboats: “You can reclaim your former glory.”
From Owen Gleiberman’s 9.7 review: “Written and directed by James Vanderbilt, Nuremberg presents itself as lavishly somber and important and includes several not-so-veiled references to the rise of intolerance, and the need to maintain international standards of justice, in the world today.
“But competent and watchable as it is, Nuremberg isn’t big on psychological tension or insight. As Herman Goring, Russell Crowe acts with consummate command even as Göring, by design, keeps the audience at arm’s length. But Rami Malek‘s Lieutenant Colonel Douglas Kelley brings a weird insecurity; along the way, his Kelley almost seems to forget what his job is.”
I distinctly recall being taught in my teens that the central character’s last name was spelled Goering. (The Wiki page confirms this.) So what is this “Goring” shit?
After last night’s anti-Trump blowout, Democrats with political aspirations coast to coast now absolutely understand two things:
(1) The way to further winning is to run on average-guy affordability issues, which is to say mimic Zohran Mamdani‘s campaign minus the free buses (because we don’t want any smelly, urine-stained bums riding the buses in the afternoons and early evenings); and…
(2) Totally abandon woke identity politics in all its forms, and that especially means throwing the trans issue (including gender-affirming care) under the bus. Just dump that identity shit while embracing affordability issues…simple.
I love (a) Mamdani’s quick mind and smile, (b) his considerable rhetorical skills, (c) the fact that he had the balls to mention Eugene Debs and Fiorello LaGuardia last night (I 100% guarantee that the vast majority of Millennials and Zoomers who voted for Zohran have NEVER HEARD of Debs or LaGuardia), and (d) the fact that he’s a couple of years younger than my two owns, Jett and Dylan.
On top of which the once young and matinee-idol handsome Brendan Fraser turns 58 on 12.3.25. Costar Rachel Weisz celebrated her 55th last March.
No one’s advocating for size or age discrimination here, but traditions are traditions.
The only girthy-protagonist-vs.-monster precedent is LouCostello in those goofball Abbott-and-Costello horror japes. HE’s favorites are (a) Hold That Ghost! (‘41) and (b) Abbott and Costello Meet The Mummy (‘55). But Mummy Costello was ten years younger (48) than Fraser.
Friedman to HE (received at 6:54 pm eastern): “I don’t know how you came upon the unlisted link to our Woody Allen interview. It was not yours to publish. We’re always grateful for publicity, but the piece was not finished. It’s been removed and will launch soon properly. I’m disappointed that you didn’t contact me before posting it. Just so there’s no question, Woody loves the interview. It’s our decision to launch it properly.”
Friendo: “Right now Sentimental Value is one of the most profound arguments against AI. Whatever you may feel about Chat GPT 5, Grok 4, Claude 4.5, Deepseek R1 and Gemini 2.0, they can’t replicate what Sentimental Value holds and nurtures and quietly delivers in a couple of hundred different ways.”
I’ll finally be seeing Joachim Trier‘s film again tomorrow night (Wednesday at 7:15 pm)…my first and only previous viewing was six months ago in Cannes.
Am I sorry that director-cowriter Trier didn’t write a role for an obese, wheelchaired LGBTQ-of-color character? Or that he didn’t least insert a South Korean maid who gets stuck in a heavy rainstorm while shopping? Am I sorry that he decided against making Stellan Skarsgard‘s paterfamilias into a late-blooming homosexual (like Chris Plummer in Beginners)? Yes, I’m sorry for this…all of it. Because Sentimental Value would have a much better chance of taking the Best Picture Oscar if he’d constructed his film with a nice, diverse Wicked: For Good attitude.
Too many white Norweigans = definite Academy issues.
