Since her breakout into the mainstream last year for her scorched-Earth set on “The Roast of Tom Brady” and a top-notch comedy special “Someday You’ll Die,” Nikki Glaser has become an A-lister in the stand-up comedy world. But did that success translate for her first time as “Saturday Night Live” host?

Not too surprisingly, Glaser did well given that her best qualifications for the gig are that she’s very good at delivering jokes for a living and that she’s not shy about pushing the boundaries of taste in her comedy. That’s a good fit for the current incarnation of “SNL,” which tends to have at least one gross-out scatological sketch per episode and lots of “Weekend Update” segments and jokes that either land in the “just dirty enough” or “way over the line” camp.

Apart from her go-for-broke monologue, Glaser’s sensibility locked in on sketches including one about family members performing karaoke who seem way too intimate with each other, a commercial about grown men obsessed with life-sized American Girl dolls, and a bizarre musical number about a mechanical bull that rides away with Glaser and Sarah Sherman. These, along with a funny ad for a Jennifer Hudson spirit tunnel drug and one about characters in a children’s book, were pieces that aligned well with what Glaser does and that she performed exceptionally well.

A sketch about a stalled plane and a chatty pilot (James Austin Johnson) was good, but only because of Johnson’s perfect impression of flight intercom chatter.

Less successful were a half-baked mashup, “Beauty and Mr. Beast,” about the popular YouTuber, and a sorority sketch with Mikey Day as an interloping man wearing a bad facial disguise.

Glaser’s lengthy monologue may not have been as perfect a fit as it should have been, but her sketch performances were spot-on.

Musical guest Sombr performed “12 to 12” and “Back to Friends.” There was also a sweet and funny animated short, “Brad and His Dad,” about a divorced father trying to connect with his video game-obsessed 11-year-old.

In this week’s cold open, President Trump (James Austin Johnson) commented on the bizarre White House incident where a pharmaceutical representative (Jeremy Culhane) collapsed in the Oval Office while Trump was captured on camera looking away. As Trump put it in the sketch, “Someone dying in my office, I stand there and stare like a sociopath.” “Each week I try to create a visual,” he said, that represents what’s going on in the country like last week’s White House demolition. Trump walked over the fallen man to deliver a monologue on the week’s events, starting with the New York City mayoral election and concluding with SNAP benefit cuts and rising food prices. He offered that the cancellation of flights caused by the government shutdown will help by keeping families apart for Thanksgiving. “Killing two birds with one bird. Can’t afford food? Have some cheap Ozempic,” he said. Next up: stealing Christmas. “We’re doing Grinch!” Trump said.

Like a lot of “SNL” monologues from stand-up comics, Glaser’s was a microdose of her comedy act. As such, it was full of jokes about race, politics, sex acts and, for one uncomfortable stretch, the idea that someone (not Glaser, but maybe!) might suddenly realize they’re a pedophile. Glaser began by calling New York City “Epstein’s original island” before discussing white women being cultural appropriators by spray tanning, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (“I’m no health expert, but neither is he”), dating a short man with anger issues and PSAs in public bathrooms about human trafficking. In her 20s, Glaser joked, the only fear she had was “good old-fashioned rape.” The barrage of jokes was exactly what you expect from Glaser, but some of the jokes didn’t seem to land as well on the “SNL” stage as they typically would on roasts or in her own comedy specials.

Best sketch of the night: When declining a Jennifer Hudson spirit tunnel invite is the only option

“The Jennifer Hudson Show’s” signature bit, in which guests dance through a hallway while staffers clap and cheer them on, has become such a big deal that celebrities like Glaser, playing herself in this commercial, have major anxiety about their dancing. Glaser, a self-described “uncoordinated white woman” claims her dance moves are so bad they’re potentially career-ending. “I even tried to put my ass into it. But I don’t have one,” she laments. But luckily there’s a drug, Hudsacillin, that makes you so violently ill that the celebrity in question has to cancel their appearance. “What’s the alternative?” the ad asks, “lightening up and being fun?”

Also good: Maybe this pilot shouldn’t be texting, even on the tarmac

Advertisement

With all the flight delays and cancellations happening, this topical sketch was about a couple (Sherman and Andrew Dismukes) sitting on an airport runway waiting for their flight to take off while their pilot (Johnson) announces delays and also shares updates about a woman he’s texting that he met on a dating app. What really sells the piece is Johnson’s delivery as the pilot, but also the funny interactions he has with the co-pilot (Kam Patterson), Glaser as the disaffected flight attendant and a set of passengers who argue nonverbally about whether or not to get involved (Kenan Thompson and Bowen Yang).

‘Weekend Update’ winner: A way to visit Staten Island without going to Staten Island

As the only guest segment on “Weekend Update” this week, Pete Davidson’s check-in on the Staten Island Ferry he purchased a few years ago with Colin Jost wins by default. Davidson referenced a New York Times article about trouble with their business venture, but said, “I cant spend $5 on a paywall when I have a kid on the way.” He promised to give parenting, “all the enthusiasm I never had for this show.” Davidson revealed that the new plan for the ferry is to convert it to a city on the water, New Staten Island, with all the things that make Staten Island great: pizza (it turns out it’s just one thing). Davidson couldn’t resist getting in a dig at his old boss after saying he’s not giving up on the ferry. “If Lorne Michaels has taught us anything, it’s never give up even if everyone says the time has come and Tina Fey is ready to take over.”

Die My Love Movie Review

Lynne Ramsay’s Die My Love is not a film designed for comfort. It arrives with the intensity of a fever dream and the jagged edges of a raw nerve, refusing to offer easy answers or tidy resolutions to the existential nightmare unfolding on screen.

This is film as immersion therapy, plunging viewers headfirst into the psychological disintegration of Grace, a young mother trapped in rural Montana whose grip on reality splinters with each passing day. At countless points through this film, I found myself questioning my own sanity and wondering what was actually happening. Was it real? Was it a metaphor? Or was it a dream or a hallucination? Honestly, by the end, I was asking those same questions about the film as a whole.

What’s Die My Love About?

Based on Ariana Harwicz’s 2012 novel, “Die My Love follows Grace (Jennifer Lawrence) and Jackson (Robert Pattinson), a couple who relocate from New York City to Jackson’s inherited family home in the Montana wilderness. What begins as an idyllic escape quickly transforms into something far more sinister. After the birth of their child, Grace descends into severe postpartum depression that morphs into full psychosis, her sense of self eroding as the walls close in around her.

The movie takes us through Grace’s increasingly disturbing behavior: crawling through tall grass with a butcher knife, throwing herself through glass doors, tearing sinks from bathroom walls, and engaging in primal acts of desperation that blur the line between sexuality and violence.

The film’s structure deliberately disorients. Time becomes elastic and ambiguous, with scenes unfolding in a non-linear fashion that mirrors Grace’s fractured mental state. We see glimpses of Grace and Jackson’s passionate early days in their relationship juxtaposed against the numbing monotony of new parenthood.

Jackson’s mother, Pam (Sissy Spacek), lives nearby and struggles with her own tenuous grip on reality following the recent death of her husband, Harry (Nick Nolte). There’s also Karl (LaKeith Stanfield), another new parent who may or may not be real, existing somewhere in the liminal space between Grace’s imagination and actual encounters.

Die My Love Movie Trailer

Die My Love Movie Review: What I Did and Didn’t Like

Shot on 35mm film in a claustrophobic 4:3 aspect ratio, the film traps audiences in Grace’s perspective. Even when she roams through vast Montana landscapes, there’s no escape. Cinematographer Seamus McGarvey utilized Kodak Ektachrome reversal stock to create a skewed, almost dreamlike visual signature that enhances the film’s disorienting quality. The result is a viewing experience that feels suffocating and overwhelming, mirroring the protagonist’s psychological imprisonment.

But what really made Die My Love so compelling, and simultaneously so maddening (for me), is its refusal to conform to traditional narrative structures. Ramsay has created a mood piece that prioritizes emotional truth over plot mechanics, and the results are both mesmerizing and exasperating. The film succeeds brilliantly in making you feel Grace’s isolation and desperation. The use of that boxy 4:3 frame constantly reminds us that Grace is trapped, no matter how much open space surrounds her.

The dark humor threaded throughout is unexpected and effective. Grace’s interactions with the people in her life carry an absurdist quality that prevents the film from becoming oppressively bleak. When Jackson brings home an incessantly barking dog expecting Grace to care for it while he travels for work, the scene plays as both tragedy and dark comedy. Lawrence’s commitment to these moments of black humor gives them an uncomfortable authenticity.

The Script

Working from a screenplay she co-wrote with playwrights Enda Walsh and Alice Birch, Ramsay transforms Harwicz’s internal monologue into a predominantly visual experience. The novel is written in a stream-of-consciousness style, filled with poisonous thoughts and maternal ambivalence, but Ramsay wisely avoids leaning too heavily on voiceover or dialogue-heavy exposition. Instead, the script relies on physicality and behavior to convey Grace’s psychological state.

The screenplay’s greatest strength lies in its resistance to easy categorization or diagnosis. Grace is never explicitly diagnosed with postpartum depression or psychosis. There are no scenes with doctors prescribing medication or family interventions with clear treatment plans. This omission is deliberate. Director Lynne Ramsay pushed back against critics who labeled the film simply as a postpartum depression story, stating at Cannes: “This whole postpartum thing is just bullshit. It’s not about that. It’s about a relationship breaking down, it’s about love breaking down, and sex breaking down after having a baby. And it’s also about a creative block.”

The script explores how Grace’s identity as a writer has been subsumed by motherhood, how sexual intimacy transforms (or disappears) after childbirth, and how isolation can accelerate mental decline. Grace’s struggles become universal even as they manifest in extreme, specific ways.

A Complicated Service to Maternal Mental Health?

Yet this ambiguity raises questions about the film’s service to those dealing with postpartum depression. Does Die My Love do justice to this experience?

The answer is complicated. On one hand, the film’s unflinching portrayal of maternal ambivalence and psychological suffering gives voice to feelings many new mothers experience but fear acknowledging. The shame, the isolation, the sense of losing yourself while everyone expects you to be grateful and fulfilled… these emotional truths resonate powerfully.

Lawrence herself, who experienced postpartum depression after filming, noted in interviews that watching the film helped her understand Grace’s mindset: “I hadn’t experienced postpartum while filming, but I knew that suicide is a leading cause of death among new moms. I couldn’t understand how she could do that because I loved my baby so much. But once I experienced postpartum, I realized it has nothing to do with love; it’s about feeling imperfect next to something so perfect.”

On the other hand, by refusing to name Grace’s condition or explicitly show her receiving help, the film risks leaving viewers without resources or hope. And, while artistically bold, the ending (don’t worry, no spoilers here), may not offer much solace to those seeking affirmation that recovery is possible.

Ramsay’s comments about the film’s metaphorical nature suggest she views Grace’s self-destruction as a kind of liberation. Speaking about the ending (again, trust me, no spoilers), she explained: “I was trying my hardest. It’s not in the book. I just felt like she wants to burn the world down. It’s a metaphorical liberation.”

This framing positions the film more as a Gothic tale about a woman who refuses to be domesticated. Whether this artistic choice serves or undermines the understanding of postpartum mental health issues remains an open question….

The Performances

Jennifer Lawrence as Grace

The performances in Die My Love are without question the film’s strongest element. Jennifer Lawrence delivers what is arguably the most challenging and uncompromising work of her career. This is not the charismatic, accessible Lawrence of The Hunger Games or Silver Linings Playbook. This is something feral, raw, and completely untethered. She filmed many of these scenes while four-and-a-half months pregnant with her second child, adding an extraordinary physical and emotional layer to an already demanding role.

Lawrence’s Grace is simultaneously seductive and repellent, maternal and destructive, vulnerable and terrifying. She shifts from catatonic emptiness to explosive rage within single takes, her body language morphing from predatory crawling to collapsed exhaustion.

The physicality of the performance is stunning. Whether she’s scratching bathroom walls until her nails bleed, climbing inside a refrigerator, or prowling on all fours through grass like an animal stalking prey, Lawrence commits completely. There’s no vanity here, no concern for likability or traditional markers of movie-star glamour. She embodies Grace’s dissolution with a freedom that feels almost dangerous to watch.

Critics have already begun discussing Oscar potential for Lawrence’s performance, which would be her fifth nomination. The comparison to her work in 2017’s Mother! is inevitable, but this feels even more visceral and unprotected. 

Robert Pattinson as Jackson

Robert Pattinson wisely portrays Jackson in a deliberately understated manner, creating a stark contrast to Lawrence’s volcanic performance. His Jackson is not a villain, but rather a well-meaning man completely out of his depth. Pattinson channels an everyman quality, portraying a thirty-something man-child who brings home a dog, expecting his struggling wife to care for it, and suggests his wife “talk” about her feelings, while fundamentally not understanding the severity of her crisis.

The performance is effective precisely because Jackson’s ordinariness makes Grace’s extraordinary suffering more isolating. Pattinson and Lawrence share genuine chemistry, particularly in the film’s opening sequences, where they communicate through physicality rather than words, nuzzling, biting, wrestling in primal displays of desire.

The Supporting Cast

Sissy Spacek delivers a quietly powerful performance as Pam, Jackson’s widowed mother, who recognizes something of her own struggles in Grace’s unraveling. Spacek brings maternal warmth tinged with her own grief and instability, sleepwalking with a gun in scenes that blur the line between dark comedy and genuine menace. Her scenes with Lawrence crackle with understanding, two women adrift in their own ways, connected by shared loss and dislocation. 

LaKeith Stanfield’s Karl exists in an ethereal space that keeps audiences guessing whether he’s real or a figment of Grace’s imagination. His understated performance adds to this ambiguity, making his interactions with Grace feel simultaneously grounded and dreamlike. The film never definitively confirms Karl’s reality, leaving viewers to question how many of his scenes actually happened versus whether they exist purely in Grace’s fractured psyche (one of my many ‘what the heck is going on’ moments…).

Overall Thoughts

Die My Love is not for everyone, and it doesn’t pretend to be. Ramsay has crafted a film that exists in the space between arthouse provocation and genuine psychological horror, borrowing techniques from Antonin Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty to break down the barriers that keep audiences feeling safe.

The film works best when understood not as a straightforward narrative but as a sensory experience designed to replicate Grace’s mental state. The aggressive sound design, with blaring rock music and deafening slams that assault the ears… the claustrophobic framing that traps characters in doorways and corners… the time distortions that make it impossible to track how much time has passed… all of these choices serve to destabilize viewers in ways that mirror the protagonist’s experience. When you emerge from Die My Love, you should feel like you’ve been through something, like you’ve barely survived tumultuous rapids. That’s the point.

But does that make a good film? The question of whether this movie serves those experiencing postpartum depression remains complex. It offers validation for dark feelings rarely depicted on screen, but it also provides no roadmap for recovery or healing. Grace’s story ends in metaphorical immolation, and while Ramsay intends this as liberation rather than tragedy, the distinction may be lost on viewers seeking hope.

Perhaps the film’s greatest service is simply its willingness to depict maternal struggle without sentimentality or easy resolution, to show that sometimes love isn’t enough to fix what’s broken, and that the societal pressure to perform gratitude for motherhood can itself become suffocating.

However, this one just didn’t work for me – despite the beautiful cinematography and incredible performances.

Die For Me Movie Review: Final Grade

Grade: C-

Sarah Paulson appears to be having a blast in Ryan Murphy’s new Hulu “legal” drama “All’s Fair,” and that’s about the only good thing about the show.

The New York Times recently ran a piece extolling its reimagining of the power suit (down to at least one visible thong) and I suppose that’s one way of avoiding the obvious. Still, I’m going to stick with Paulson’s obvious glee in playing a villain. Her Carrington Lane was left behind to fester in the comic-book sexism of a male-dominated divorce law firm when two of her colleagues stalked away to form an all-female team and Carrington is not one to surrender a grudge.

It’s impossible not to like Paulson and she is clearly enjoying the opportunity to glare and hiss and indulge in the kind of gross but creative profanity Melissa McCarthy likes to unleash when her characters hit the brink.

As for the rest … well, let’s just say with “All’s Fair,” American culture is getting exactly what it deserves: A series that wallows in the shiny, knockoff-ready trappings of new money (immaculate and soulless homes, private jets, diamonds the size of a Rubik’s Cube), defines “sisterhood” as the belief that any personal crisis can be alleviated by vaginal rejuvenation combined with a girls’ trip to a jewelry auction and gauges power by the ability to plot and take revenge. Preferably in the form of huge amounts of money.

“All’s Fair” may or may not be, as some have said, the worst show of the year (or possibly of all time), but with its celebration of the 1%, personal feuds and financial vengeance, it is certainly the first to truly embody the culture of the Trump presidency.

Down to the reality star at its center. “All’s Fair” gives top billing not to any of the fine and seasoned actors that star — Paulson, Niecy Nash, Naomi Watts, Glenn Close — but to Kim Kardashian, who plays Allura Grant, head of the law firm Grant, Ronson and Greene.

That Kardashian (and Kris Jenner, who serves as a producer) were able to summon such forces of the galaxy to showcase her, shall we say, limited thespian abilities could be justifiably viewed as yet another “you go, girl” testament to her seemingly limitless business acumen.

On the other hand, “All’s Fair” makes the dismal final season of “And Just Like That” look like Chekhov.

Murphy, and the forces at Disney, which owns Hulu, the home of “The Kardashians,” understand Kardashian’s cult-like following and are operating under the assumption that viewers will be so entranced by her and the fashions (which include an alarming amount of hats, capes and gloves) that they won’t notice that the main player is relying on her eyelash extensions to do her acting for her.

To be fair to Kardashian, few nonprofessional actors would shine beside scene partners like Close, Watts and Nash, and the writing of the series, which flirts with camp but never fully commits, does no one any favors.

Not since “Charlie’s Angels” has there been a “feminist fantasy” with such a male gaze. (Apologies to “Charlie’s Angels,” which was in many ways a groundbreaking show.)

After suffering on the sidelines of a mostly male law firm, Allura and Liberty Ronson (Watts) decide to branch out on their own. They do so with the blessing of Dina Standish (Close), that firm’s only female partner, and take with them ace investigator Emerald Greene (Nash). When we meet them again, 10 years later, Allura also has an assistant/mentee in Milan (Teyana Taylor), who later provides a predictable plot twist.

The names alone suggest a level of parody, and, in the first episode, a send-up quality flits in and out of the proceedings, but the show chooses cynicism over satire every time.

Instead of sexist jokes, the partners of Grant, Ronson and Greene spend much of their time discussing how awful men are, with the possible exception of Liberty’s beau, Reggie (“The Handmaid’s Tale’s” O-T Fagbenle), and Standish’s ailing husband, Doug (Ed O’Neill).

That is, after all, the raison d’etre of the firm: Grant, Ronson and Greene are intent on protecting rich women from the perils of the prenup and generally making the bastards pay, sometimes through their “superior” knowledge of the law (in one storyline, this involves explaining that gifts are the sole property of the recipient, which even I knew), but more often blackmail (if you have chosen to live your life without ever seeing a butt plug the size of a traffic cone, keep your eyes shut when Emerald starts her slideshow).

A brief, and seemingly contractually required, mention of the firm raising money to help the underprivileged is laughable — “All’s Fair” is 100% après-moi television, in which extreme wealth is presented as too normal to even be aspirational, and any work not done by Emerald consists of sashaying in super slick shades from one successful throwdown to the next. With brief interludes in sumptuous cars and, as previously mentioned, overbidding on hideous brooches at a high-end jewelry auction (held by a firm client, which honestly seems potentially unethical, but whatevs).

If the dialogue were sharp, funny or even self-aware, Murphy and his team might get away with it, but it’s not — “It’s a shame your mother didn’t swallow,” Dina tells Carrington in what passes as proof that women can be as tough as men. Or that older women can talk trash. Or that Close will do her best to give a decent reading of any line. Or something.

There are brief nods to the women’s personal lives — as a divorce lawyer, Liberty is reluctant to marry Reggie, Dina is struggling with Doug’s decline, Emerald is a super-single mom — but it all feels very box-ticky. Including Allura’s disintegrating marriage, which becomes a major plot point as the gals gather round to make that bastard pay as well, and her realization that if she wants to become a mother, she’s running out of time.

Reading the zeitgeist, the creators of “All’s Fair” were clearly not looking for raves or awards, just viewers.

(Disney)

In many ways, “All’s Fair” is an American version of the excellent British series “The Split,” which follows a matriarchal family of female divorce lawyers. Early on, one of the daughters (played by Nicola Walker) leaves the family firm and, in her own way, attempts to right the wrongs often done to women facing divorce from rich and powerful men while dealing with her own marital breakdown and a family with actual children.

But “American version” doesn’t really cut it. This is Trump’s-America version, in which ethics, morals and virtually all human feeling are secondary to winning, and winning is defined by who ends up making their opponent pay.

Between Kardashian’s conspicuous nonacting and dialogue that often seems lifted from the all-caps regions of X, “All’s Fair” has, not surprisingly, received a critical drubbing. Which seems almost intentional.

Critics, after all, have long been routinely, and often viciously, disparaged (after the reviews were in, Close felt moved to post a sketch of the cast gathered around a “Fatal Attraction”-like “critic bunny stew”). More important, reviews, bad or good, do not (nor should they) predict audience reaction (see early theater reviews of “Wicked”). As Trump has proved again and again, bad press is still press and the worse it is, the more easily it can be cast as proof that the cultural elites (i.e. critics) are out to get … somebody.

So it shouldn’t surprise anyone that, despite a 5% score on Rotten Tomatoes, “All’s Fair” was Hulu’s most successful scripted series premiere in three years.

Reading the zeitgeist, the creators of “All’s Fair” were clearly not looking for raves or awards, just viewers. In this American moment, bad is good and shrewd operators know that if you throw in enough high-profile ingredients — Kardashian, Murphy, a bevy of fine actors — you needn’t take the trouble to ensure the mix will rise to the occasion.

As the president builds a ballroom while food banks are overrun, why wouldn’t TV audiences want to feast on fallen cake?