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The first shot of director Lynne Ramsay’s stubborn and exasperating postpartum nightmare “Die My Love” would be a great opener for a horror movie. The camera lurks in the kitchen of an isolated ranch house, as still and foreboding as a ghost, while a couple named Grace and Jackson (Jennifer Lawrence and Robert Pattinson) poke around the front porch of their newly inherited property. The two take several beats to go inside, long enough that we suspect these crazy kids are making a dangerous mistake. Just look at the wallpaper. Those florals would make anyone crack.

“It’s not New York but it’s ours,” Jackson says of the rural home, left to him by his uncle who died violently upstairs in a way that Grace finds hilarious. He grew up in the area and his parents, Pam and Harry (Sissy Spacek and Nick Nolte), still live nearby. Neither Jackson nor Grace say anything about their past lives back in the city, but he yearns to play drums and she once claimed to write. There’s a sense that their dreams have stalled out, either due to finances, passion or talent. So they move in, have a baby and pivot to domestic chaos.

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Lawrence and Pattinson are such a natural, overdue pairing that it’s a surprise to realize this is the first time they’ve teamed up to make the kind of polarizing, go-for-broke prestige film they both enjoy. The two stars launched into the public consciousness roughly around the same time, then followed the same trajectory from teen franchise idols to creatively ambitious A-listers and now, more recently, newish parents making a movie about miserable parents whose hopes have run aground. Lawrence has two tots under 3; Pattinson, a toddler. Their kids shouldn’t watch this movie until college.

In a dynamic montage, Ramsay sets up their boyfriend-girlfriend pair as lusty but strange. Jackson and Grace flirt by fighting like wild beasts. Nuzzling, sniffing, biting, wrestling — that’s foreplay (and she’s more into it than he is). But they can’t communicate with words. “If you’re not feeling good, maybe we should, like … talk?” Jackson says tentatively to his increasingly restless and unstable partner. Grace isn’t interested in talking, though occasionally she’s game to scream. When they fight for real, their bodies twist into spasms of outrage. And when the other one isn’t looking, each seems to power down — Lawrence’s Grace physically collapsing like an unplugged air dancer — a clue of how much energy they must privately expend to make it work.

“Die My Love,” adapted by Ramsay, Enda Walsh and Alice Birch from the 2012 novel by Argentine author Ariana Harwicz, makes parenthood feel like being handcuffed to an anchor that’s sinking into a swamp. Lawrence’s Grace needs help and the more she flails, the worse she makes things. The book is an inner monologue of poison: “How could a weak, perverse woman like me, someone who dreams of a knife in her hand, be the mother and wife of those two individuals?” the first paragraph seethes. But Ramsay rejects putting its angst into words. As with Joaquin Phoenix in “You Were Never Really Here,” she prefers characters who silently roil under their skin.

The tension in this home starts quiet — too quiet — with Grace cranking up kiddie albums by Alvin and the Chipmunks and Raffi to drown out whatever noise is happening in her head. After Jackson brings home a stray dog, the racket becomes unbearable, with sound designers Tim Burns and Paul Davies skillfully and cruelly making sure that no matter how far Grace roams, she can still hear the darned thing bark.

Lacking much perspective into Grace, we mostly see a mentally unwell woman incensed that her sexual playtime is over. She howls with the urge to mate, prowling the house in matching fancy bras and thong sets that clash with this disheveled house and its stockpile of cheap beer. Occasionally, a mysterious leather-clad biker (LaKeith Stanfield) speeds by, considering a quickie with this bored beauty.

Grace’s erotic agony is reductive and a bit ridiculous, although I think the script is also trying to imply that Grace herself is focused on the wrong problems. The film represents her depression by coating the night scenes in so much blue tint that even Picasso might suggest dialing it back. Despite cinematographer Seamus McGarvey’s efforts to put us in her headspace with lenses that make the world blur and swirl around her, you’re more afraid of Grace than for Grace, especially when the shock editing has her smashing through doors like Michael Myers.

Hurling herself into every scene, Lawrence puts her full faith in Ramsay. It’s not a trust fall so much as a trust cannonball. As good and committed as Lawrence is, there were times I wanted to rescue her from her own movie, to protect her from the fate of Faye Dunaway when “Mommie Dearest” turned another blond Oscar winner into a joke.

Yet, this is a character who hates pity and I can’t help but admire that Ramsay faces down today’s phonily upbeat and relatable motherhood discourse with this boogey-mom who keeps herself aloof. Grace treats the older women in her family like a wall of advice to be tuned out even when they’re right. “Everybody goes a little loopy the first year,” Spacek’s Pam says, offering empathy that falls on deaf ears. (Spacek delivers a lovely, endearingly layered turn.) And while Grace is so lonely she literally claws the walls, she rejects any overture of friendship, either from a perky fellow parent (Sarah Lind) or a peppy cashier (Saylor McPherson) whose attempts to start a conversation go so badly that when the poor dear asks Grace if she’s found everything she’s looking for, Grace huffs, “In life?”

Pattinson has the more recessive role but his performance is so subtle and clever that it’s worth watching closely. His Jackson is pathetic, passive and skittish around his baby’s mother, who he both longs to heal and tries to avoid. He has a few moments that play so close to comedy — say, whining to be let into the bathroom — that you wish the movie would do more to encourage our pained, guttural laughs. The punchlines are there, such as a beat after one meltdown where Jackson admits he’s getting really stressed out and Grace coolly replies, “About what?”

There’s one scene in which Grace reveals a snippet of backstory that might explain her psychology, and I think that specificity is a narrative misstep. What’s powerful about Grace is that she’s howling for all parents, even the mostly happy ones. Harwicz’s book deliberately never gave her character a name.

Even inside this movie, Grace’s anguish is universal. Yes, she wanders into the wilderness at night, but so do her in-laws Harry and Pam, for reasons of their own.There are dark vibrations emanating from almost every character, even the minor ones, although Grace is too caught up in herself to take any comfort from that. But Ramsay is comfortable suggesting that everyone feels crazy and miserable. I suspect she thinks it’s the most normal way to live.

Donald Trump has made politics into a dystopian reality show he loves to host, but Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries are playing by the old rules — and the mismatch may cause Democrats to get blamed for a government shutdown.

This is not because they’re dumb (they’re not) or incompetent (as the top Democrats of the Senate and House and as representatives of New York, both have risen to positions that require a Lyndon Baines Johnson-esque dexterity most of us couldn’t sustain for a single PTA meeting).

You can see it playing out in the government shutdown. Schumer and Jeffries seem almost neurologically incapable of operating in the world Trump has created — one where politics is less about governing or even persuasion, and more about staying on offense and generating spectacle.

Schumer exudes old-fashioned backroom politics and insider deal-making, which is another way of saying that he’s scripted, sweaty and stilted. It’s not that he’s bad at speaking; it’s that the kind of speaking he has mastered — the methodical, over-enunciated style that once charmed donors and editorial boards — is the equivalent of trying to fax something in 2025.

Jeffries, by contrast, is calm and disciplined. He speaks slowly, often channeling a rhythmic pattern that is reminiscent of a preacher or litigator. In a different era — the kind of era when “normal politics” still existed — this trait might have worked brilliantly. Today, it just feels tired. He’s supposed to be the hip one, once marketed as a “bad, brilliant brother from Brooklyn.” But his recent attempts at communication feel more like a corporate onboarding seminar.

And it’s not like he’s compensating for this shortcoming by electrifying the progressive base. Jeffries’ recent praise for New York Mayor Eric Adams (calling him a man who “served courageously and authentically for decades”) was a bit like praising Nickelback for artistic innovation. It’s not just inaccurate; it’s weirdly tone deaf to the moment.

To be fair, competing with Trump’s megaphone requires a skill set that is closer to professional wrestling than to 20th century politics. Trump is chaotic and often incoherent to the point of parody. But, and this is key, he never sounds like a normal politician.

In a game where authenticity — however poorly defined and cynically constructed — is the only real currency, the Democrats’ undynamic duo come across as high-functioning androids.

Countering Trump’s superpower calls for Democrats who can compete in the attention economy: leaders who feel authentic, actually enjoy picking constant political fights and understand that “going viral” is the new “getting quoted in the New York Times.”

Indeed, the only Democrats who have shown any capacity for being able to survive in this era have been Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Schumer and Jeffries do not have these skills, despite having plenty of material to work with.

Case in point: Republicans are about to make healthcare more expensive for millions of Americans. In theory, that’s a devastating talking point. In practice, it’s difficult to imagine Schumer and Jeffries delivering it in a way that can compete with Trump’s bogus assertion that the Democrats are shutting down the government because they want free healthcare for illegal immigrants and “transgender for everybody,” whatever that means.

Faced with these mistruths and the anemic response we’re getting from Schumer and Jeffries, the best-case scenario may be that Republicans — by virtue of being the “anti-government” party — take some blame for a government shutdown. But that’s not a strategy. That’s hoping partisan inertia is still on your side.

Regardless, the shutdown is merely the latest example of Democrats struggling to compete with MAGA. The larger problem is that the Democratic Party doesn’t really have a communicator right now. It hasn’t had one since Barack Obama left the stage.

It’s probably not fair to compare a congressional leader with a presidential candidate. But even by the standards of modern congressional leaders, Schumer and Jeffries are ill-equipped for the task at hand.

Democrats need someone with Newt Gingrich’s manic energy, revolutionary zeal and theatrical flair, coupled with Nancy Pelosi’s more pragmatic toughness and ruthless discipline. This is to say, someone who understands that politics is now a form of entertainment, but who still has the moral seriousness to prevent it from devolving totally into nihilism.

Instead, they’ve got two men who might as well be AM radio hosts trying to livestream on Twitch.

Ultimately, the Democrats’ communications crisis won’t be solved until they have a presidential nominee who can actually speak the language of the moment. Until they can find one, Democrats are stuck with two guys who are no match against a man who has turned political chaos into performance art.

And if Democrats don’t find one — and soon! — they won’t just lose the narrative: They’ll lose the country that depends on it.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”

Dianne Bourne went to Gulliver’s World with her kids and realised it’s one of the best value-for-money family days out in the region

For a brilliant family day out, there’s one destination that offers exceptional value whilst keeping youngsters thoroughly entertained. Manchester Evening News lifestyle editor Dianne Bourne ventured to Gulliver’s World with her children and discovered this theme park is seriously underrated.

According to Dianne, the Warrington attraction is “arguably one of the best value-for-money family days out in the region”. Daily passes start from just £14 per person, available through “secret sales” on Gulliver’s official website.

During Dianne’s visit on a glorious Sunday at the beginning of school holidays – likely the busiest and most “peak” period possible – day passes were priced at £25 per person, or £16 for afternoon entry, reports the Express.

She wrote: “Even at £25 per person, I found it to be excellent value, considering the enjoyable full day I spent here with my two children, aged nine and five.”

Gulliver’s frequently gets overshadowed in the theme park hierarchy, especially given its proximity to the enormous Alton Towers.

Whilst it might not rival adult thrill-seekers’ expectations, Gulliver’s targets the family demographic specifically, featuring attractions tailored for ages two to 13.

Dianne observed: “I was quite impressed that even during peak times, queue lengths never exceeded thirty minutes for any attraction.”

Those who haven’t been to this Cheshire theme park in a while will be amazed by the fantastic new additions. The standout feature is The Land of Oz, which was Dianne’s family’s starting point for their day out.

This magical new area takes its cues from the much-loved Wizard of Oz story and its unforgettable characters.

Dianne said: “Visitors can stroll, or dash as my children did, along a yellow brick road… inevitably humming ‘follow the yellow brick road’ repeatedly – if you’re anything like me.”

The first sight that greets guests is the Upside Down House, where you can wander around and marvel at the rather puzzling spectacle of it all, before exiting via a huge slide (adults included) at the end.

Dianne added: “My younger son was particularly fascinated by the twitching limbs of the Wicked Witch pinned beneath the house.”

Next to the house is a child-friendly driving experience where little ones think they’re in charge – and they’ll probably enjoy spotting a munchkin (and other colourful characters) along the forest path.

However, the most striking new attraction in this part of the theme park has to be the Winged Monkeys. These creatures from the classic Wizard of Oz have haunted many a dream over the years.

Yet here at Gulliver’s World, visitors can climb aboard one of these spooky creatures as they glide through the air. The brilliant thing about this attraction is that older kids (and grown-ups) can choose to hit a button to flip upside down for an even more thrilling experience, whilst younger ones can simply enjoy the journey as the monkeys bounce up and down.

Dianne revealed: “My nine-year-old dared to try one spin in the monkey before deciding to remain upright for the remainder of the ride, much to my relief.”

Following all the thrills of the new Land of Oz, Dianne chose to explore Western World and was delighted to discover just a brief queue for one of the most beloved attractions, Apache Falls.

She explained: “This ride is a bit of a hybrid between a Rapids ride and a log flume, and one thing’s for sure – you’re going to get wet. Not that my children minded, they absolutely loved it.”

Meanwhile, Gully’s Cartoon Studios serves as an excellent spot for lunch and features an extra soft play zone inside the restaurant. Dianne noted: “It’s these little extras that make a day out like this more manageable for parents, I believe. The soft play provided a distraction for the kids while I queued for our hot food at the takeaway.”

There’s so much on offer that Dianne and her family couldn’t experience all the attractions. She commented: “One of the things I adore about Gulliver’s World is its compact layout, making it easy to navigate and ensuring everything feels within reach.

“The park is also visually appealing, boasting plenty of greenery and a large pool at its centre, home to numerous ducks and moorhens that kept the children entertained during our brief ice cream break.”

Compared to other family attractions like the Trafford Centre Summer Funfair where Dianne once spent £64 on rides for two children over just two hours, plus an entrance fee of £10.50 for three of them, Gulliver’s World (which cost £75 for three) offers incredible value for a full day out.

Dianne stated: “I would highly recommend it for anyone looking to entertain children under 12 during the school summer holidays. If you can be flexible with your dates, keep an eye out for those £14 tickets too.”