The bonkers, star-studded musical-biopic-fantasia-mess proves Jennifer Lopez can do whatever she wants.
Throughout her career but particularly over the last decade, Jennifer Lopez has earned the title of one of the busiest people in the entertainment industry. From performing at the Super Bowl halftime show to churning out rom-com after rom-com to repurposing “Let’s Get Loud” at a presidential inauguration and headlining a Las Vegas residency, the multihyphenate is truly everything everywhere.
It only makes sense that she would tax herself with a superfluous three-part project revamping one of her highest-performing albums, 2002’s This Is Me… Then — not even during its anniversary, by the way — all of which essentially serves to emphasize her persisting dominance in pop culture. (And oh yeah, her current state of bliss with her husband, Ben Affleck.)
The first part of this trifecta, which includes a forthcoming documentary and a new album out today, is the Prime Video movie This Is Me… Now: A Love Story. The trippy musical isn’t the sort of high-brow, experimental venture one might expect from a pop star of Lopez’s caliber (think more like a wacky Marvel film than Beyoncé’s Lemonade). If anything, This Is Me… Now is a confirmation of the singer/actress’s elite showmanship and her ability to bounce back as a cultural figure and chronic divorcée. It’s exactly the sort of galaxy-brained project one makes when one has nothing to prove and $20 million to spend — and one is high on love.
This Is Me… Now is a messy, green-screen fantasia — but to what end?
From the moment the movie trailer dropped on social media, This Is Me… Now seemed primed for jokes about Lopez’s theater-kid-level earnestness and whatever Oscar-winner Ben Affleck planned on doing in the film. (He’s almost unrecognizable as a rambunctious news anchor, in addition to a few other cameos.)
On one hand, it is obvious meme material. We’re talking about Lopez here, who has largely opted for maximalism over subtlety as a performer. (This is a woman who inserted a pole-dancing routine from her role in Hustlers into a Super Bowl halftime show, after all.) And as the star of a slew of romantic comedies (Maid in Manhattan, The Wedding Planner, Second Act, Marry Me), she’s no stranger to reveling in cheesiness.
That being said, the semi-autobiographical movie relies a lot on big metaphors and unsubtle imagery. For example, in a dream sequence, Lopez’s heart is represented by a giant, combustible apparatus operated by dancing factory workers and fueled by rose petals. But it somehow feels right from the brain of such an iconic Leo, known for wearing her heart on her sleeve.
The hour-long movie opens with Lopez reciting the Puerto Rican myth of Alida and Taroo, two star-crossed lovers from rival tribes. After Alida’s father forbids their romance, Alida prays to the gods for help, who then turn her into a red flower. When Taroo asks the gods to help him find Alida, he is transformed into a hummingbird, leading him on a continual search for his one true love. If you’re fluent in the history of Bennifer and all the tabloid scrutiny that followed the first round of their relationship, you’ll see where all this allegory is going.
But before Lopez can reunite with her Prince Charming, we’re taken on a fantastical musical odyssey through her tumultuous, star-studded romantic history. Directed by notable music video director Dave Meyers, the film is admittedly reminiscent of some of his later, less visually appealing work — from the overly glossy, video-game-like sheen to the depressingly gray-and-amber Zack Snyder look of the film. The constantly rotating, borderline nauseating camera angles brought to mind his unfortunate collaborations with Ariana Grande.
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Courtesy of Prime Video
In slightly more grounded moments— if you could describe any part of this film as grounded — Lopez is able to overcome a vexing amount of green screen to convey something real and exciting. In one particularly fun number where she reimagines her three ill-fated marriages, she adds new life to the otherwise middling single “Can’t Get Enough.” In arguably the movie’s most powerful scene, she makes amends with her younger self for putting men before her personal happiness. This is also where she performs the title track “This Is Me… Now,” a standout on an album that doesn’t seem to be brimming with hits.
Of course, Lopez’s penchant for astrology is included throughout the film. One of the funniest and most enjoyable aspects is the Zodiac Love Council, who struggle to match Lopez with her one true love. The astrological gods are played by a random but somehow pitch-perfect ensemble of celebrities including Lopez’s Monster-In-Law co-star Jane Fonda, rapper-singer Post Malone, actress Sofia Vergara, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, America’s sweetheart Keke Palmer, comedian Trevor Noah, screen legend Jennifer Lewis, and hyper-pop singer Kim Petras.
Oddly enough, these supporting characters have more chemistry than you might expect and are as committed to the bit as Lopez is — and really, isn’t commitment the most you can ask for from an overstuffed vanity project?
The movie isn’t as confessional as you may think
This Is Me… Now is more disorienting than revelatory. The fast-paced, CGI-on-steroids element feels like a purposeful distraction from the fact that viewers will not learn anything about Lopez’s love life and psyche that she hasn’t been open about before. If you haven’t noticed, she and Affleck have been extremely public about their rekindling. Since reuniting in April 2021, the two have posed on numerous red carpets together, gushed over each other in interviews, starred in Dunkin’ commercials, and even recreated a moment from the “Jenny From the Block” music video on a yacht for paparazzi.
The therapy scenes between Lopez and fellow Bronxite Fat Joe are almost entirely played for laughs, revealing nothing novel, despite a perfect opportunity in the film for deeper introspection. Plus, the narrative explored in This Is Me… Now feels similar to many of her albums exploring her mishaps in love, including Love?, her 2011 comeback album.
In her 2014 memoir True Love, she takes readers on the same self-love journey, investigating her regrettable approaches to her past relationships and what she describes as a tendency to mistake passion for genuine love. Even a striking sequence in the film where Lopez dances with a volatile partner inside a glass house isn’t particularly shocking, given that in her book, she writes about being “mentally, emotionally, verbally” abused by an unnamed ex.
A raw, more transparent piece of art would likely confront the public’s treatment of her love life, given that the media’s ridicule and other external pressures, according to Lopez, were such a huge part of her and Affleck’s initial estrangement. It could at least include a few fun, lighthearted Easter eggs. Perhaps she’s saving more personal anecdotes for her documentary, The Greatest Love Story Never Told, out February 27, but This Is Me… Now seems like a prime vehicle for some juicy details about her past.
This Is Me… Now is more about J. Lo’s power as a celebrity than an artist
It’s a bit ironic that the thing Lopez’s character overcomes in this film — a need for external validation — is what seems to be driving its existence. It’s hard not to view the movie within the larger context of Hollywood failing to take her seriously as an actress, despite being one of the most bankable movie stars and turning over some genuinely good performances throughout her career.
For example, Lopez has been open about the disappointment that was her failed Oscars campaign for the 2019 movie Hustlers, even capturing her tears during nominations morning in her Netflix documentary Jennifer Lopez: Halftime. While the actress earned other big awards nominations that year, including for the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Golden Globes — she already has a Golden Globe nomination for the 1997 film Selena — the Hollywood establishment seems hesitant to see her as much more than a commercial star. Such treatment has presumably caused her to feel like an “outsider” in Hollywood.
Regardless, it’s hard to point to a moment in time since her breakthrough in the late ‘90s when Lopez’s name has not been in the public conversation, whether for her personal life or professional ventures.
Even initially questionable film and television roles, like starring in the NBC cop show Shades of Blue or lending her voice to the Ice Age franchise, now feel like necessary stepping stones in her trajectory. For instance, despite having a spotty, often poorly reviewed filmography, her choices in projects — particularly rom-coms and two-handers — have at least contributed to her specific brand as a movie star. Fans know what to expect from a classic J. Lo movie. It’s why she can star in a chaotic, objectively bad rom-com, like 2022’s Shotgun Wedding, without any expectations beyond being generally entertaining and delivering nostalgia.
The same resilience and ingenuity can be seen in her bumpy music career, which saw a downturn in 2007 following the release of her Spanish-language album Como Ama una Mujer and her return-to-pop-R&B album Brave. Her decision to judge American Idol in 2011 — a surprising gig for a pop star at her level of fame — gave her a platform to regain the country’s interest as well as advertise new music. Plus, her Las Vegas residency, All I Have, from 2016 to 2018 would also set the stage for a revival of her musical catalog.
All in all, Lopez’s career has demonstrated reinvention and, more importantly, redemption that not many can emulate. Her determination is, of course, the result of a celebrity culture that enjoys building women up until they’re deemed past their prime. For women of color, this cycle can be more brutal. Nevertheless, it’s historically resulted in some of our most fascinating divas and pop cultural stories.
This Is Me… Now is a statement of Lopez’s cultural resilience, if not just her ability to rebound from a bad relationship and find herself in another attention-grabbing power couple. She’s the kind of celebrity who can make sense out of any creative decision, including funding a self-important long-form music video based on her therapy sessions. There’s a level of shamelessness (and megalomania) required in crafting a movie like this, but it’s the sort of unabashed confidence that makes our celebrity ecosystem go round.
What seasonal affective disorder can tell us about ourselves.
“I get emotionally down with the short days and feel like hibernating,” says Annabel Lagasse. So she gets on her bicycle and heads up the hill to London’s Hampstead Heath, where the Winter Swimmers Club meets by a natural pond, come rain or shine; when we spoke in December the water, was 39 degrees Fahrenheit. Lagasse describes swimming in near-freezing water as visceral and sensual: “It’s an exciting shock. Afterward, you feel that calm, and a greater alertness too.”
There’s nothing like the dim light in the depths of winter to make us feel like we’re really just plants: We seek out the sun and wither without it. At its most serious, that moody winter tiredness is called seasonal affective disorder (SAD), which the Diagnostic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) lists as “Major Depressive Disorder with Seasonal Pattern.” The symptoms are similar to regular depression: sadness, loss of energy, difficulty concentrating, and hopelessness. But SAD has a few unique features too: an extreme desire for sleep, strong cravings for carbohydrates, and it’s strictly seasonal: SAD disappears entirely in spring. According to the American Psychiatry Association, up to 5 percent of people experience clinical SAD, which lasts about 40 percent of the year. Additionally, 10 percent to 20 percent get a milder version more fitting of the term “winter blues,” called subsyndromal SAD.
Lagasse’s pond mornings have become a beloved ritual: “When it’s cold, dark, and wet, you think you don’t want to go, but often it’s worse in your head than it actually is.” This is why experts recommend pushing yourself out the door in winter, to get the benefits of bright morning light. A course of SAD-specific cognitive behavioral therapy can also be very effective. You should always see a doctor if you’re struggling — SAD responds to antidepressants and can be every bit as serious as any mental health condition.
Scientists are still uncovering how SAD works, but the key is light. “SAD has been linked to the shortage of daylight,” says Timo Partonen, research professor at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare. In addition to sunlight, bright artificial light can be used for treatment — Partonen explains that you might be able to lessen the symptoms of SAD if you start using a light box omitting at least 10,000 lux a couple of weeks before symptoms tend to start. Just make sure to get in front of it before 10 am: “It should be at least five mornings a week, up to one hour each time,” says Partonen. Eight out of 10 people who have SAD see good results from light therapy, which has been found to reduce the amount of melatonin secreted into the bloodstream.
In the US, SAD increases the farther north you go: 1 percent of people in Florida and 9 percent in Alaska have SAD. But Europe is different: Partonen says that while only 1 percent to 2 percent of Central and Southern Europeans have SAD, there’s a lot more subsyndromal SAD: “In the Nordic countries, a larger portion of the population has milder SAD symptoms,” says Partonen, explaining that subsyndromal SAD is probably a physiological reaction, affecting people whose bodies are sensitive to light. “But when it comes to [full] SAD you also need to have a predisposition to depression.”
Light is crucial because of how it impacts the body clock. Your circadian rhythm doesn’t just impact alertness, but everything from blood pressure and glucose release to memory consolidation at night — all things that could impact your mental state.
Russell Foster, head of the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford, says we still don’t understand the fundamental causes of SAD. “In harsh winter conditions, we want to snuggle in, we want to conserve energy,” he says, “but is that driven by biology, or is it a social phenomenon?”
While SAD makes you tired, extra sleep isn’t restorative because what you really need is light. Foster, also the author of Life Time: Your Body Clock and Its Essential Roles in Good Health and Sleep, explains that we’re most sensitive to light at dusk and dawn — while light at lunchtime is nice, it hardly does anything to ground your body clock. “Dog owners are supposed to have lower rates of depression,” says Foster, who thinks the reason is clear: “You have to get out of bed and take them for a walk, and you get the morning light!”
Attitude matters too when it comes to SAD. “Developing new thought patterns can change the wiring in your brain,” says Kathryn Roecklein, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. While trauma can cause depression in part because it changes our physiology, it works both ways: Positive habits can change our physiology as well.
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Photo courtesy of Cecilia Blomdahl
Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for SAD might work for up to 70 percent of people, says Roecklein. While general CBT aims to change unhelpful thinking about the self, SAD CBT focuses on thoughts and behaviors unique to winter. “A lot of people with winter depression have summer, spring, and fall activities they really enjoy [and miss]. One approach is to [find] winter activities that are similarly enjoyable, social, and maybe include physical activity,” says Roecklein. So if you can’t go cycling in winter, you could snowboard instead, and if you miss the heat, you could go to a steam room. Any CBT-trained therapist can create a SAD program; Roecklein recommends Kelly Rohan’s guide and workbook.
Even if the arrival alongside the November gloom is a dead giveaway that it’s SAD, depression rarely exists in a vacuum. “If there are parts of your life that particularly bother you [when you have SAD] … you might want to do some thinking, feeling, reconsidering,” says Jennifer Griesbach, a therapist in New York City and teacher at Gestalt Associates for Psychotherapy.
While no one actually wants to be moody and Netflix-bound for months every year, self-care for SAD can start to feel like going against nature. After all, seasonality is only natural, and bears in hibernation don’t drag themselves to spin class.
“This is a problem not just with SAD, but of living in the 21st century,” says Griesbach. “How do we work with the difference between what society wants for us and what our bodies want?” Griesbach recommends experimentation and paying close attention to how we feel afterward: “Sometimes you need to go to bed early, and sometimes you need to go out. It’s hard to tell the difference, but we can get better at it.”
Chasing the light isn’t the only way to enjoy winter. Darkness is truly magical for Cecilia Blomdahl, whose YouTube channel documents her life on Svalbard, a Norwegian island close to the North Pole that experiences two and a half months of darkness during polar night. “I look forward to polar night like a kid looks forward to Christmas,” says Blomdahl, who left her native Sweden eight years ago. “I see this as a season to slow down and appreciate the serenity the darkness brings. There’s so much beauty in the darkness.”
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Photo courtesy of Cecilia Blomdahl
Blomdahl admits polar night comes with challenges: “There’s nothing telling your body to wake up, so naturally, all I want to do is sleep!” A wake-up light helps, as does sticking to healthy routines. Blomdahl learned that in 2021, during one particularly tough polar night: “I’d just started my own business and was very stressed, and didn’t have a good routine at all. That really showed me the importance of a good sleep schedule and prioritizing things that make me feel good, like exercise and being outdoors.”
If the idea of strong-arming yourself to be active when your body just wants to cosplay as a couch cushion still just feels plain wrong, you might be intrigued to learn that even for people who don’t have SAD, “feeling like it” isn’t required to enjoy winter. “Last night I went outside at 6 pm and it was 14°F. You do have to force yourself,” says Trude Witzell, a photographer living in Trondheim, Norway. “Of course, after dinner, you just want to go to bed when it’s cold and dark like this!” (This interview was conducted in Norwegian and has been translated into English by the author.)
Hibernation isn’t the solution; researchers were confident about this, as we’re creatures driven by light. Winter requires many of us to work a little harder, though. SAD can make it difficult to tell whether we should be pushing ourselves out the door for a bundled-up morning walk across a frosty park, or if this is the night for lighting a candle while reading under a blanket. But we can use this slightly more difficult season to learn how to listen to ourselves and do what will truly make us feel good.
Most evenings, Witzell heads down to the fjord for a swim, often in the dark because at midwinter, the sun sets at 2:30 pm: “It’s incredible to lie back and look at the dark sky.” Norwegians have a saying, dørstokkmila, meaning the doorstep mile, that is especially relevant this time of year: “The hardest step to take is the one out your front door.”
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Photo courtesy of Trude Witzell
Navalny’s death is the end of an era for Russia — and cements Putin’s grip on power.
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most famous opposition figure and President Vladimir Putin’s most effective rival, has been reported dead.
Russian state media — which is loath to even say Navalny’s name — reported the death on Friday. Prison authorities say Navalny fell unconscious and died after taking a walk in the prison complex where he has been held since December. Though it’s difficult to verify information coming from the Russian state apparatus, Navalny’s team indicated they believe the reports to be true due to unusual conditions around the prison camp close to the Arctic Circle where Navalny was being held, namely that they could not make contact with the prison. Navalny’s lawyers are headed to the prison to investigate his death, according to his spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh.
Navalny’s partner, Yulia Navalnaya, appeared at the Munich Security Conference Friday and warned that Putin’s regime is not to be trusted but, should the reports of Navalny’s death be true, “I would like Putin and all his staff, everybody around him, his government, his friends, I want them to know that they will be punished for what they have done with our country, with my family and with my husband.”
Whether the Putin regime directly assassinated Navalny or his death was the result of grueling conditions — including being poisoned in 2020, being held in Russian penal colonies, and going on a hunger strike in 2021 — it will be understood by many as a signal about Russia’s future.
US President Joe Biden, for example, said the US did not know details of what happened but told reporters Friday: “Make no mistake: Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death.”
Navalny’s reported death comes right before the country’s March elections, in which he was attempting from jail to persuade fellow Russians to reject Putin, who is essentially guaranteed a fifth term.
“The war against liberalism that we have seen in Russia, taking place at the same time as the war against Ukraine, [the Kremlin] is doubling down on that,” Graeme Robertson, director of the Center for Slavic, Eurasian, and East European Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, told Vox in an interview. “Their sense of their ability to act with impunity is really just, it’s really off the charts.”
That impunity also signals to Russians in the country and the diaspora that there’s no Russia without Putin.
Navalny, the anti-corruption campaigner
During the late 2000s, Navalny made his name as an anti-corruption blogger, Vox’s Alex Ward wrote in 2021. But it was during the wave of anti-government protests, or the so-called Snow Revolution, starting in 2011, that Navalny first came to national prominence. At the time, he was one of the many voices denouncing the Putin regime after Putin announced his return to the presidency and his United Russia party was caught rigging a legislative election.