Welcome back to The Weekend Press! Today, Caitlin Flanagan regrets Tom Cruise’s America-hating new film. Aaron MacLean explains why you need to read a biography of Xi Jinping’s father. Kat Rosenfield is still reeling from the bizarre Elizabeth Holmes documentary. And more!

But first: Why would you leave America to live in England?

Look, I’m not going to pretend your country’s not great. I spend a lot of time in the Free Press office in New York, and whenever I look out the window at the skyline, the majestic Succession theme starts playing in my head. Speeding across the Brooklyn Bridge in a yellow cab is the ultimate manifestation of the phrase “I’ve made it.” Your houses are so big, your appliances so very modern, and even your domestic flights have live TV!

England, where I live, is not like that. The economy is stagnant. Our prime ministers are always resigning. In London, my perfectly nice apartment—or, as we say, flat—does not have a dishwasher. Or a tumble dryer. I’ve had my phone stolen not once, not twice, but three times.

But, I’m sorry, no matter how much Americans try to persuade me—and believe me, Bari will not let me hear the end of it—I’m not going to move to America.

Our contributing writer Freya India, a fellow Brit, made a different decision. Last summer, she moved to Washington, D.C., for work, then spent a year “trying to talk myself out of my homesickness; trying not to think about what I was giving up, all that time with my parents and grandparents; trying to think of the GDP!”

But a few weeks ago, she packed up and came home to London. “Many people think this is a mistake,” she writes in her essay today. Brits remind her of the money to be made in the U.S. Americans worry she’ll get arrested for her posts on X.

More powerful than her belief that England has problems, Freya writes, was “this sense of betrayal, like I had left somewhere I was obligated to.” She was investigating what makes 20somethings unhappy, and gradually concluding that it’s because they’re afraid “to put down foundations, to bind ourselves to places and people.”

It’s not that England is better. It’s not that America is worse. This week, when I saw the BBC headline “Tiny Rare Frogs Bred for First Time at London Zoo,” I said to a colleague who was also born here, “We live in a silly little country.” We don’t deny it. But it’s home.

—Freya Sanders

Freya India • Culture and Ideas Why I’m Moving Back to Broken Britain

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Caitlin Flanagan • Culture and Ideas

What Do You Do with Tom Cruise? Not This.

“Has anyone ever loved America the way Tom Cruise has loved America?” Caitlin Flanagan asks this question sorrowfully in her latest piece, which is about the sad fact that Cruise has yoked himself to an America-hating movie that was supposed to win him an Oscar but has instead lost a quarter of a billion dollars and is being dumped by theaters after just two weeks. Curious, Caitlin wanted to see if Digger is as terrible as people were saying. “There are always bad movies,” she writes. “But then there are the ones that make you want to carve a little circle around your chair and tunnel your way out.” Do not miss her highly entertaining review. Read story ›

Kat Rosenfield • Culture and Ideas

Did Nathan Fielder Get Too Close to Elizabeth Holmes?

What do you know about Elizabeth Holmes? The story of the girlboss-turned-felon—who said she was revolutionizing medicine with a product that proved to be criminally fraudulent—has been told so many times since her downfall four years ago. But Nathan Fielder’s new documentary, for which he moved into Holmes’ house the month before she went to prison, proves we had absolutely no idea who she really was. Kat Rosenfield saw the movie this week, and found it “definitely stranger than fiction, but not necessarily the truth”—which, she writes, might actually be the perfect way to tell the real story of Elizabeth Holmes. Read story ›

Joe Nocera • Two Drinks

Two Drinks with. . . the Woman Who Handled a Trade War Against Trump

Chrystia Freeland spent five years as Canada’s deputy prime minister trying to be friends with America. But after Donald Trump took office the first time, she says the U.S. became, as her new book is titled, an Unreliable Boyfriend. The 45th president accused our northern neighbors of “ripping us off” and called Freeland “totally toxic.” But “he can be charming,” Freeland told Joe Nocera over ginger turmeric tea. Read on for her reflections on standing up for her country, working motherhood, and why being a politician isn’t so different from being a reporter. Read story ›

Joshua Katz • Things Worth Remembering

Winnie-the-Pooh’s Most Important Lesson

Winnie-the-Pooh just celebrated its centenary! Happy bir