“A hellzapoppin’ cacophony of silly ideas and mad movie love, overhauling James Whale’s 1935 classic into a funhouse feminist manifesto. The exclamation point in the title is emblematic of Gyllenhaal’s try-hard approach, which doesn’t always land on the right side of cringe and could easily be exhausting if you’re in the wrong mood. I was in the right mood.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 03/05/2026
“Barclay’s documentary is ultimately a story of religion and the powerful hold it can have on those brought up in it; when Jesus said to love everybody, but the church says the way you love them is a sin. Music was Preston’s escape from his earthly torments, his way of reaching the divine. But that faith is also what drove his self-destruction.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 03/03/2026
“An exhausted excuse for a sequel, lacking a single new idea or any discernable reason for being. Taking place in a drab, suburban wasteland where everyone is tediously obsessed with a few murders that happened 30 years ago, the Scream movies have long ago shifted from an arch commentary on slasher movie tropes to an endless recycling of the same.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 02/28/2026
“Always a pleasure talking to pals Justin and Laura Khoo. This time we discussed Timothee Chalamet’s selfish pursuit of ping-pong excellence in Josh Safdie’s Marty Supreme, and why kids these days seem to get so hung up on their protagonists having to be a good person. We also talked about the curious effect of Kevin Costner on periomenopausal women.” – Cows In The Field, 02/27/2026
“It’s easy to guess which parts of the movie Hadi personally remembers from growing up in Iraq. That verisimilitude is the film’s strongest asset. Yet it’s just as easy to guess which screenplay conceits the director gleaned from studying film at NYU, and what story points came from the Sundance Institute Labs. Basically, the movie is too real to be this phony.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 02/26/2026
“‘I’ve always been fascinated by films within films,’ said the Brattle’s creative director Ned Hinkle. ‘The best instances of these are when an audience watching a film in the real world is brought into a cinema by the character onscreen and we all experience a particular moment together. It creates a crazy, almost metaphysical bond with the characters in the movie.’” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 02/25/2026
“In this case, half a movie is better than most in full. It’s a work of dazzling breadth and grandeur, with a naughty modernity that reportedly caused clashes on the set between filmmaker and star. (No doubt the Hays Office never would have allowed the prince’s panty-sniffing scene.) It may have taken 98 years, but Queen Kelly is finally ready for its closeup.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 02/25/2026
“Words like ‘corny’ and ‘cringe’ never occurred to Elvis Presley, a man incapable of irony. That’s why he was The King. Baz Luhrmann understands this, bless his rhinestone-encrusted heart. The gaudy Australian maximalist has spent the past few years trying to find bigger and louder ways to convey the Earth-shaking awesomeness of the Elvis experience.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 02/21/2026
“Yet for a knockabout comedy contrived as a way to make boat payments and get drunk on the beach, Donovan’s Reef is nonetheless fascinating on several fronts, not the least of which is its fantasy of benevolent colonialism in a tropical Valhalla. The island is a utopia lorded over by aging white warriors. Lucky for us their hearts are in the right place.” – Crooked Marquee, 02/20/2026
“Kubrick was fascinated by the ways in which we foolish mortals try to impose order on an indifferent universe, constructing elaborate systems and machinery that inevitably come crashing down around us. His dark sense of humor and the pitiless temperament of his films caused some to label him a misanthropist, though I’d say he qualifies more as a realist.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 02/19/2026
SPLICED PERSONALITY 