“Absent the ache of World’s Fair or the devastation of TV Glow, this is a much slighter, sillier picture. Schoenbrun’s humor is an extremely online, meme-friendly absurdism for which your mileage will vary. I complained to a friend afterwards that a lot of the dialogue feels like it was written with the end goal of being all-lowercase quotations in Letterboxd reviews.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 08/13/2026
A quick chat with my buddy Blake Howard about how delighted we were by director David Robert Mitchell’s lean and mean little dinosaur thriller. Blake suggested someone should start Greystoke-ing Ewan McGregor’s dialogue whenever he’s playing an American, and we both gave thanks for Anne Hathaway’s Streep-level emoting whilst swatting pterodactyls. – One Heat Minute, 08/12/2026
“It pulls off what six Jurassic Park sequels have failed to do, giving us a full-tilt, bracingly nasty dino-attack adventure that feels fresh and exhilarating. There’s a giddy, childlike mean streak to the mayhem recalling Spielberg in his Poltergeist and Temple Of Doom mode. Folks get gobbled up in abrupt and sometimes riotously undignified ways.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 08/12/2026
“A mostly made-up mishmash of coming-of-age cliches so self-aware that an early scene has the protagonist explaining what a bildungsroman is. Matt Johnson and his regular writing partner Matthew Miller shrewdly deploy familiar Hollywood formulas so we can see every set-up and welcome every payoff. They’re cooking up comfort food, and Tony delivers.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 08/11/2026
“When I saw the movie 30 years ago it was a late-1960s period piece set in a vanished downtown art scene. Revisiting the film was like opening a Totally ‘90s time capsule, its recreation of a bygone Manhattan now evoking a heyday of independent filmmaking from three decades after the movie was set. Watching it was like looking at a double reflection.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 08/11/2026
Had a lot of laughs with my buddy Blake Howard and television critic Roxana Hadadi wondering what the hell was going on with Apple TV’s Cape Fear remake, one of the most mystifying things we’ve ever seen. Hear three incredibly confused people try to puzzle out what the show was aiming at, while lamenting the perils of stretching a simple story out to ten hours. – One Heat Minute, 08/08/2026
“None of these practical concerns have any impact on the central romance, and One Night Only isn’t engaged enough with its high-concept to entertain that kind of scrutiny. A lot of the online nitpicking reminds me of a regular at my old bookstore who used to scream about how Star Trek was bad because ‘their system of currency makes no sense.’” – Spliced Personality Substack, 08/07/2026
“It’s also kind of a bummer to remember how high culture was once seen as aspirational, and that we could have a rock star conductor like Leonard Bernstein who strived to make the arts accessible to everyone. I grew up in a Boston where Arthur Fiedler was as revered a local hero as Carl Yastrzemski. It wasn’t that long ago.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 08/05/2026
“The funniest cameo is still Val Kilmer, doing his Doc Holliday accent in a Jim Morrison wig while trying to get the Sphinx-like Dylan to break. When I sat down with Kilmer in 2005 for the most bizarre interview of my career, he really lit up when I mentioned this film. I told him how many times I’d watched it, and he said, ‘That makes you, me and the editor.’” – Spliced Personality Substack, 08/03/2026
“Most of the dialogue is rancid, often riotously so. Stone tries to knock the earnest, do-gooder halo off the social issue drama by making his lead characters lowlifes. Half-Graham Greene, half-Hunter S. Thompson, Salvador isn’t particularly interested in the nuances of Central American politics. It’s more about the director’s ideal of a macho, alpha-male liberalism.” – Crooked Marquee, 07/31/2026
SPLICED PERSONALITY 