Always a treat talking to my buddy Blake Howard, this time about what went wrong with the new Supergirl reboot and why we liked the first part when it was ripping off True Grit way better than when it was trying to be Fury Road. We also discuss how ugly studio movies have gotten these days and wonder why these filmmakers won’t just go outside.” – One Heat Minute, 06/25/2026
“Predictably, Supergirl is being bashed sight-unseen by the usual online troglodytes. I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around the young male fan culture’s hostile aversion to seeing women onscreen. Part of the reason I’ve always loved going to the movies is because I enjoy looking up at giant, moving pictures of pretty girls. I thought everybody did.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/24/2026
“I suppose we should start this series at the beginning. Perhaps fittingly, my career as a professional film critic began with Clint Eastwood. His largely-forgotten 1999 programmer True Crime was the first movie I reviewed for Philadelphia Weekly. I was 24 years old, working as a cinema manager and writing terrible screenplays in my free time.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 06/22/2026
“Humphrey Bogart was still two years away from his first leading man role in The Maltese Falcon, but he’s already dominating the screen. You can see Cagney ceding scenes to Bogie, as if he were as delighted by him as we are. The third-billed Bogart is so electrifying you remember the character as being in more of the movie than he actually is.” – Crooked Marquee, 06/19/2026
“As a recovering Catholic, I can confirm being taught to be frightened of your desires is a core tenet of Christianity. The movie makes such fear and loathing manifest, entwining sex and violence in an amplification of the lads’ rowdy courtship rituals.There’s something hilariously Australian about boys throwing rocks at each other’s chests as foreplay.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 06/19/2026
I sat down with WBZ News producer Seth Szilagyi to talk about how horror movies have been dominating the box office this summer. We discussed the out of nowhere Obsession phenomenon, reveled in a Star Wars movie being beat by Backrooms and wondered who exactly Masters Of The Universe was supposed to be made for in the first place. – CBS Boston, 06/18/2026
“However academic you want to get about the actual Robyn Hode legends of yore, modern audiences are still going to think of men in tights and Disney’s wily cartoon fox. Yet in a strange way, that’s part of what Sarnoski’s film ends up being about. It’s a story about the stories we tell ourselves, and how we can’t help cleaning them up for our children.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 06/18/2026
“Adding to the pathos is how unnervingly elderly these toys sound. At 63, the grandma-voiced Cusack is a spring chicken in this cast. Listening to the 73-year-old Allen rasp his way through kiddie banter with the 69-year-old Hanks makes you wonder why Bonnie would want to play with senior citizens. Which I guess is part of the point.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 06/17/2026
I was lucky enough to be the dumb guy onstage with brilliant Emily Brontë biographer Deborah Lutz and WBUR’s Here & Now producer Kalyani Saxena to talk about the various screen adaptations of Wuthering Heights and how this twisted, harrowing revenge saga has somehow been misconstrued in the popular imagination as the greatest love story of all time. – WBUR CitySpace, 06/16/2026
“Not to sound like a party pooper, but perhaps beginning with the cold-blooded murder of a child rape victim isn’t the best way to get audience members in a festive mood for your stunt show. It did not engender in this critic a generous mindset for an escapist entertainment about how many awesome ways you can clobber somebody with a bicycle pedal.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 06/12/2026
SPLICED PERSONALITY 