“A listlessly stupid movie made by a guy who used to be much smarter about making stupid movies, the Dumb And Dumber director’s latest return to his lowbrow roots follows 2024’s grim Ricky Stanicky as another monkey’s paw situation for any of us who ever expressed a preference for Farrelly’s earlier, funnier films.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 04/18/2026
“‘Movies create community,’ said Campbell. That’s been IFFBoston’s mission from the beginning. As someone who’s been attending the festival for more than two decades, I can’t tell you how many dear friendships started while standing in line at the Somerville, or chatting about movies at an afterparty. It’s a perfect place for folks to come together and make discoveries.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 04/17/2026
“It’s sparse enough to invite all sorts of allegorical readings. At the time, some viewers assumed it was a statement about the HUAC hearings, Alas, the racist bullying and cowardice on display in Bad Day At Black Rock are depressingly applicable to any American era, and I note with a shudder that Ryan’s sneering ringleader is first seen wearing a red baseball cap.” – Crooked Marquee, 04/17/2026
“Sir Ian McKellen has been loaning his Shakespearean gravitas to franchise films for so long it’s easy for movie audiences to forget how marvelous he can be when he’s asked to actually act. Steven Soderbergh’s new film comes as such a sweet relief because it reminds us of everything McKellen can do when he’s not stranded in front of a green screen.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 04/16/2026
“Hill is clearly writing from painful lived experiences here, but without the perspective of having come out on the other side of them. As the kids say, he’s ‘posting through it,’ and the movie’s weird contradictions and tonal see-saws make for a bracing viewing experience. I can’t really defend the movie, but I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 04/12/2026
“This is where the compression of the text feels really limiting. We’re so locked into the main character’s mania that there’s no variation in tone, no comic relief nor any of the grace notes that make Shakespeare’s saga so rich. This might be the shortest Hamlet I’ve seen, but it feels like one of the longest because every scene is played at the same pitch.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 04/09/2026
“A naughty, big-hearted party of a movie, writer-director Sergio Tovar Velarde’s freewheeling sex farce The Divine Tragedy is a bawdy, ebullient film full of colorful costumes and even more colorful supporting characters. This messy, happily horny picture is exactly the kind of thing we come to festivals like Wicked Queer to celebrate.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 04/08/2026
“Penn’s nervy performance goes full Ratso in a parking garage scene when he dares a car to run him over. It’s a magnificently off-putting turn, all twitchy paranoia with a voice as thin as his pencil mustache. Daulton was the forerunner of the actor’s iconically obnoxious cokeheads in Carlito’s Way and Hurlyburly, but not all viewers found pleasure in his company.” – Crooked Marquee, 04/03/2026
“The sheer volume of time we spend with these people is needed to convey the weird normalization of life under authoritarianism. It depicts how we all adjust to massive affronts to our cherished ideals and personal liberties while everyone finds a way to go on with the day-to-day business of living, even as the world changes forever around us.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 04/02/2026
“If you like laughing at things we’re not supposed to joke about, I’ve got good news. Teetering on the edge of tastelessness and pushing touchy buttons with diabolical delight, The Drama is the most provocative American movie I’ve seen since Eddington, and will probably be just as divisive. The film feels a little dangerous, like it wants to start an argument.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 03/31/2026
SPLICED PERSONALITY 