“A stunning piece of filmmaking, using rigidly locked-down frames and careful placement of characters within them to indict an entire worldview. Manuel is working in a complete, visionary tradition, telling the story through color, costume and intensely controlled production design. Filipiñana is full of blistering social commentary, but it’s all in the images.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 09/11/2026

“One of those sequels that immediately undoes the emotional arcs and hard-won conclusion of the previous picture, rebooting the characters to factory settings so we can watch the same conflicts play themselves out a second time to diminished returns. Bullock’s daughters literally have their memories erased to make the plot possible.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 09/10/2026

“As crass and morally repugnant as any movie made this year, with the possible exception of Melania. It’s more of the gross Green Book fantasy in which a streetwise white slob has to teach the uppity Black guy in a suit how the world actually works. Once again, Wahlberg is playing dress-up and telling us it wouldn’t have gone down like that if he’d been there.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 09/06/2026

“The grisly siege thriller is a virtual litany of allusions and Easter eggs that has no identity of its own, nor any reason for existing other than to show off the dubious taste of its creators. From the faux-Carpenter synth score to the old-school, practical squib effects, it’s a feature-length fanboy fap session, and an overproduced, hollow one at that. I’m too old for this shit.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 09/03/2026

“The best parts are the black-and-white, interstitial glimpses of Perry being whisked around beneath the stage between numbers, with costumers and hairdressers descending upon her like an F1 pit crew. I know there are countless reasons why it never would have happened, but I wish Frederick Wiseman could’ve gone on tour with a pop star.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 09/01/2026

“The absurdly prolific 88-year-old director has reached a stage where he’s making movies not because he has a story to tell, but because it’s Monday morning and it’s time to go to work. Scott can be counted on to shoot the shit out of whatever script pages you put in front of him, but he doesn’t appear overly concerned with making them fit together as a whole.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 08/28/2026

“The endless road is less of a plot device and more of an existential condition, and the film is at its weakest during the obligatory monsters-in-the-woods scare sequences that presumably got it financed in the first place. The second half is much stronger than the first, after it stops trying to be a horror movie and becomes more of a philosophical argument.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 08/26/2026

“The perfunctory affair feels more like an outline for a movie than a developed screenplay, full of the kind of placeholder dialogue someone jots down with the idea that they’ll go back and embellish it with something more colorful later. I really miss corny wisecracks in action movies. Also, a little disappointed that Statham’s character isn’t named John Mutiny.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 08/21/2026

“A raucous, freewheeling folk tale full of sidewinding digressions and narrative cul-de-sacs with secret meanings hiding in plain sight. The film is mostly a character study, something of a revenge drama, half a heist movie, a bit of a musical and all heart. Like the title character, it’s a charmingly verbose and swaggeringly confident American original.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 08/17/2026

“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