“It’s not hard to see the pattern in writer-director Cristian Mungiu’s movies of individuals being abused by inflexible institutions, but Fjord has caused a stir for flipping the script so that the victims are the people we usually see presented as the bullies. A friend described it as an inverted Footloose, and I honestly can’t do better than that.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 10/25/2026
“He makes a terrific Ripley. So much so that you wish the filmmakers would ditch the postmodern frou-frou and just cast Ehrenreich in a straight Highsmith adaptation. The easily foreseeable problem with A Talent For Murder is that the new Ripley story conjured by Murray-Smith for the purposes of the screenplay can’t hold a candle to Highsmith’s originals.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 10/22/2026
“Can a movie be too beautiful? It’s hard not to come away wishing Love of Your Life had been a bit rougher around the edges. The images are too cozy for this story. Aesthetically, the film could have taken a few cues from the prickly performance by its star Margaret Qualley, a very pretty actress who isn’t afraid to go to some ugly emotional places.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 10/16/2026
“This is a wild, mind-melting movie people are going to be talking about for the rest of the year, and probably long after that. Fielder and Oppenheim have ingeniously assembled a gut-busting cringe comedy that doubles as an unexpectedly hefty philosophical inquiry into the nature of perception. It’s also the story of a master manipulator meeting his match.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/14/2026
“Shockingly incompetent. Affleck’s TNT-coded oeuvre always had the sturdy polish of a studio craftsman, but this feels like one of those cheap, 1980s potboilers that were phoned in by an elderly journeyman long past his classic Hollywood heyday. Paging Golan and Globus, is it possible that Affleck has entered his J. Lee Thompson era?” – Spliced Personality Substack, 10/14/2026
“A stunning piece of filmmaking. The minimalist aesthetic allows the viewer room to really sit with the horror of what is being said. Abraham and Szor’s lay descriptions of atrocities over distant shots of people in their Tel Aviv apartments, quietly going about their uneventful evenings. They’re 47 miles from the dropping bombs and an entire world away.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 10/10/2026
“Jeremy Allen White talks too slow to star in an Aaron Sorkin movie. Madison winds up lapping him during their attempts at banter. Curiously, Sorkin’s screenplay contains no cultural references post-1964. Topics of conversation in this film about the 21st century internet include Show Boat, Gilligan’s Island and Frank Capra’s Lost Horizon. OK boomer.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 10/07/2026
“Digger periodically pauses to insist that real life is far more complex and less cathartic than phony, simplistic satires like this one, but we still have to sit through the rest of this phony, simplistic satire anyway. It’s a baffling creative choice. The movie rips the rug out from under us, then continues vacuuming for another 90 minutes or so.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/01/2026
“The reason to see the movie is Hathaway in monstrous mommy mode. So voracious she leaves bite-marks on the wooden headboard after having sex with hubby Hartnett, the actress makes a meal out of every evil utterance, crisply articulating with a mid-Atlantic accent out of a 1940s film. The character’s name is Verity Crawford, but Hathaway’s going full Joan.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 10/01/2026
“Ayer slathers on a heartland family entertainment aesthetic so low-rent it’s kind of surprising to see an Oscar-winning movie star like Brad Pitt in the lead and not some country singer I’ve never heard of. The whole movie has an air of gaseous sanctimony, which is considerable nerve for such a ridiculous, made-up story about an imaginary wonder dog.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 09/28/2026
