“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

“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

“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

“Charli XCX plays the kind of girlfriend who complains that ‘we just had sex eleven days ago,’ and her unenthusiastic faking of an orgasm is one of the funniest bits of business I’ve watched in a while. It does your heart proud to see young Cooper Hoffman following in his father Philip Seymour’s footsteps as one of the great movie masturbators.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 07/31/2026