“Every time the story starts building a head of steam, we skip back to learn more about how we got here, like we’re flipping channels between the movie and its more expensive prequel. Project Hail Mary constantly interrupts itself to answer questions we didn’t ask, spending too much time on scenes of Gosling refusing to go on a mission we already know he’s on.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 03/19/2026

“There’s an ugly disconnect between Weaving walloping her romantic rival over the head with a keyboard and Newton spitting blood while Hatosy kicks her in the kidneys. Yet the filmmakers don’t seem to have the slightest idea how pummeling a pretty, defenseless girl’s face into hamburger might sour their cheesy ‘80s music cue humor.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 03/18/2026

“Manhood is not a film for the faint of heart. It’s also not the sniggering yuk-fest one might expect, given the topic. Director Lombroso takes his subjects seriously, giving full weight to their fears and the crippling sense of inadequacy that could compel someone to spend tens of thousands of dollars on such a painful, humiliating procedure.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 03/15/2026

“A typically Hoover-ian tapestry of tragic coincidences, female fortitude and character names that make you wonder if you heard that right. The movie is more grounded than the comically luxurious It Ends With Us, and boasts performances more understated than the deranged kabuki theater of Regretting You. Such restraint might not be to the picture’s benefit.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 03/14/2026

“It’s a terrible structural idea telling us up front that we’re going to have to listen to ten recordings. We can’t help thinking, ‘We’re still only on number six?’ I was hoping to hear something truly terrifying, like: ‘Here are a bunch of sports guys spending two-and-a-half hours ranking their favorite crime movies from the 1990s.’ The ultimate in podcast horror.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 03/13/2026

“With the synth-pulse soundtrack and vast desert spaces, Laxe is working in the mystic tradition of filmmakers like Herzog and Tarkovsky, but with the white-knuckle ruthlessness of an action craftsman. A friend left the film saying he wanted to drown the director in a puddle of radiator fluid. I don’t share his reaction, but I understand it. The movie works you over.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 03/08/2026

“A hellzapoppin’ cacophony of silly ideas and mad movie love, overhauling James Whale’s 1935 classic into a funhouse feminist manifesto. The exclamation point in the title is emblematic of Gyllenhaal’s try-hard approach, which doesn’t always land on the right side of cringe and could easily be exhausting if you’re in the wrong mood. I was in the right mood.” – WBUR’s Arts & Culture, 03/05/2026

“Barclay’s documentary is ultimately a story of religion and the powerful hold it can have on those brought up in it; when Jesus said to love everybody, but the church says the way you love them is a sin. Music was Preston’s escape from his earthly torments, his way of reaching the divine. But that faith is also what drove his self-destruction.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 03/03/2026

“An exhausted excuse for a sequel, lacking a single new idea or any discernable reason for being. Taking place in a drab, suburban wasteland where everyone is tediously obsessed with a few murders that happened 30 years ago, the Scream movies have long ago shifted from an arch commentary on slasher movie tropes to an endless recycling of the same.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 02/28/2026

“It’s easy to guess which parts of the movie Hadi personally remembers from growing up in Iraq. That verisimilitude is the film’s strongest asset. Yet it’s just as easy to guess which screenplay conceits the director gleaned from studying film at NYU, and what story points came from the Sundance Institute Labs. Basically, the movie is too real to be this phony.” – Spliced Personality Substack, 02/26/2026