In theaters now from Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment!
Directed by Stephen Speilberg.
Written by David Koepp, Steven Spielberg.
Check out the trailer here!!
A tech-guy named Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) and a weather newscaster named Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) both share an experience in their childhood that neither remembers but left both with strange abilities later in life. Daniel sees language in mathematical terms, a power that manifested years later in college and aiding him in becoming a cyber-criminal and later an employee of a secret government organization. Margaret’s power to reach into minds and see a person’s experiences, manifest on the day she inadvertently speaks an alien language on live TV during a weather broadcast. All of this involves a conspiracy to cover-up extra-terrestrial encounters that have occurred around the world for decades. The cover-up is shepherded by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), who is trying to acquire Daniel and Margaret. But they are being guided by a defector from Scanlon’s undercover operation named Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo) in hopes to disclose all information the organization has about alien life and their encounters on earth.
I’m a huge UFO/UAP nut, so you understand how exciting a time this is for me with the government releasing proof of alien life. It’s an interesting time we live in where you can turn on any news channel at any time of the day and hear them talk about UFO’s, the stuff I usually only saw on YouTube and Discovery Channel shows. Having been a believer for so long, it’s validating that pretty much all those nutty conspiracies we were all told were fabrications from fractured minds were, in fact, true. So, one might think a movie like DISCLOSURE DAY, from the maker of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND, one of my favorite movies of all time, would be right up my alley. Now, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS was made at a time when Spielberg was hungry and at his creative peak. DISCLOSURE DAY is an interesting film to bookend Spielberg’s career as it signifies how far, and in some cases, how less effective his work has become through the years.
I want to go over some positives before I really stab into DISCLOSURE DAY, but I will say that while I was entertained, it did fail to live up to the immense hype this film had around it. Maybe it was because I find the real released footage so compelling compared to what was released in DISCLOSURE DAY. Hopefully, I’ll get to the bottom of why this DISCLOSURE DAY didn’t work for me by the end of this review.
But as I said, first the good. Spielberg has a wonderful way of setting a scene. He takes advantage of the fore, middle, and background like few others in cinema. It’s this type of care to each shot that you just don’t see in modern films, and even in his less effective films, at least the scene set up in the camera frame looks good—almost painterly in the way his film canvasses are put together.
The cast is fun. I’ve never really seen Josh O’Connor in anything, but he managed to be interesting in pretty much every scene he’s in, especially when teamed up with the talented Ms. Blunt, who also does a decent job with the material she is given, though for some reason, Blunt seems to forget to close her mouth for the bulk of the movie giving her a constant doltish look on her face at all times. Colin Firth does a fantastic job as Scanlon, who is determined to keep this information undisclosed. Seeing him eat up the scenes here while recklessly using his authority and alien tech to find Daniel and Margaret are some of the best in the film. And Wyatt Russell, what can I say? The guy elevates each and every movie he is in. Sure, he plays the same dumbass numbskull in every film, but I have yet to get sick of it. In many ways, Russell plays the down-to-earth Richard Dreyfuss character that this film needs, but sadly, he is shuffled to the sidelines halfway through the film. Still, he and Emily Blunt’s Margaret share some of the most human and humorous scenes of the film. He may not have his father’s hairline, but Wyatt shares his father Kurt’s charisma. Get this guy in more movies!
John Williams score is phenomenal and while I noticed his absence in THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU, he makes up for it in spades with a thrilling musical accompaniment that forces you on the seat’s edge. If anything, Williams elevates what turned out to be a mediocre script and pretty much saved the film for me. This goes for the action scenes as well. While capably shot and admittedly thrilling, I feel that none of this was anything new and I certainly didn’t come to see this movie with my hard-earned shekels to see a car chase scene and a train dodge. It was fun, but something I feel I’ve seen before in one way or another.
The effects are hit and miss. The alien stuff works. Most of it looks seamless and integrated into the scene. Many of the alien disclosures are recreations of famous and not-so-famous encounters from the past, all noted in conspiracy and UFO videos I’ve seen a million times. I know this film is for the normies who don’t devour all UAP content imaginable, but I honestly don’t think this is going to give that jaw dropping feeling Spielberg gave us in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS or even the spectacle of Jordan Peele’s NOPE. Unfortunately, and this is kind of unforgivable; the animal CGI is mediocre to bad at times. None of the animals have weight to them, especially the fox and cardinal animations. It’s strange that something that is well documented and can be referenced like an animal can look so shoddy, but the aliens and their ships can look so good. It baffles me.
The real problem with DISCLOSURE DAY is that it suffers from the same malady films as JASON TAKES MANHATTAN and JASON GOES TO HELL suffers. Meaning, the film is called DISCLOSURE DAY, but it takes pretty much the bulk of the movie to get to the Disclosure and what happens next, well, we’re just going to have to wait for the sequel, I guess. For two hours, there is the promise of pulling back the curtain revealing the existence of aliens to the public, and then for the last fifteen minutes is the reveal and then cut to credits. I feel this is less of a spoiler than it is a warning. If you are looking for how a world with its head so far up its ass would react to the revelation of aliens’ existence, then buddy, you’re going to be mighty disappointed. I know I was. Yes, this means DISCLOSURE DAY lacks any kind of closure. Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.
That’s right. As soon as the info is disclosed, everyone immediately buys it. I mean, look at the way the public reacted after the congressional hearings that revealed the existence of UAPs and alien life forms. They still didn’t believe it, or it just wasn’t sexy enough to bat an eye at compared to who’s dissing who on Insta. But in DISCLOSURE DAY, this info dump stops the world. Or at least it seems to, as the film cuts before there is any real reaction other than a bunch of people staring at screens and phones looking at the released footage. Will the public believe it? Will it bring closure to all wars knowing that we aren’t alone in the universe? Or will the info be old news by the time the next news cycle comes around? We don’t know and that’s the interesting stuff I was hoping DISCLOSURE DAY would delve into but didn’t.
Instead we get a two-hour long chase scene where a MacGuffin is passed along from one person to the next. This MacGuffin is one of three shards of alien tech that humans know next to nothing about. It basically has unlimited power to be the exact thing the hero or villain needs at that moment. Do you need it to project your mind to great distances and possess someone? It can do that. Do you need it to awaken latent powers you never knew you had? It can do that. Do you need it to make you invisible to your enemies? Sure thing, it can do that. Do you need it to power up the whole building even after the power and backup power has been cut? It does that too. This is the laziest form of writing to have an item so powerful that it literally gets the hero or villain out of every challenge they find themselves in.
But the real reason I hated the McGuffin shard of kryptonite or whatever the hell it is, is because it a bit of alien lore that had never existed before. It was made up for the film. Sure, we know that these aliens have power beyond our imagination, but aside from the mystery element Bob Lazar has talked about for years, there has never really been talk about any kind of alien Dark Crystal thingee. I mean, Emily Blunt actually calls the shard a thingee in the movie. She might as well just call it what it is. Yes, the MacGuffin is a tried-and-true plot device in many a film, some of them great. But having it provide easy answers to all questions shows how remedial writer David Koepp’s screenplay really is, even though he’s leeched onto various high-profile directors and claimed fame from it for his entire career.
I will give it to DISCLOSURE DAY. Koepp and Spielberg’s script does bring up an interesting argument about believing in aliens and religion at the same time. This is a brave topic to breach in this apathetic and agnostic day and age, so kudos for them for even trying it.
This is a gorgeous looking movie. It’s as polished as one can imagine a Spielberg movie can be. I know a Spielberg movie in theaters—a Spielberg sci fi movie at that, in theaters is a rarity, so I can enjoy the film for that, but the sense of wonder that permeated his previous sci fi films like CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and E.T., hell, even the dystopian horrors of MINORITY REPORT, has simply fizzled out. Bad CG, bad story, misleading premise. This one has it all. Too bad there are a million and one YouTube videos and cable paranormal shows that have done it before and sometimes even better. Not a positive review on DISCLOSURE DAY for me, folks.
