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November 11, 2026, 05:12:29 PM

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#11

Bad Movies / Re: RECENT VIEWINGS (Bad Movie...

Last post by M.10rda - November 10, 2026, 02:02:49 PM

DISCLOSURE DAY (2026):
Not a horror film, obviously, so rather an anti-climax to my October viewing.

Also, in spite of a good bit of excitement in the first half or 90 minutes, ultimately this is quite underwhelming/disappointing, as many other viewers have remarked. Perhaps I'd hoped my contrary inclinations would allow me to find this to be a diamond among the Spielbergian rough - I am, after all, a defiant defender of both READY PLAYER ONE and 1941.

But, no - DISCLOSURE DAY seems crafted to make absolutely no one entirely happy (except, maybe, Spielberg himself?).

There are plenty of small and large issues w/ DISCLOSURE DAY, which have been discussed elsewhere, so I'll only focus on my biggest issue... with both DD and many other Spielberg films:

Here Colin Firth plays (initially with commendable loathsomeness) a fanatical Musk/Thiel-type tech oligarch who will go to any and all amoral ends to prevent the eponymous day of disclosure, including deploying a (surprisingly) small army of mercenaries to murder anyone who would hasten said revelation, and/or utilizing alien technology to remotely commit murders himself (by puppeteering innocent accomplices). Eventually it's explained that all national security oversight for extraterrestrial obfuscation has been outsourced from the federal government and the U.S. military to Mr. Firth, which seems a little implausible at first and then much much much more implausible at the film's climax, when Firth spontaneously surrenders in the face of imminent "disclosures" even though his mercenaries could just machine gun a room full of disclosers and witnesses and waltz away with impunity... a contrivance which is necessary for Spielberg to proceed w/ the main event which justifies his entire project, but which nevertheless seems to confound the chief mercenary, and also confounded this viewer, who wondered why there were no subsequent cut-aways to the POTUS, Secretary of Defense/War, Joint Chiefs of Staff, or any other high-ranking Illuminati, $#!tting their pants in progress and ordering air strikes on the small Kansas City block where Emily Blunt was blithely dismantling their entire empire.......

This nonsense points to two larger shortcomings of Spielberg's alien-centric filmography at large (and perhaps beyond just the alien flicks in his canon). Naturally DISCLOSURE DAY is disappointing simply on account that he's been teasing out these identical themes for my entire life - initially w/ significant intrigue in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, then variably through E.T., A.I., TAKEN, and ...CRYSTAL SKULL, each promising then forestalling some euphoric culmination of cosmic enlightenment. At the end of DD, most viewers reaction seems to be: ...This is it? Really? Not only don't we know more than we knew in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS, but the flat revelation and resolution at DD's end actually kind of diminish the alluring mystery of CE.

And, of course, the non-answers that Spielberg offers in DD further confuse the morality of his onscreen universe. I intentionally omitted WAR OF THE WORLDS from the previous list of Spielberg's alien saga, as that (not very good) one-off at least was willing to commit to the malice of its extraterrestrials. They kidnapped Cary Guffey in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS and drove Dreyfuss to madness, but somehow I'm still able to accept the ambivalence of their mission. But even as a five-year old watching E.T. in the theater, I felt great relief when the scientists took the creepy little bastard into custody, and no end of dismay when those dumb kids on bikes set him free. This same instinctive aversion to these unearthly child-grabbers is reflected briefly in DD by one of the lead characters (himself taken and probed by aliens as a kid), but his scene-partners quickly urge him to get over it and embrace his shady overlords, just as 80s pop culture norms emphatically informed me that I'd watched E.T. THE E.T. incorrectly and should have cheered on his escape to more adventures w/ his child-loving glowing finger.

2002's TAKEN (w/ Tobe Hooper) at least afforded some additional ambiguity about who were the bad guys and who were the good guys - the aliens abducting and traumatizing children, or the military spooks at least ostensibly taking steps to counter the alien maneuvers. But, nope, DISCLOSURE DAY homogenizes the entire conflict by its conclusion: the aliens are the Good Guys and, actually, the murderous tech Deep State are also the Good Guys, shucks! ...As long as we give 'em a chance!

This profound lack of moral clarity has now kneecapped Spielberg's career-long endeavor, but it looms large beyond the alien flicks as well. Always my thoughts return to the crowd of Stepford Aryans at the end of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, reassuring teary-eyed old Matt Damon that everyone who died to save him (including all those Jews) did so justifiably, as (implicitly) it helped replenish the good genes of Der Vaterland! Of course Spielberg couldn't have intended this message - but why then would he, the Master Filmmaker of the late 20th century, have labored to construct and transmit it? The most sympathetic presumption is that Spielberg is, unconsciously, both the Jeremy Davies and Adam Goldberg characters in SPR - bending over backwards enthusiastically to credit the humanity and decency in the captured Nazi, then living to regret it as that Nazi sadistically and slowly stabs him to death while spitting anti-Semitic epithets at him.

Spielberg's occasional collaborator Tony Kushner - the much cannier Jewish writer who rendered Roy Cohn as implausibly, impossibly charismatic and sympathetic in ANGELS IN AMERICA while still reminding audiences that Cohn will happily serve Satan in Hell - may have been subtly criticizing the director in THE FABELMANS, when he has the Young Spielberg character dramatize his childhood bully as a hero in a short film, and then when Lil' SS is pressed to explain his choice, he can't begin to rationalize his actions. I guess when the Overlords of the UFO do finally descend upon us, ol' Steven will be first in line to board the craft, and first with his @$$-up on the examination table-slash-hibachi grill.

2.5/5 .......But the girl at the end who plays the network anchor was great, right?

#12