Cast:
Emily Blunt (Margaret Fairchild; Delaney Cuthbert as young Margaret), Josh O'Connor (Dr. Daniel Kellner; Tyler Renaud as young Daniel), Colin Firth (Noah Scanlon), Eve Hewson (Jane Blankenship), Colman Domingo (Hugo Wakefield), Wyatt Russell (Jackson), Henry Lloyd-Hughes (Casper Boyd), Elizabeth Marvel (Sister Maura), Hettienne Park (Serena), Tommy Martinez (Dave Santiago), Gabby Beans (Angela Childs), Jeremy Shamos (Claypool), Brandon Wilson (Nathan Twinning), Priyanka Kedia (Grace Zhao), Elliot Villar (Diaz), Noah Robbins (Munsey), and Michael Gaston (General Dobbs)
Directed by Steven Spielberg (#126 - Close Encounters of the Third Kind, #168-#170, #302, #351, #480, #563, #573, #642, #958, #1068, #1305, #1478, #1520, #1528, #1560, #1843, #2000 - Duel), #2026 - Twilight Zone: The Movie)
Review
For a movie with such a clunky title (no, I don't care that there was already a movie called "Disclosure" in the 1990s), it sure is interesting to hear how many people apparently went to see it in its first week, mainly because I chose to not see much of the marketing for the film, particularly with its trailer. It's been a while since I saw a Spielberg movie in theaters, mainly because I don't remember what I was doing when West Side Story [2021]* or The Fabelmans [2022] (but I do remember seeing Ready Player One [2018]), but the curiosity was bubbling since the first rumblings of a "UFO film" came around in 2024. One inspiration listed was a New York Times article ("Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program") about a program exploring space phenomena without identification (okay you've got "unidentified anomalous phenomena" and "unidentified flying object", what sounds better?); Spielberg wrote a story outline over two months in 2023. We've had a few things related to the disclosure movement* or conspiracies dictated about say, Roswell, ranging from the light fare such as getting a body from there in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) or the 2002 miniseries Taken (as executive produced by Spielberg) to, well, documentaries such as The Age of Disclosure (2025), which had presented former government officials and disclosure movement people with varying claims and arguments and, well, little physical evidence. David Koepp wrote the screenplay (reportedly doing over 40 drafts). Recently, there was a de-classification of UFO-related files, but, well, there was nothing about it as interesting as was present in the movie, so that's certainly a thing to say.
What you get with this movie is a thriller about trying to have people listen to one another. Sure, the "disclosure" looms heavily throughout the movie, but what is most important is the danger of fearing what one doesn't know. It takes a handful of big swings for the ideas of faith over fear, interest in beings that aren't just ourselves, and, well, washing away the established order of things as perhaps not the only supreme being in the universe* which might be nice for those who, say, liked a film like Signs [2000] (speaking of movies where t. It is a thriller of illumination (essentially by stating one is not an idol, but an instrument, whether in understanding or in math) that gradually assembles the pieces together for a fairly satisfying movie, although I'm not sure exactly how it will sit with me in the years to come and I can certainly understand where others might not anoint it as highly. It takes its swings of wonder and doesn't yearn to answer every nibbling question, for better or worse; Spielberg himself has said it is not a "holistic review of the entire history of the UFO phenomenon". Blunt commands the film with a fairly entertaining performance, managing to evoke plenty of curiosity and humor in the fractured world she finds herself part of beyond is seen and unseen, particularly since her and Russell have decent timing together for a time. O'Connor is merely fine, but he never really gets into his own as a character when him and Blunt actually meet (to say nothing of one scene in particular involving the big reveal). Domingo provides a bit of serenity to counteract the real veteran presence in Firth, who is delightfully malevolent that underlies a yin-and-yang of people who see the status quo and the place of any potential wild card element differently (whether seeing it as one for control or one for co-existence), which is neatly interesting to see in how each play it. It's a strangely bloodless journey to get through, but the sense of wonder is inviting for those who have the patience for the inevitable meshing of empathy and numbers. Basically, it's a fable about if the world actually had some more idealism rather than the cynic slop that pervades our lives in such loud fashion that the only real way to pay attention probably would be to just listen.
Admittedly, it rests heavily on the idea that seeing is believing in a world that actively sees plenty of videos and images filled with despair (and then of course there is AI slop, which is disgusting, full stop). Would we tune out a theoretical creature from a different world than ours like people do when trying to tune out the rhetoric of hatred of others (or, alternatively, watching alternative media; my caveat is that if the film involved trying to distribute top-secret stuff on the Internet, people would've just said it was being cribbed from Glass [2019]). To say nothing of the news anchor in the climax, which actually took me out of the movie more than the CG for the animals (which I can at least defend as, well, something that is meant to be a bit off-kilter). In some ways, you could call this an extended version of say, an X-Files episode (at least it's not trying to rip off one of the lamer "mythology" ones?). It is a goofy and naive film all about getting people all tuned in on one thing, for better or worse. But even with the little quibbles*, you still have a solid movie worth looking into, one that is a finely tuned thriller in assembling its pieces where it wants to go for a film built on the milage of understanding more than anything.
Overall, I give it 8 out of 10 stars.
*Okay, with West Side Story, I just thought it sounded like a waste of time to remake a beloved movie. Especially with Ansel Elgort as the lead.
*David Wilcock is, sorry, was, a hack and should've been thrown out of serious discussion years ago. Seeing his face on a Wikipedia article and clicking it just to find a hack is actually kind of annoying. Anyways.
*I would basically call myself agnostic, mainly because it seems illogical to fully deny the divine even if I am not the kind of person interested in church. To say nothing of the cringe nature of religion/atheism in certain circles online.
*One spoiler, if you like highlighting. The abduction scene is probably so heavy-handed that of course people equate it to molestation or Mysterious Skin [2004], which involved two boys being affected by a certain event that sees them lead different lives in young adulthood, with one being into alien abductions. My take? Nah. I just don't see it. If anything, it's just an overgrown fulfillment fantasy that we see over and over with powers that just happens to involve alien rocks. Besides, it's a friggin fable, not Dateline.
No comments:
Post a Comment