DISCLOSURE DAY is not related to the 1994, Seattle-set reverse sexual harassment/VR thriller starring Michael Douglas called DISCLOSURE, it’s merely Steven Spielberg (WAR HORSE) attempting to ride that film’s coattails. Also it’s his late career return to the subject of beings from other worlds, this time not dealing with close encounters or wars of but with how humanity as a whole handles the knowledge of their existence.

I went to this assuming I would like it because it’s Spielberg, but knowing that a movie with the same trailers and a no-name director probly wouldn’t have even gotten me into the theater. It didn’t look that exciting to me, so I was impressed to be immediately thrown into a conflict already in progress. Dr. Daniel Kellner (the mastermind himself, Josh O’Connor, CHALLENGERS) has already stolen secret files and “the device” from his employers, who have retaliated by kidnapping his girlfriend Jane (Maid Marian herself, Eve Hewson, BRIDGE OF SPIES), and are attempting an exchange. He manages to use this small extra-terrestrial object to escape with Jane and call his contact Hugo (Unicron himself, Colman Domingo, ZOLA) before going to hide out at a convent under the watch of Sister Maura (40-year-old Mattie Ross herself, Elizabeth Marvel, G20).

I’m not sure how long Daniel and Jane have been together, but he didn’t know she almost became a nun, and she didn’t know he had been in prison for cybercrimes and (BLACKHAT style) was recruited to work for the government and now has turned whistleblower. Fortunately they are accepting of these revelations. He takes his time getting there but eventually shows her some videos to prove that since the ‘50s the government has known of aliens thanks to both dead and living ones recovered from crashed spaceships. This agency Wardex, operating without oversight thanks to profits from reverse engineering alien technology, cover it up. CEO Noah Scanlon (the Kingsman himself, Colin Firth, 1917) and his henchpeople are chasing Daniel because he’s joined Hugo and others in a conspiracy to reveal this information to the world.

But Daniel’s actually the secondary lead, because meanwhile Kansas City TV meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Mary Poppins herself, Emily Blunt, SICARIO) is going through some shit. While explaining to her pajama-pant-wearing musician boyfriend Jackson (Todd age 11 himself, Wyatt Russell, INGRID GOES WEST [whose mom starred in THE SUGARLAND EXPRESS]) that she wants to move and pursue a job at the anchor desk, a cardinal flies into the window, stares her down for a minute, and suddenly she speaks Russian. And then other weird shit starts happening. She gets out of a speeding ticket by reading a cop’s mind and comforting him about his problems, and while on air she goes into a trance, speaks a clicky alien language, and collapses. An MRI shows nothing wrong and then she gets an urge to flee the hospital and look for Daniel Kellner, a guy she doesn’t know and has never heard of.

The rest of the world is on edge about other shit: something to do with North Korea and World War III. That’s going on in the background as our two main characters gravitate toward each other and avoid bad guys, sometimes finding themselves engaging in the blockbuster movie type spectacle that Spielberg is one of the best at. There are shades of his last alien joint, WAR OF THE WORLDS, but having O’Connor instead of Tom Cruise makes it a very different type of movie. Cruise can put on a baseball hat and play regular, but he’s still an action star. O’Connor really seems like an average dude forced to figure out how the fuck to climb from a car onto a moving train.

I’m surprised to be saying this, but if I had a choice between a more action-packed DISCLOSURE DAY and a version that doesn’t bother with action set pieces, I’d go with the latter. I’m not sure it’s really needed. It’s Spielberg so obviously it’s great shit, but the scene where Margaret and her doofus boyfriend (who by the way wears a jacket similar to Cruise’s in WAR OF THE WORLDS) find out they don’t really know how to destroy a cell phone made more of an impression on me.

The Wardex agents are intense. They zip down curvy roads in their convoys of black vehicles, precision driving right on each other’s asses, in formation, while Daniel is clodding around like an idiot, stealing one of their cars and immediately crashing it. So it’s an intimidating situation. Scary government forces also existed in E.T., they’re a timeless fear, though their competence might be harder to believe in this era of the dumbest motherfuckers imaginable running everything. I took the mention of a female colonel as evidence that whatever bad people may be in charge it’s not Trump and Hegseth. But just in case, there’s an explanation for why they don’t let presidents in on their secrets, covering for my longstanding “Trump would’ve blurted it out” argument against alien contact.

And yet, this is clearly a message for this moment, because it’s calling out those who see other people only as threats and competition, and technology only as profit and weaponry. Scanlon has this device that can power a tv station and who knows what else, but he uses it for surveillance and mind control.

I love that this movie is so shamelessly about the power of empathy. Daniel’s super power is math, but it leads to nothing but frustration until he combines forces with Margaret, who’s all about listening and understanding and caring. She can hear and speak any language without even noticing, she can read people’s entire lives, so her encounters become experiences in learning people’s stories, what they’ve been through, what hurt them, who they love. When she’s meeting Daniel and realizes he’s an ex-con she doesn’t become scared of him, she tells him it must’ve been hard. Another little moment that’s more meaningful than it seems at the time is when she stops in the studio to translate for a Korean guest. While showing off her new language abilities the scene is also pointing out that just mistaking the intended connotations of a word could cause a whole miscommunication. If only we could be like Margaret and skip past words to see the other person’s perspective.

At first she’s using her abilities to get away from cops and agents, but these people don’t seem to feel they’ve been Jedi mind tricked. Even Scanlon seems more moved than upset when she uses knowledge of his dead wife on him. The very premise of the movie is a challenge to the only-the-strong-survive world view; it states explicitly that empathy is an evolutionary advantage and necessity, and makes a good case for it. Rare for a genre movie, it stays true to this: the good guys don’t turn on each other, they remain caring and gentle, the narrative even has humane endings for villains we wouldn’t mind seeing get a comeuppance. It doesn’t pull any version of the “I don’t believe in violence, but whoops you pulled a gun on me, I was forced to shoot you in self defense” cliche. It walks the walk.

One of the most striking details is that Daniel flipped not because of his opinions about the public’s right to know, but out of revulsion from seeing aliens mistreated. He and the movie assume normal people seeing videos of aliens being hurt will feel more sympathy for them than fear – that’s beautiful! I hope it’s true!

I also appreciate that this one’s not about parenting. Margaret works hard and is trying to find herself and when she does it’s not from having or meeting a kid. It’s from meeting a bird and an alien.

When I was a kid I was fascinated by UFOs, checked out any library books I could find about them, always wanted to see one, largely inspired (I imagine) by Spielberg’s movies. I remember me and a friend climbing over my dad’s workshed to get onto the roof and lay up there watching the lights of airplanes and satellites, hoping one would turn out to be something else. As an adult I have less faith in UFOS being from space, but alien life certainly seems likely, and yet fuck no, I do not want to know about them. It would be too much, re-arranging my entire understanding of life. I think that’s the main reason I found myself getting very emotional during the climax of DISCLOSURE DAY (though some of it was realizing I didn’t fully buy a positive portrayal of humanity). I’m not sure I’ve seen another movie grapple with that aspect, or with Jane’s worries about the religious implications.

How did this movie move me so much but still feel like lesser Spielberg? Or to put it another way, how did I end up more excited by his remake of WEST SIDE STORY than his new alien thriller? I believe it comes down to the specific choice of basing it all in established UFO tropes: greys, Roswell, crop circles. I’ve heard that choice praised elsewhere, but for me it removes the element of awe and freshness that you would get in any other Spielberg movie and replaces it with imagery already worn out in the days of ravers in Dr. Seuss hats. It doesn’t help that a few years ago an article I read somewhere convinced me 100% that the Roswell sightings were of anatomical dummies dropped from planes to test what would happen to the human body in such a scenario. Kind of like that issue I have where I can enjoy a completely fictional ghost movie more than the ones based on “true events” that I believe to have been hoaxes and scams.

Don’t get me wrong, I did smile seeing those funny little dudes walking like MARS ATTACKS! martians, and wished I could be one of the guys holding an umbrella for them. Seems like a cool job. I also think the alien technology is cool. Scanlon’s telepathic intrusions and interrogations put me in mind of SCANNERS and other smaller, grimier sci-fi thrillers. Oh shit, yeah – screenwriter David Koepp wrote I COME IN PEACE before he was Mr. Blockbuster! It’s also funny how much the opening reminded me of HIGHLANDER, since it’s a wrestling match and we zoom into the audience to the one guy not enjoying it, then he leaves and has a conflict with mysterious enemies. But it’s that type of movie done up big, with production touches like a situation room with info-packed screens that actually made me think “whoah, I’ve never seen one like that in a movie”

and more importantly with the Spielberg filmatism, the perfect staging, the drama-heightening camera movements, the whole works. Even Margaret couldn’t speak the language of cinema as eloquently.

There’s a whole thing about (spoiler, sort of) building an exact duplicate of Margaret’s childhood home to help her deal with something she went through. I couldn’t make out what was in her VHS collection, but my wife says she saw KINDERGARTEN COP and EDTV. I was too busy joking about Nathan Fielder playing Hugo to consider the meta implications – that this parallels Spielberg making THE FABELMANS, and that the math genius/empath pair mirrors his portrayal of his parents. Good call, Griffin Newman on Blank Check and whoever else has noted this. That’s another layer worth studying.

Anyway, happy Disclosure Day to all. Hope you get some time to relax, take advantage of some good sales, unite with all of humanity in a profound shared experience, etc.