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). (read the rest of this shit…)
Kelly Reichardt’s THE MASTERMIND is in a niche that really appeals to me: the unglamorous crime tale. It’s about an art heist, but there are zero Hollywood-style thrills involved, no witty dialogue, no gun fights, not much in the way of car chases. They seem like regular people, the plan isn’t complicated at all, lots of attention is paid to the slow, mundane details of the process. It’s a period piece, set in 1970 – that’s pretty cool. But it’s not, like… ’70s New York or anything. It’s Framingham, Massachusetts. The one very smart concession to cinematic fantasy is an excellent avant-garde jazz score by Rob Mazurek of Chicago Underground. He plays cornet and I think there’s some piano but sometimes it’s just drums, and it does make everything seem pretty cool.
The trailer for Luca Guadagnino’s CHALLENGERS looked kinda like a 2020s version of a 
