Disclosure Day (Steven Spielberg, 2026)

[therewillbeblus]

Cool, well hopefully more people actually see the thing and weigh in

[The Curious Sofa]

That's in stark contrast to IMDB where the average rating is 6.9 (whereas most blockbusters llike this are usually over 8 in the early days) w/ 20k ratings and only one actual review gives it a 7 while all the rest are 1-6 out of 10.

According to IMDB, The Shawshank Redemption is the greatest film ever made. I rest my case.

[The Narrator Returns]

That's in stark contrast to IMDB where the average rating is 6.9 (whereas most blockbusters llike this are usually over 8 in the early days) w/ 20k ratings and only one actual review gives it a 7 while all the rest are 1-6 out of 10.

Just watch the movie (or don’t!) instead of using other people’s opinions as a justification for writing it off. I’m not surprised it’s proven divisive, it’s a pretty strange beast in many ways, but it’s far too interesting to merit sight-unseen dismissal.

[The Narrator Returns]

Certainly no Joe Schmo posting “worst movie ever!!” on IMDb is going to tell you that, more than Close Encounters, it unfolds as an action-packed riff on Mysterious Skin.

[therewillbeblus]

Certainly no Joe Schmo posting “worst movie ever!!” on IMDb is going to tell you that, more than Close Encounters, it unfolds as an action-packed riff on Mysterious Skin.

I'd love an expansion on this reading

[The Narrator Returns]

I’d seen the comparison before I saw Mysterious Skin for the last time last night, and even then I was a bit shocked by how literal (in at least one case using the same shot) the parallels are.

Spoiler

Spielberg and Koepp are very on-the-nose about O’Connor and Blunt’s shared close encounter standing in for repressed childhood trauma (Blunt calls it that even), and they follow Araki’s structure of two stunted kids being slowly drawn to each other and to confront this gaping hole in their memory/reason for who they are in the present. Both movies come to a head when the house where it happened finally fills in the gap (the ending of A.I. parallels in that scene knocked me on my ass). Obviously Disclosure Day diverges by making the aliens real rather than a coping mechanism, but even in the ending I feel Spielberg resisting simple wonder in favor of something close to what Araki arrived at: the comfort of finally finding the one person in the world who knows exactly what you went through warring against the bad feelings that can only be acknowledged and never forgotten or healed. I’m thinking, with both, about what the New York anchor says at the end of Disclosure Day, something like “I’m so sorry you have to see this along with me.” It’s important to discover these things but the hurting that follows can’t be easily translated into hope for the future.

[therewillbeblus]

I really enjoyed reading that, thanks!

[Noiretirc]

That's in stark contrast to IMDB where the average rating is 6.9 (whereas most blockbusters llike this are usually over 8 in the early days) w/ 20k ratings and only one actual review gives it a 7 while all the rest are 1-6 out of 10.

According to IMDB, The Shawshank Redemption is the greatest film ever made. I rest my case.

I like this post.

I like this post a lot.

[Captain Paranoia]

Certainly no Joe Schmo posting “worst movie ever!!” on IMDb is going to tell you that, more than Close Encounters, it unfolds as an action-packed riff on Mysterious Skin.

I guess I'm not the only one who recognized the similarities.

[Finch]

Not seen the film, but this passage from Walter Chaw's review stuck with me:

What Disclosure Day is up against is our own ability to normalize literally anything almost immediately now. This means its entire Watchmen/“The Architects of Fear” premise fails in the face of real-world evidence to the contrary. We accept school shootings. We accept gerrymandering and the eradication of trans rights. We accept genocide on our dime, the pardoning of everyone trying to overthrow the government on January 6th, that we passed the red line for reversing climate change and never looked back. We accept the eradication of the rule of law and the wholesale looting of this country and its people. We accept that most of us won’t wear a mask to save someone else’s life. If Trump were to use a child as a human shield during one of the weekly attempts on his life, it wouldn’t end his career, Greg Stillson-style; it would add a few points to his favourability amongst his slavering base, however. What sweet summer children we were. And you’re trying to tell me disclosing that space aliens are real will cause everyone around the world to decide to give an ounce of a shit again? Well, that kind of happened already, and, you guessed it, nobody cares.

[therewillbeblus]

I think that misses the point for a variety of reasons but especially the fact that

Spoiler

normalizing corporeal events is different when presented with a faith-based truth that unites and humbles us

It’s also a spoiler, Finch