Disclosure Day

I did not enjoy this movie very much. An outdated spy-action thriller with some great shots, cool set pieces, a strong score, but mostly a bloated, boring mess that never came together into anything meaningful.

You follow twin paths of two protagonists, weaving in important parts of their lives that seem to be building toward some kind of grand reveal. But then it basically abandons most pieces that it invests in (nuns, hello?). Emily Blunt is fine while Josh O'Connor weighs down his parts (similar to Knives Out 3 IMO); and then the most excellent Colman Domingo plays a wise, old... well... a well-acted one-note addition that was almost given an interesting story.

The villains were classic paper-thin Spielberg, which is fine (see: The Goonies, et al). But that one-dimensional "evil" just felt stupid and ill-fitting in this seemingly serious and ambitious story about life's greatest questions. And the deus ex weapon that opens the movie before being underexplained and inconsistently used? Bafflingly bad.

The movie overindulged especially with a first half that made the whole feel too long by not meaningfully building anything up in a real way and leading to nothing worthwhile. The second half almost seemed like it wanted to lazily change subjects instead of explore the notions the beginning brought up. Characters that were prominently featured in the beginning were seemingly forgotten about in the second half (or just abruptly sat down/stormed away). Even the live action + CGI stunk, e.g. the crop circle sequence 🤮, the boomer-brained belief that a modern broadcast would hold sway over our modern audience, and ultimately the seeming-eternity of somehow-uninteresting found footage — it all just sucked.

The big set piece, i.e. Spielberg's mechanical shark in this one? A (second or third?) weak chase scene with a laughably bad train moment that was both visually jarring and straight stupid screenplay, compounded by one of the terrible antagonists.

When it finally started trying to give some answers, the answers sucked. The unearthly powers, the house reconstruction, the alien tech, etc. And then it somehow slowly yet suddenly and mercilessly ends. And this is despite the alien lore being quite solid and touching on some things that could've been very worthwhile to build upon. Too many almost poignant statements or interesting paths that went nowhere and said nothing.

This is a movie for a certain audience who wants the greatest hits replayed and so I hope they get more out of it than I did.

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