Disclosure Day & Backrooms

Yeah, so this is, I believe, Steven Spielberg's 37th feature film, which is pretty extraordinary.

He is, obviously, I hardly need to say that he's a living legend and has reshaped cinema in his own image across... a host of different genres, including the extraterrestrial alien invasion movie.

I mean, this goes right the way back to Close Encounters in 1977, which is obviously seen as one of the definitive first contact movies.

And I think what Disclosure Date is, is basically I would describe it as the spiritual sequel to Close Encounters.

It revisits a lot of the same themes, albeit it explores those themes in the modern world in a much more disillusioned, cynical modern world compared to 1977 when Close Encounters came out.

But like the earlier film, it takes place in the American heartland.

It rotates around an ensemble of different characters, each grappling with the potential of information fallouts and personal revelations so primarily you have emily blunt as the um weather forecaster who all of a sudden finds herself gifted uh with the seeming extraterrestrial ability of telepathy and speaking in an alien language and speaking in other human language other human languages And then you have Josh O'Connor as the whistleblower who's basically gone on the run from his own company with basically a plot MacGuffin that will threaten to blow the whole alien conspiracy angle wide open.

And Colin Firth is the incongruous, the British bad guy who is kind of coming after him.

You know, when I think of like sinister government officials at the head of an American organization, I don't think of Colin Firth, although I do love Colin Firth.

And then Common Domingo is basically Josh O'Connor's man on the inside, who for most of the movie appears to be inside a giant warehouse building a model model home.

But I can't go to I can't go further than that.

Yeah, I'll draw a line at that because I don't want to spoil anything for people who haven't seen it.

but yeah it's basically as I said it is the spiritual sequel to Close Encounters and it's scripted by David Koepp although the story originated with Spielberg Koepp is credited with the final script and it does sort of glancingly touch on some interesting ideas so the idea of If you could expose several decades of an alien conspiracy on Earth in this day and age, what would it do to people? Would it further send people into paranoia? What would it do to the concept of organized religion? The idea of if you have people believing in a monotheistic religion and then all of a sudden you expose the fact that we're not alone in the universe, what would that do to people's psychology? Would it send them into a panic? That's just one strand of the movie that's kind of, again, sort of thrown out there.

I think there are, for me, there are a lot of ideas that are kind of glancingly touched on, but not in any great depth.

It's one of those things where I think, although I did broadly enjoy it, I wouldn't call it one of my favorite Spielberg movies.

I mean, I'd say it's probably a mid-tier Spielberg movie.

I kind of watched it thinking a lot of it feels quite behind the times.

I mean, the whole idea of the world we live in now is so much scarier than anything before.

that an alien conspiracy could suggest.

I mean, you know, we're living in a much more dangerous world now anyway.

So I just think the threat that this film poses it does feel about 30 or 40 years behind the times.

It feels very close encounters.

It also feels very post X-Files.

Like the X-Files did all this stuff in its original run back in the 1990s before it eventually ran out of steam.

And I'm kind of like, I'm not quite sure there are no revelations in this.