Disclosure Day

Review: Steven Spielberg still has the sauce. For me, this movie hit on all the right notes. I enjoyed all of the performances from Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colman Domingo, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Wyatt Russell, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Elizabeth Marvel, & Tommy Martinez. I thought they all had a great scene presence and great chemistry with whoever they were onscreen with at the time. If I had to pick one MVP it would for sure be Blunt, with O’Connor as a close second. The visuals were extremely well done, both in terms of effects and cinematography. The car chase scene at the farmhouse was REALLY well shot, I loved the POV shots in that one. And I don’t know who did the score, but he should look into doing film scores as a job, he crushed it on this one. The writing wasn’t the best ever, but it was still positive, executing some very effective storytelling and switching from comedic to dramatic when necessary. I laughed more than I thought I would. And I was also surprised on some of the themes it touched on, like disunity in the world being disrupted by a major event like this, or how it could affect the foundations of religion. I think it was well paced and the second half was significantly stronger than the first. It really ends on a high and leaves a good taste in your mouth walking out of the theater. For some spoiler related thoughts, scroll all the way down to the bottom of this page.

High: This was a movie where you could really feel the director and their direction. Sometimes that’s good, sometimes it’s bad. When the director is Steven Spielberg, it’s good. The director left his mark on every single part of the film and when I say Spielberg is for everyone, that’s true. I usually do a glance around before the movie to see the average demographic of the theater. For example, ‘Backrooms’ all appeared to be mid-30s or younger. This movie had everyone. There were older movie goers all the way down to a group of teens who had their mall shopping bags in hand. My theater was filled up and there was just about every type of person in there. That’s awesome.

Low: Hmmmm. A low. I’m not totally sure. I don’t love that they showed the alien in the marketing, but we also get a glimpse at the extraterrestrials earlier than I thought we would. The story wasn’t riding on the mystique of what they look like. I guess I’d say a low is that I could’ve used a little more Colman Domingo. But that’s just because I love Colman Domingo.

Rating: 9/10

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SPOILER WARNING

Okay I really only want to address one thing that’s mildly a spoiler, even though it’s in the title of the film. The actual disclosure was handled really well. I was nervous it was going to show the news getting leaked and then the movie just immediately end. But we got to see it play out and how the whole world stopped to learn this news. It was extremely well done, to the point I had to snap out of it a bit at the end because I felt like I had actually just watched a news report telling me there was aliens. Great job everyone.