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!