(2026 dir. Steven Spielberg) Date Seen: June 16 2026
At this point Spielberg's just having a swell old time constructing all these signature oners / multi-plane dioramas. Those shots continue to wow, and more impressively, seem to go on longer and longer with each new film. He's always been one of our greatest natural visual storytellers, but all this modern movie tech has only made his work more expressive. Towards the end of the 2nd act of DISCLOSURE DAY there's a big revelation sequence involving the unlocking of repressed memories that genuinely inspired wonder for me and my wife. & one wrong note & the moment i'm referencing could've easily slipped into either overly spooky Whitley Strieber "Communion" territory or something just way too goofy. Screenwriter David Koepp and Spielberg maybe sprinkle a little too many cutesy Capra-corn character beats into this thing for my personal taste, but none of them hurt the film nearly as much as the final act’s compulsion to over-explain itself. Plot & character revelations that could've been so much more otherworldly & awe-inspiring without voiceover explaining so much of what was going on (imagine if in CLOSE ENCOUNTERS @ the Mothership arrival part a character kept interrupting via voiceover to elucidate like they were reading a children's fable); There were even 2 parts where the dialogue and score got so syrupy -- I started worrying we were wandering into "KICK THE CAN" territory, but thankfully the film would always rebound (that aforementioned segment from TWILIGHT ZONE: THE MOVIE being the only Spielberg directed bit I consider truly mediocre & beneath him). His sentimentality always works for me until he stops trusting the strength of his pictures.
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