I left the theater angry and frustrated. The last twenty minutes or so struck me as naive -- "Everybody will believe it if it's on television and we tell them it's not AI." Oh Mr. Spielberg, you sweet, doe-eyed little dumpling, in today's world, Disclosure Day would be "fake news-ed" & "January 6ed" down the rabbit hole and out of the memory of the general public in no time at all. Anyway ... that 79 year period bothered me too. The great airship mysteries of the early 1900s would like a word.
Yep. The weird thing is, with all that expository dialogue, they still couldn't make the plot be a plot. Why did any of the things in the plot happen? Why didn't they release the files immediately after stealing them? Why did they build the house? Why did the two leads have to meet? Why was the surviving alien in Kansas? None of these things were given any kind of explanation. Bizarre obsession with plot but failure to link anything up.
The house! I agree, that was one of the weirder bits that nobody can explain to me. And why can Colin Firth use the astral-projection thing but not anyone else?
Side note but… why did these aliens only manage, somehow, to crash in the continental USA over the course of 79 years?
Let's just assume that Steven Spielberg knows what he's doing (to make money, not make good films). So, he puts the stupid plot holes in the script deliberately because this is what people fixate on and they can generate endless online commentary for years and years. A boring film- who cares? But a film that's full of plot holes made by a supposedly competent director, that's something people write Reddit posts about.
I think there are artists (filmmakers but also musicians and others) who do this, absolutely, but I don't think Spielberg is one. He's way too earnest for that.
Hahaha, I like the conspiratorial theme, very much in keeping with the movie! Spielberg is being held hostage by the greys, and his only way of communicating with the public is by making movies so dumb, we will be forced to send Reckless Ben to investigate...
Random thoughts: Blunt was very good. This was not cinematic at all, save for one early panoramic shot in and out of the car in the initial chase. There was very little high tension. The end was preordained and the bad guys were the keystone cops. Took my daughter on Father’s Day, I’m somewhat glad we missed the chance to see Close Encounters beforehand. I had talked it up. Disclosure day would have been even more of a let down. Midway I found myself bored and slightly disinterested. I was genuinely shocked people clapped at the stupid end. We will watch CE later in the week primarily to cleanse our souls. I generally love Spielberg - but I’m hating the soulessness of modern digital filmmaking.
Spielberg is in the phase of his career after having made a 2.5 hour film about how he fancied his mum. He is immune to everything now. He has self-actualised.
Going to give this one a hard pass. I find the lead-em-by-the-nose/club-em-to-death-with-the-obvious Spielberg handling very hard to take as I ripen into total misanthropy.
The trailers just look silly with the empty conceit of yumans losing fudge over hapless aliens marooned looking for a friend.
"Speaking Xhosa while giving a particularly hard blowjob" is a chef's kiss line btw!
Enjoyed your review—just left the theater and my family and I were all like, “Huh?!” The trailer was great—maybe it should have ended there. 😂 I did think Emily Blunt was amazing as always and the action scenes were enjoyable.
I don't know...it was Summer movie fluff. I had no expectations. I truly enjoyed the air-conditioning ( it was 105 out) and as a result was happy to sit through this silly movie. I left in a much better mood when I left the theater. Then went out for tacos. That is as good as it gets around here.
can't even wrap my head around missing ones fav team win the Premier League. if there's even a slight statistical probability they will win it all, you watch.
Hah, cheers, I felt like two barrels would re-energise the blog a bit after a couple of more niche posts, and DD delivered what I was after (though I was fully ready to enjoy it if it had turned out to be better)
Thankyou for watching it so we don´t have to. Is it so bad as to be good? Might it be worth the effort just to have 2+ hours of air conditioning in this heatwave?
Now, speaking of sci fi movies / TV series I wish someone would re boot ´The Invaders´
This film was kind of fascinating and therefore enjoyable to me because of what a mess it was. There are kernels of great concepts, some good sequences and excellent acting, but all watered down in a mush of confused themes and formulaic dialogue. Pretty mad that an original idea of this scale was given the green light though so in a way I'd rather defend than attack it overall. Though we really do need to have a chat about CGI animals. I see Supergirl coming up with that stupid fake dog and I just know it's going to piss me off. What happened to the good old-fashioned animal casting call
“while the cardinal, racoon and other beasties that appear in front of Kellner and Fairchild throughout the film also reside firmly in the Hallmark Channel uncanny valley”
I watched this terrible movie Thursday and then rewatched E.T. Saturday. There’s a real live raccoon that tries to eat the desiccated E.T. in a creek! Looks so great as it scurries away when the older brother arrives to rescue the creature.
I am not a fan of Spielberg in general so I have no interest in seeing this film. I strongly agree with you however about the case of discovering aliens: if it ever happened that definite, unambiguous proof was right in front of us we would get over it in a week. We all got used to nuclear weapons, or physics has advanced to the point that we can find out that virtually nothing is real, but very few people actually have had this road to Damascus experience from it.
The bits that I liked, I liked very much. “Possibly the worst movie of the year so far” is a stretch. “Wuthering Heights” is right there, and Michael’s into its second $billion.
Wuthering Heights at least had gumption, it was ridiculous and occasionally unhinged, but it took a swing. Michael, I haven't seen and never will; life's too short. But point taken, yeah.
I’d like to see Spielberg take a full couple of years on a single thing. Seems like he’s always juggling multiple director, producer and exec producer credits and the clichés and clunky exposition that fog up some of DD could be the result. Basically, I cut him a LOT of slack out of pure career-arc admiration, but no free pass. (Counterpoint, maybe that sole-focus was The Fabelmans: worthy but no skyrocket.)
Having commented on it, I was intrigued to check his workload. IMDB reports 35 “upcoming” producer(ish) credits which – even with a lot being just his name attached to get a ball rolling – is still a pretty daunting slate for a 79 year old.
You know, the critical response to Disclosure Day feels a lot like when Megalopolis came out and people said, "oh, it's hokey and overlong and the CGI looks like outtakes from a Linkin Park video -- but he made The Godfather! Five stars." Except that Megalopolis was genuinely good (imo) and this film was... mostly not. I guess I liked Emily Blunt as a de facto screwball comic heroine?
Although I was largely *not* bothered by the CGI, because I think the scenes are staged beautifully, so when I look back at them in my mind's eye I'm like "what an interesting image!" rather than "that is the fakest bird I have ever seen."
I left the theater angry and frustrated. The last twenty minutes or so struck me as naive -- "Everybody will believe it if it's on television and we tell them it's not AI." Oh Mr. Spielberg, you sweet, doe-eyed little dumpling, in today's world, Disclosure Day would be "fake news-ed" & "January 6ed" down the rabbit hole and out of the memory of the general public in no time at all. Anyway ... that 79 year period bothered me too. The great airship mysteries of the early 1900s would like a word.
Yep. The weird thing is, with all that expository dialogue, they still couldn't make the plot be a plot. Why did any of the things in the plot happen? Why didn't they release the files immediately after stealing them? Why did they build the house? Why did the two leads have to meet? Why was the surviving alien in Kansas? None of these things were given any kind of explanation. Bizarre obsession with plot but failure to link anything up.
The house! I agree, that was one of the weirder bits that nobody can explain to me. And why can Colin Firth use the astral-projection thing but not anyone else?
Side note but… why did these aliens only manage, somehow, to crash in the continental USA over the course of 79 years?
Let's just assume that Steven Spielberg knows what he's doing (to make money, not make good films). So, he puts the stupid plot holes in the script deliberately because this is what people fixate on and they can generate endless online commentary for years and years. A boring film- who cares? But a film that's full of plot holes made by a supposedly competent director, that's something people write Reddit posts about.
I think there are artists (filmmakers but also musicians and others) who do this, absolutely, but I don't think Spielberg is one. He's way too earnest for that.
Hahaha, I like the conspiratorial theme, very much in keeping with the movie! Spielberg is being held hostage by the greys, and his only way of communicating with the public is by making movies so dumb, we will be forced to send Reckless Ben to investigate...
Random thoughts: Blunt was very good. This was not cinematic at all, save for one early panoramic shot in and out of the car in the initial chase. There was very little high tension. The end was preordained and the bad guys were the keystone cops. Took my daughter on Father’s Day, I’m somewhat glad we missed the chance to see Close Encounters beforehand. I had talked it up. Disclosure day would have been even more of a let down. Midway I found myself bored and slightly disinterested. I was genuinely shocked people clapped at the stupid end. We will watch CE later in the week primarily to cleanse our souls. I generally love Spielberg - but I’m hating the soulessness of modern digital filmmaking.
It must be a new phenomena but the last film I was in - Top Gun Maverick, they also clapped… and this was my podunk town, not Cannes…
I'm not totally opposed to the odd clap, but it can be a bit much
People clapped at the end? Cmon... that's very corny
Spielberg is in the phase of his career after having made a 2.5 hour film about how he fancied his mum. He is immune to everything now. He has self-actualised.
Ah, I’m sorry, I didn’t realise, I’ll delete this now
Going to give this one a hard pass. I find the lead-em-by-the-nose/club-em-to-death-with-the-obvious Spielberg handling very hard to take as I ripen into total misanthropy.
The trailers just look silly with the empty conceit of yumans losing fudge over hapless aliens marooned looking for a friend.
"Speaking Xhosa while giving a particularly hard blowjob" is a chef's kiss line btw!
Enjoyed your review—just left the theater and my family and I were all like, “Huh?!” The trailer was great—maybe it should have ended there. 😂 I did think Emily Blunt was amazing as always and the action scenes were enjoyable.
Despite the tone of my review, perhaps, I do like her a lot. But this was slim pickings…
Wish she was allowed to just have her natural accent
I don't know...it was Summer movie fluff. I had no expectations. I truly enjoyed the air-conditioning ( it was 105 out) and as a result was happy to sit through this silly movie. I left in a much better mood when I left the theater. Then went out for tacos. That is as good as it gets around here.
A very stoic take!
can't even wrap my head around missing ones fav team win the Premier League. if there's even a slight statistical probability they will win it all, you watch.
This is exactly the type of takedown I needed to read to get motivated to watch this haha. Not in theatres, though.
Hah, cheers, I felt like two barrels would re-energise the blog a bit after a couple of more niche posts, and DD delivered what I was after (though I was fully ready to enjoy it if it had turned out to be better)
Thankyou for watching it so we don´t have to. Is it so bad as to be good? Might it be worth the effort just to have 2+ hours of air conditioning in this heatwave?
Now, speaking of sci fi movies / TV series I wish someone would re boot ´The Invaders´
I'm afraid that in my opinion it's simply bad enough to be bad... but if it's hot enough then any film is worth it for the cool dark, in my book
This film was kind of fascinating and therefore enjoyable to me because of what a mess it was. There are kernels of great concepts, some good sequences and excellent acting, but all watered down in a mush of confused themes and formulaic dialogue. Pretty mad that an original idea of this scale was given the green light though so in a way I'd rather defend than attack it overall. Though we really do need to have a chat about CGI animals. I see Supergirl coming up with that stupid fake dog and I just know it's going to piss me off. What happened to the good old-fashioned animal casting call
Bring back jobs for animal actors!
“while the cardinal, racoon and other beasties that appear in front of Kellner and Fairchild throughout the film also reside firmly in the Hallmark Channel uncanny valley”
I watched this terrible movie Thursday and then rewatched E.T. Saturday. There’s a real live raccoon that tries to eat the desiccated E.T. in a creek! Looks so great as it scurries away when the older brother arrives to rescue the creature.
I am not a fan of Spielberg in general so I have no interest in seeing this film. I strongly agree with you however about the case of discovering aliens: if it ever happened that definite, unambiguous proof was right in front of us we would get over it in a week. We all got used to nuclear weapons, or physics has advanced to the point that we can find out that virtually nothing is real, but very few people actually have had this road to Damascus experience from it.
The bits that I liked, I liked very much. “Possibly the worst movie of the year so far” is a stretch. “Wuthering Heights” is right there, and Michael’s into its second $billion.
Wuthering Heights at least had gumption, it was ridiculous and occasionally unhinged, but it took a swing. Michael, I haven't seen and never will; life's too short. But point taken, yeah.
I’d like to see Spielberg take a full couple of years on a single thing. Seems like he’s always juggling multiple director, producer and exec producer credits and the clichés and clunky exposition that fog up some of DD could be the result. Basically, I cut him a LOT of slack out of pure career-arc admiration, but no free pass. (Counterpoint, maybe that sole-focus was The Fabelmans: worthy but no skyrocket.)
He treads a very, very fine line between "earnest" and "sentimental", I think, and quite often slips up.
Having commented on it, I was intrigued to check his workload. IMDB reports 35 “upcoming” producer(ish) credits which – even with a lot being just his name attached to get a ball rolling – is still a pretty daunting slate for a 79 year old.
You know, the critical response to Disclosure Day feels a lot like when Megalopolis came out and people said, "oh, it's hokey and overlong and the CGI looks like outtakes from a Linkin Park video -- but he made The Godfather! Five stars." Except that Megalopolis was genuinely good (imo) and this film was... mostly not. I guess I liked Emily Blunt as a de facto screwball comic heroine?
Although I was largely *not* bothered by the CGI, because I think the scenes are staged beautifully, so when I look back at them in my mind's eye I'm like "what an interesting image!" rather than "that is the fakest bird I have ever seen."
CGI quality matters a lot, but beyond that - yeah! Agreed, largely.
I liked it. You people don’t get it at all.