Steven Spielberg's highly anticipated new film came out this week, and being a huge fan of his, I knew I had to see it as soon as possible. The film touches on a subject I've always been interested in, which is aliens and how the world would react if they were proven to be real. This film, Disclosure Day, tackles that subject and the questions of religion and human emotion that would be tied to the existence of aliens. The movie has a great cast with some new faces, but mostly established A-list stars like Emily Blunt, Colin Firth, and Coleman Domingo. There are also some good up-and-coming stars in here, like Wyatt Russell (of nepobaby fame), Eve Hewson (also of nepobaby fame), and a starring role for Josh O'Connor. Needless to say, I was very excited to watch this movie.
I'm going to just get it out of the way: this movie is not very good. In fact, it's a bit of a mess, especially as a Spielberg project. This isn't the first time he's tackled the subject of aliens; in fact, he has quite a few movies that deal with this subject matter. This one isn't the worst, but it's not that great when put alongside movies like E.T. and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The story in Disclosure Day picks up when a young man named Daniel is revealed to have stolen data that shows the existence of aliens, with military footage that's been hidden for decades. He's being chased by a man named Noah, who wants to stop him from releasing the videos to the public. From Daniel's point of view, the world deserves to know the truth. From Noah's point of view, he thinks the world will go into chaos if such information is revealed to the public. Things get really weird when a woman named Margaret starts to have supernatural powers and realizes she needs to help Daniel on his mission to reveal the truth. It's an interesting concept in theory, but unfortunately, the movie just doesn't do a great job at making this as interesting as it should've been.
One of the main problems this movie has is its pacing. It starts off quite slowly, as all the characters are being established. It feels like the movie wastes a lot of time building these characters that, at the end of the day, I just didn't really care too much about. There are also a lot of strangely setup actions scenes, where they make the characters (especially the bad guys) seem incredibly inept. The action can come across as awkward in that way, and it takes away from the sense of danger. That's not to say that all the action scenes were bad, because there were a few good ones, but nothing amazing. The movie also has a problem with weird-looking CGI. I don't know what it was, but there are scenes where they have CGI animals, and they look so off-putting that it took me out of the movie. It feels weird to say that about a Spielberg movie, who is one of the most iconic filmmakers of all time. Well, I guess they can't all be hits.
I felt like the end of the movie was quite good. I don't want to give anything away, but I will say I enjoyed it despite it not really giving a lot of details. The performances were all solid, though some of the things they had the actors do were pretty weird. I got to give props to Emily Blunt because her character was so weird at times, but she did a good job at making it believable. I can't say I completely hated this movie, but because it's a Spielberg movie, my expectations were so high. This might be one of the most forgettable movies in his catalog. If you have zero interest in aliens, then this movie would probably be a huge waste of time for you, as it doesn't really introduce any new elements to make the subject any more interesting. If you DO have an interest in aliens, then maybe this movie will be interesting enough to give a watch, maybe you'll even like it. As someone who loves alien movies (E.T, Arrival, Signs), this movie was just okay. I really don't see myself ever watching this movie again; it just didn't have anything unique or extraordinary to make this worth coming back to.
So yeah, pretty sad to go into a Spielberg film and not like it. I'll still look forward to whatever he does next, because he's earned that from his countless other amazing movies. If you want to see a great alien movie, then maybe watch some of Spielberg's older ones that I mentioned earlier (E.T. and Close Encounters). Maybe this new movie Disclosure Day will grow on me as time passes, and maybe I will give it another chance, but for now it's just a pretty forgettable movie with some decent to good moments sprinkled in every now and then.
GRADE: C-
No comments
Post a Comment