Disclosure Day

2026

Welcome to the Steven Spielberg Cinematic Universe. You’ve been here all along.

It has been a long time since I had a cinematic experience like Disclosure Day. First of all, the movies I want to see are never in the rooms with the really big screens, but this one was. How I wish that I could watch every film on such a scale! It was incredible. But, all that screen means nothing if the movie is no good. This movie is so good! Like, “oh, this is what going to the cinema is like,” good. Like “I can’t unclench my body” good. Like “jaw on floor, next to tears” good. This is, finally finally finally, a true summer blockbuster. A blockbuster like we haven’t seen in decades. A blockbuster the likes of which we haven’t seen since the days of…Steven Spielberg.

I cannot tell you much about this movie, as the entire tension is the unfolding “disclosure” that is so masterfully teased out over the length of the film. Spielberg throws us right into the mystery with no preparation (except for some very well-made trailers), and we have to piece it all together on the run, as it were—just like our stars, Emily Blunt and Josh O’Connor. That kind of storytelling—done at this level—is hypnotic. Narratives are built on our drive to get answers, our need to know what happens next, and the electrical tension of having just enough information to long for the next scene—and no more.

Blockbuster narratives, of course, are also built on exciting set pieces: chases, reversals, secrets, betrayals, explosions, and shadowy pursuers. It’s all here. It’s all thrilling. This film manages to do so much at the same time! It strings together perfectly pitched scenes of suspense and danger with carefully metered out exposition, overwhelming emotion, and a passel of themes and subplots that turn out not to be subplots.

There are easily half a dozen concomitant stories that you can choose to trace. The film has as many layers as you wish to seek. It works marvelously as simply great storytelling. But you could also examine the questions it raises about humanity’s innate worship instinct and the essential nature of faith, be it misplaced or not. You could look into its comments on what I officially dub political downheaval: a sort of socioeconomic entropy. Within such a framework, it looks at how humans have a basic drive to question and an inherent sense of when they are being lied to. It can talk to you about the nature of the Image and the power of media. Its questions about the inherent goodness or badness of humanity can be plumbed. It tackles issues of responsibility to use knowledge well. Do you disclose every piece of information you have and let the consequences come? Do you have a duty to allow people to choose how much they wish to know? Do you want to know everything you know? Do you wish to find out the answers to all of your questions? And who makes those decisions on behalf of humanity in general? Do you have a right to choose your level of ignorance? Is truth always a good thing?

Do you REALLY want to satisfy that drive for answers that pushes you through a good narrative, when you don’t know what those answers might be?

Disclosure Day is phenomenal for many reasons. Emily Blunt gives the greatest performance of her life, and she deserves an Oscar for it. Colin Firth is a great misguided mastermind. Eve Hewson (Bono’s daughter) has an especially impactful scene with Firth that provokes a physical reaction in the viewer, as she deftly juggles themes of faith, insanity, technology, abuse of power, and agency. The film fits nicely into Spielberg’s canon, bridging such films as E.T., Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and even Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The sheer spectacle and entertainment value are massive.

Underneath (or perhaps overtop) of everything, it is a call for radical empathy. And, darn it, I cried during the credits because I felt part of the human race. I felt the breadth and size of the human race and my place within it. I felt like I belonged in it. How did Steven Spielberg make me feel something I have never felt before? I’m starting to think that he can do anything, even reignite the magic of the cinematic experience.