Rent Disclosure Day (2026)

The America They Arrive In - Disclosure Day review by griggs

Fifty years after Richard Dreyfuss built a mountain out of mashed potato, Spielberg's back asking whether we're alone — except the real question in 2026 is whether anyone would put their phone down long enough to care. Disclosure Day has the confidence of a director who still knows how to stage a chase, hold a reveal, and let something enormous and unknowable hang over a frame. Kaminski points the camera at light, scale or sky and every frame looks composed.

Colin Firth's villain is chilling — calm, convinced he's the last reasonable man alive, and rarely raising his voice. Colman Domingo sharpens every scene he's in despite limited screen time. Blunt becomes the emotional centre; O'Connor starts strongly, then gets carried along by the machinery.

The third act wobbles. Spielberg favours wonder over answers, usually a strength, but here the ending feels slightly weightless. A little too long, a little too soft on landing, but still unmistakably Spielberg: humane, handsome, and better than most blockbusters currently being extruded by the franchise sausage machine.

One thing that struck me afterwards: Spielberg's aliens have always arrived at precisely the wrong moment in American history to be considered welcome. From Dreyfuss chasing visitors through Carter-era uncertainty, to E.T. hiding from Reagan-era authorities, to Tom Cruise running through the surveillance paranoia of War of the Worlds, the extraterrestrials are often less invaders than outsiders. Disclosure Day continues the pattern. Its visitors are met not with wonder but with enforcement and detention. Spielberg has spent half a century telling us we're not alone; what changes from film to film is the America receiving the visitor.

Alien Conspiracy Thriller - Bold & Fun - Disclosure Day review by GI

Steven Spielberg's latest alien conspiracy thriller is entertaining although a little too earnest at times as it mixes deadly seriousness with a sort of twinkle of the eye mischief vibe. For the most part, once you get settled in, this leaps into a Hitchcockian style chase film, very North By Northwest (1959), as Josh O'Connor's Paul and his girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson) are being chased by some sinister Government agents over a bag of tapes and a strange artefact (the film's macguffin) that Paul has stolen from a secret Government laboratory, run by a snarly Colin Firth, where he once worked. These chases are quite relentless and Paul and Jane prove very adept at getting away. Meanwhile, TV weather presenter Margaret (Emily Blunt, on fine form) is at home when she becomes entranced after a bird flies into her apartment and suddenly appears to have mind reading capabilities and speaking various languages without realising she's doing it. All these characters eventually unite in the story where it's revealed that they have various forms of evidence of alien visits and cover ups led by Firth & Co who are desperate none of it gets out. Paul and Margaret are determined the world must know! For the most part this is all very Spielberg, extremely well executed set pieces mainly the chases, great special effects as you'd expect, but a story that feels a little laboured and it has the Spielberg themes surrounding childhood experience, a child's imagination and comments on religion. The message that the world will unite in some harmony over the revelations the narrative builds to is a little too saccharin for me as I doubt it would at all. This is a film that fans of Spielberg's earlier, and better, Close Encounters Of The Third Kind (1977) will recognise as similar in story. That's not to say it's a bad thing as here this director proves he is still front and centre of big, entertaining cinema and it's certainly a film that is enjoyable if a little underwhelming.