Full Disclosure: Disclosure Day Is Awesome! 

Disclosure Day is a 2026 Universal Pictures movie directed by Steven Spielberg. It was written by David Koepp, based on an original story by Spielberg. It stars Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor, with support from Colin Firth and Colman Domingio. The score was compsed by long-time Spielberg collaborator John Williams. The film was made on a budget of $115-million and it has made $120.5-million at the box office so far.

During the first scene of this movie, my friend leaned over to me and said, “this looks like a movie.” She meant it as an insult. While she had a point, I think it's important to remember why Disclosure Day feels so much like that. It is, after all, a Spielberg picture. In a lot of ways, he is the benchmark for what we understand as a popcorn movie. He created (or at least perfected) a lot of the tropes that we associate so much with the biggest releases, to the point that a lot of them feel ripe for parody. If this were someone else's movie, I would agree that it looked derivative. But to dismiss Disclosure Day for feeling too much like a movie would be like saying that a Hitchcock movie felt too much like a thriller or that a Scorsese movie had too many gangsters.

For me, it didn't bother me. I saw my friend's point, but this is Spielberg. This is exactly what I was expecting. As the movie continued, it did hit some pretty standard big-movie plot points, but the difference was that they were executed by a master filmmaker. When the best commits to the ordinary, it becomes something extraordinary.

That's not to say that Disclosure Day is nothing more than well-executed clichés. I would argue that Spielberg is still being quite experimental in his old age. The most curious thing about this film is the structure of its story. For a good portion of the film, I had no idea what was going on. That's usually a bad thing, when pushed too far. But Spielberg expertly pushed me right to the brink of confusion without ever leaving me totally, completely lost. I wanted to know more. I wanted to understand. And that cerebral mystery is what kept me engaged through the first half of the movie.

Spielberg's expertise at tension is especially evident in this movie. There's one scene that involves train. Even though I've seen enough movies to know that, since this scene was in the middle of the movie, there was no way our protagonists would get seriously harmed, I was still on the edge of my seat. He does such a good job of pushing the obstacles to near insurmountable heights before having the heroes prevail. It was a joy to sit through. I felt like I was being led by a master through a cinematic world that was full of unexpected surprises.

The director is no stranger to alien movies. Yet, in this foray into the extra-terrestrials, he still finds ways to make these UFOs surreal, heady and fascinating. Even though the aliens are classic aliens, their methods felt totally new to me. How they communicate with humans was awesome. The use of suppressed memories and mental recreations was awe-inspiring. The final reveal had no reason being that emotional!

With all that said, there are still some elements of Spielberg films that aren't my favourite, and they're present here. The most notable is the villain, played by Firth, being largely a comically angry person. Spielberg's villains have never been my favourite. I think that, in this movie, while Firth was a little goofy, I still liked his motives. I liked that he was pushed by a fear of the unknown. It's not that he was against the reveal of the aliens. He just wasn't sure what would happen once the world knew. It wasn't greed or spite that pushed him. It was fear. That, to me, is kind of cool.

Disclosure Day is a movie, in the most literal sense. That has clearly rubbed some people the wrong way, as audience reception has been mixed. To me, under the control of a master like Spielberg, a movie feeling like a movie still feels fresh and is still very entertaining. I loved this movie. You can argue that there are formulaic elements to it, and I won't debate you. But I still think Spielberg finds space to be creative, try new things and deliver one awesome, cinematic experience.