Is Disclosure Day Spielberg’s Most Hopeful Film Or His Most Naive?

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and welcome to Celebrating Cinema, a podcast for the love of cinema. I'm Laura Gommans, and I'm here with our producer Elliot Bloom. Hello, what's up? We're going to discuss Spielberg's highly anticipated new alien epic Disclosure Day, which I have to say is getting quite mixed reviews, honestly. It's really divisive. Find out what we think after I share some fun things that are going on at LAB111 in Amsterdam in the upcoming weeks. If you're into UFO and Alien stuff, we're doing a whole program on the other worldly cinema of UFOs and cosmic visitors. Cinema has a history of looking skyward in search of fear and wonder and possibility beyond human understanding, and we've partnered up with historian Alexander Bartels to create this program. He'll also be doing introductions to The Thing on June 18th, Close Encounters of the Third Kind on June 25th, and Memoria on June 29th. But first, Elliot, what have you been watching lately? I finally got to watch Obsession. Oh my god, welcome. It was a lot of fun, and yeah, it's a really simple setup or promise, but it works so well with this idea of like if you could wish for anything and that thing being for the person you love to love you back, what would that look like? It just spirals out of control in a very, very chaotic way. And what I liked about it, there's like a few really gory moments, but not enough that I'm squealing and having to look away too much. And there's I think like two or three pretty big jump scares, just the one that I very much recall. How did you do with those? And jump scares, I can manage it. I find them a bit more fun. Okay, yeah. It's the blood and gore that really gets to it. Right, right, right, right, right. Which I think I have a different friend who's really bad with jump scares, and I do remember that you're the one who doesn't like any gore, so it really... And there's one scene that really is a little gory. It's really cool, given like a conversation we had about back rooms and sort of these YouTube turn directors that you're really seeing them.

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They've been what cleared over 100 million at the box office. Obsession seems to be one of these few films that making more and more money as the weeks go on. Yeah, first one since ET to do more in the second and third week than it's first week. And it's projected to make like 250 million on a budget of 750,000. And what have you been watching recently? Oh man, I was also a little bit late to the party, but I watched The Sheep Detectives. What is that? Oh my god, The Sheep Detectives. Okay, so The Sheep Detectives, how do I explain? It's huge, Ackman. He's a shepherd. He has a bunch of sheep and he lives in a little British town. Then he's murdered, but he's been reading his sheep, his CJI sheep, murder mystery stories every night. So his sheep know everything about detective stuff. So the sheep help the idiot policeman who's played by Nicholas Braun, cousin Greg from Succession. They help him solve the murder of Hugh Jackman the shepherd. And it's truly, it's a classic British daytime murder mystery. I don't know who it's for. Maybe for me? I don't know, I've seen a lot of people say this is like the new Paddington. This is amazing. This is five stars. I didn't think that. I thought it was a solid three and a half fun time. Stacked cast. Like Brian Cranston, Hugh Jackman, Hong Chau, Emma Thompson, Brett Goldstein has a couple of voices. It's just a really stacked cast and it's a really fun. It's another one that you can kind of stick in that folder of like, if you go home and have to watch a movie with your parents maybe, you know, this is like a perfect contender. I quite liked it. Hearing you having to explain the plot? Yes, I know it is one of those moments where it's like, I can't believe this is my job. But yeah, The Sheep Detectives, I had not heard of it leading up to it. It's released like the poster dropped and I was like,

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what the fuck is this? It's like the poster is a bunch of sheep holding a Polaroid of Hugh Jackman. And I was like, and what fever dream did I end up? I can't believe I missed this. Also, even crazier, it's written by Craig Mazin, who's the guy that did like Chernobyl and stuff. What's okay? Yeah, and I'd say like, I think the central theme of it is Lost and Grief and Remembering. It is one of those kids movies that has a way more meaningful overarching theme, which I think is nice. Re-Super Mario Galaxy. Disclosure day is Steven Spielberg's new movie, a return to subject he loves and we generally love to see him tackle aliens. I did the ancient aliens meme, but it's an audio medium. We follow a minimum of two stories. First off, Daniel Kellner, played by Josh O'Connor. He's got intelligence agency Wardex on his ass, because he has a backpack full of USB sticks, containing basically 79 years of undisclosed alien info, as well as a mysterious object that everyone seems to be really nervous about. They just kidnapped and released his girlfriend Jane, played by Bono's daughter Eve Hewson. So a few miles down the road, we have Emily Blunt's Margaret Fairchild. She is this like sassy weather lady at a local Kansas news station, and one day on her way to work, she is visited by a bird, and now she speaks Russian, Korean, and during her weather segment, she starts speaking some mysterious alien clicky language. By the way, this all happens during an escalating lead-up to nuclear war. That's all playing out on the news. It's clear that something is going on for reasons yet to be disclosed, but it is important that Daniel and Margaret find each other. Here's a clip. Good morning Kansas City. Let's take a look at today. Let's, let's, today is, today's, today's.

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So before we start talking about what we thought, something really fun happened during the promo of this movie. Maybe our listeners are familiar with my esteemed colleague Ali Plumb. He's that guy from the BBC with the glasses, who always does those fun interviews you watch on YouTube, and he always has a lot of fun with his guests. He was hosting a Steven Spielberg-themed pub quiz, and Steven Spielberg just happened to show up. It was a really big viral moment. It was even on the news here in the Netherlands, like, and it just so happens that Ali is one of my good friends. So I asked if he wanted to tell us in a little voice note on the pod, how this came about, what was that like? Fair warning, it starts with a bit of unprompted flattery, which I could have cut out, but I'll keep it in because I love compliments. Here's Ali. Hey Laura, how's it going? I missed you. How are you? You are beautiful and kind and great. I think you're going to go far. All right, so I'm just stalling because I still haven't processed the fact that Steven Spielberg came into one of my quizzes on Friday alongside Colman Domingo. And look, there's no way of talking about any of this. That's something like a total expletive deleted. I'm fully aware that this is a moment in my life I'll never forget. And I'm a person of extreme privilege. I get to review movies and watch films and occasionally host quizzes where Steven Spielberg turns up. But... And for those who don't know, I host a film quiz here in the UK, but also in Ireland and elsewhere where I go to cinemas and I take over the biggest screen, if I can, and I put on a big quiz. And through a lot of hard work from people, I basically managed to speak to some folks about the chances of getting like anyone even vaguely famous to turn up to one of my quizzes and ask a few questions. And often a lot of the people I've approached say, hey, yeah, I'd be up for it, but maybe when I'm promoting a movie. And so I cracked on with hosting quizzes. Fast forward to beginning of this year, late last year, I'd just sort of got it into my head that maybe Spielberg might be willing to do this sort of thing

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with Disclosure Day coming out today, right now, whenever you're listening to this. And it just sort of worked out a lot of emails, a lot of back and forth, it was incredible. He is such a friendly, personable, giving guy. I never dreamed that he'd turn up with half a Guinness in his hand, and Coleman was just really charming too. And then I had the dream country where they asked the first questions of the quiz. I am insufferable and awful, and I can only apologize, but I really think you're great, Laura. So I had to respond to you when you said, hey, give us a voice memo. Ali, too kind, too kind. That's awesome. So it is fun to see that like a lot of work did go into getting Steven Spielberg to show up. I do like that in the news, it kind of seems like this was an incredibly spontaneous thing that happened, but it is still spontaneous that he's just like a good old geyser about it and just like, is in for a good time. I love that. It's funny that you have the Spielberg effect, but also in real life with just himself and not just his movies. It's that like, oh my God, like, you know, film the crowd and make them believe that magic. It's a Spielberg face when he walks in, and everybody gets caught. Yeah, it is funny because that is like off of the press tour. I feel like that was kind of like the biggest buzziest moment from the press tour, which is maybe a good segue into talking about what we thought of the movie. I had to say for me, apart from Dune Part Three, this has been my most anticipated release of the year. I am a huge Spielberg fan. I absolutely obsessed with Spielberg. So I have to say, this didn't really work for me. Ooh. I first thought I was, where did you watch it? I watched it yesterday night at the premiere at Tuschinski in Amsterdam. Ellie was going to go see the press screening and I was like, Ellie, I'm sorry. I want to see this with my partner. I want to see this with my friends. It's a huge deal to me, so we're recording this kind of a day late because I was a diva about it

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and I wanted to go to the premiere. But yeah, I think that was a really fun experience. Like the premiere was really cool. They had this whole newsroom build set up where you could read the news for Disclosure Day. Great on-brand cocktails with dry eyes and shit. It was really, really fun. It was a really fun event. Yes. I want that. I mean, I just- Put a dagger through my heart. I know, because like- Tell me, tell me. Well, I could sit here and talk for seven hours if you want. I'm not going to let you- I mean, we came home from the premiere yesterday and me and my partner just spent like two hours talking about like, what about this? And then what about this? And then I had like a call at midnight with one of my friends being like, we need to talk about this. Anyway, there are things about it that I liked. I like the first act. I thought the first act was very exciting. I was like, I love where this is going to go. I wonder where this is going to take us. Josh O'Connor's great. Emily Blunt is great. There's a great sequence where Emily Blunt gets these powers and sort of half realizes that it's happening to her. And she plays that note for note perfect. Like, I love the performance. I love the blocking on that. I loved that. Where it started to lose me, Elliot, and I'm so dying to hear your thoughts about this, but where it started to lose me and kind of take off the mask. At the end of the first act, Josh O'Connor's farmhouse is surrounded with what, 75 FBI agents. Josh O'Connor's outside, his girlfriend is in the house. He has to get back to the house, but he has to get past like 70 FBI agents. How the hell is he going to do this? How about walk through an open field because all of these FBI agents conveniently have their backs turned towards him and they have no peripheral vision? Well, can I just say one thing on that? Go ahead. The FBI have, have they or have they not proven themselves to be totally dysfunctional? Emily Blunt, fool, comical, commentary. They've let go. Be short, like multiple times, I was willing to,

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yeah, spend my belief that I get it. But... It's the excitement in saying, this government agency is just a bunch of low-high-key fucking idiots. You know what I'm saying? It's kind of true. They're all like, Laurel and Harding all over the place. Fucking, you know, Can Foley when they fucking tumble and fall. Then I started kind of looking at a lot of the elements of the movie Kind of all of them exists because it's kind of convenient for them to exist. Josh O'Connor has a girlfriend Jane. She is conveniently an ex-none So they can vaguely introduce a vague theme of religious undertones that they by the way completely abandoned Lady Emily Blunt is conveniently a news anchor because they might have to like barge into the news station later on to do a Disclosure Day like so many of these things was like boy isn't that just convenient and I don't know that's why it kind of lost me and I have to say I'm really upset about it because I really wanted to like this more than anything else but we talked a little bit yesterday and You seemed to be a little bit more enthusiastic about it than I was. Yeah, tell me your thoughts So I loved this film and I loved it for many reasons And I think of course while watching it it felt like Spielberg's language of cinema hasn't really evolved for like the last 20 years and you really kind of feel that you feel his age in this film And so I think yes, he is a bit more not I don't want to say lazy, but he's just he doesn't care necessarily for these convenient plot points and character developments And I don't mind it because it's more about what he's trying to convey and the message behind that that I think is far more important for him as a filmmaker rather than It all making sense. Can you tell me about the message because yeah, that was a little bit unclear to me Like okay, what is the broader message and is this the best way to say it? But I'm really interested in what do you feel the underlying message was and I'm actually By the way, we're discussing this movie

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We're really gonna try and maybe shy away from spoilers in the first bit and the spoiler alarm So I also said to you that I think it's his most sentimental film and the reason why I say this of course his previous film was the Fabelmans, which is basically incredibly sentimental. Yeah, it's an autobiography biopic basically It's very easy I think to be sentimental about your own life and your own child and everything But here I think he's sentimental about like the human race and he is giving a vision of what is still possible for us Like it's a very hopeful film in the sense that yeah It's sort of these government agencies and and how the sort of bureaucracy of power Really wants us to sort of hate each other and divide each other But really there's a really beautiful monologue which again is very convenient We're between Colman Domingo's character Hugo Wakefield and Colin Firth's character Noah Where I call when basically sort of tells you the whole premise of the film of that empathy is like the ruling emotion of the universe I thought that's so beautiful that at 80 years old You often see like these guys become a lot more cynical in their late years That's still even now that he is able to hold on to something and project sort of his idea of what the world could be like idea of that we are all entitled to the truth in some way because only with the truth are we able to be open and honest and to empathize with each other but when we're lied to and manipulated in all these ways then it's easier to be divided and I find that really powerful and I think what I also like is like Spielberg's previous films about aliens E.T. close encounters it's more about us looking towards the aliens and for me this was more about the aliens looking back at us and what do they see and how do we yeah how do we come to terms with that yeah no I and I agree like I love his other two movies about space I think both close encounters and E.T. are very human movies I think especially close encounters is actually the aliens are kind of just like a metaphor as they often are but what I love about those movies is they really make you care

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about the characters here I kind of felt even though Josh O'Connor and Emily Blunt are two of the best we have I would say I know nothing about these people what I did enjoy was Emily Blunt and Wyatt Russell her partner by the way Kurt Russell son this is a movie teaming with Nepo Babies who by the way I'll do a great job but I did enjoy their little like relationship stuff and it was comical it was in my opinion a completely different movie but then in the end I feel like Josh O'Connor Emily Blunt I know nothing about these people or like what moves them or you know and you kind of find out a little bit more throughout but I think that's kind of the point and I mean again we can talk about it in the spoiler territory zone but they say that they're vessels that they're passengers for something else and so that's also why it wasn't for me about yeah being connected to these individual characters specifically but more what he's trying to do with the message that they're carrying and I really bought into that there were a few moments I was crying at some points just I think it's kind of difficult to move past this point without sounding the spoiler alarm so maybe maybe we can put the time codes in the show notes to kind of go here we're going into like spoiler so come back to this when you've seen the movie and we're gonna kind of discuss a little bit more in detail what happens further down the line in the movie yeah actually just come back to your thing because of you not liking the film I was kind of expecting this film to divide people only after watching it of course because I think it's different to a usual Spielberg film that you might expect like of course it still has the same beat sort of like great blocking some action sequences this kind of stuff but it's also kind of devoid of like real action or like these real suspense stuff because in a way now that we're in spoiler territory the way that Emily Blunt's character Margaret and and Josh O'Connor's character Daniel Kellner they're always able to get themselves out of these like most bizarre situations of just being like completely surrounded by fed agents and all this kind of stuff and the only reason why they're able to

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do it is because their characters well Margaret's character is able to read people's minds basically and so she's able to empathize with them and suddenly sort of like the sees part and they're free to continue on their journey which of course did you like that can I just kind of paint the picture for that scene specifically so so Emily Blunt gets these powers Josh O'Connor at some point is captured by this intelligence agency she kind of like barges in there which is a super fun sequence because she's still discovering her powers she kind of gets to the gate she's like I know your agent blah blah blah and the day code is this and what it was super super super super fun Colin Firth's character Noah Scanlon up to this point his whole thing is I'm a super evil villain and my whole life's motive is to like get back these this backpack stuff it's really important to me Emily Blunt walks in there it's a moment that is clearly played for emotion and it unintentionally just was really funny to me it was just like she walks in she kind of gets in Colin Firth's face and you can see him just kind of go Joyce or whatever it was like dead wife and then the camera kind of like moves past him and you can see that Emily Blunt is now presenting as his dead wife and she goes like I love you or whatever and then he's like oh my god well you guys should probably get out of here then they walk through a sea of the 500 FBI agents and one by one she stops it like five people put her hand on their shoulder then it does that thing and it's like suddenly she's an old man saying I'm proud of you son and suddenly she's a child saying I love you mom or like and I thought it was so incredibly corny and I'm sad because I do like Spielberg's sentimentality usually or has but it usually feels earned and now again it just felt incredibly convenient yeah I mean I found that sequence pretty comical as well do you think it's played for laughs or do you think it's played for no I think yeah it's played for emotion but like maybe you can say though

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that like it shows our lack of understanding or own empathy to appreciate what that moment might mean for those two characters for someone to read their mind and understand them in that moment to change how they feel or to change their behavior yeah but it's like so many people in this government agency that are just gonna like as you say like the sea part and just let them walk out of air and then they're out of leisurely pace just like driving away until the evil FBI agents like yeah I just didn't feel any of that was earned I was just constantly left with what well what the well what the fuck you know and it kind of annoyed me then an interesting observation I made is after that happens they get to like a train crossing they're waiting there evil FBI agent shows up he rears them and he's trying to push them into the train this is something that Spielberg is usually so good at like this almost would have reminded me of something like dual like one of his earlier films he's really he tends to be good at these like car chasey things here I kind of never felt like they were in actual peril also because the train is just incredibly CGI no point do you feel like there's actually a train there at no point do you feel like this is an actual stunt and this made me think of something that has something to do with Spielberg's age which was say it again 79 79 years old that sequence read so lame to me because it was CGI and the CGI looks kind of bad like it kind of looks like a John Lewis Christmas commercial like these animals come up and you can tell that they spent like one and a half day on creating each animal it just oh man like I would have really liked that to be practical because Steven Spielberg was always the king of that now he loves CGI isn't it interesting to see Steven Spielberg now actually relying on quick and easy CGI because this wasn't Jurassic Park style very intricate CGI Martin Scorsese embracing AI promoting

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AI Kane Parsons 20 year old director of backrooms saying I want to do everything practical Curry Barker everything practical I just thought that was an interesting thing it's like oh is this like boomers posting minion pictures on Facebook like look at what we can do look at what we can do and it's like yeah no we don't fucking want that though I was thinking also a lot of Francis Ford Coppola's film Megalopolis and like in a way yes it can come across as lazy or quick like the quick and easy fix and the kind of grace that I tried to give them is that they of course have a vision they want it to be in such certain way but they are so old that like to be able to make a film and like the amount of time it takes to be on set all the time with all this kind of stuff maybe for them they're out of the age where they're like oh it makes it easier for me I'm okay to compromise on these kind of things yeah because like I said they have made so many great films and they've made so many films that perhaps they just more about the message of the film that they want to share rather than how it looks as much. And I think because you see that happening with so many older filmmakers, that's how I read it. I think we should cut them slack and kind of. That's kind of like my whole thing with this is like if you're expecting a Spielberg film of like E.T. Calabur, Jurassic Park, that was him like 40 years ago almost. And like I rather want to know how he thinks and feels in this current moment that he's in and how he's able to translate that to a film rather than expecting him to just consistently reproduce another banger after banger after banger. And so yeah, I mean, I fully agree with that sentiment. I just think there would have been a more interesting way to do it. Also, the story is written by David Koepp who is a screenwriter he's worked with a bunch before. And I'm also kind of maybe getting an inkling that maybe David Koepp isn't the best screenwriter because everyone's always saying like, well, it's David Koepp, he wrote Jurassic Park. Did he though? Because David Koepp wrote the

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screenplay for Jurassic Park based on Michael Crichton's novel. It's a very adapted screenplay. So I believe it was by Buddy Dan Realtakes on Instagram who said that it feels like David Koepp and Steven Spielberg's narratives are kind of fighting each other a little bit. Because of that, I kind of did feel like it lacked a clear message. And I didn't think that this was the best road to the message of empathy. Well, I told you, right, that I cried at certain moments. And one of those moments was when I saw the aliens. Was that the way in the beginning? Like when he shows Jane the footage? No, no, no. This was at the end. So when the finals, yeah, where they wheel in the big old guy. And you also have this moment of everybody's experience it through their screens. And that was for me when I was kind of understanding the message of the film. How was it for you to see the aliens? So for me, it's always complicated, first of all, to put aliens on screen. I think science is a great example of them doing it right and then fucking it up. Like, you know, they do a great one where they almost kind of like vaguely show the alien. And then they just give you alien full frontal and you're just like, well, it wasn't what I expected. Here, I first of all, I really liked that they're greys. Maybe for non-alien geeks, we need to. So greys are kind of like, you know, when you had the poster of aliens in your bedroom when you're 13, it's just the classic, you know, when you think of an alien, classic alien shape, gray guy, big eyes, kind of big head. I like that it's that because that kind of goes, oh, so the things that we've been expecting are rooted in truth. I like that. Okay, so the thing about the aliens in Disclosure Day is that they're supposed to be this incredibly advanced superior technological life form. Yet they keep crash landing face first, just planting into the planet, just like, keep crash landing, just eating shit for 79 years, just into earth. Okay, you know, willing suspense of disbelief is my middle name. Fine. Then what's their plan?

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They're like, find two white American children, please. Can they be Chinese? No, they have to be white American children. You know, take them up into the spaceship, do some procedure to them, then let it lay dormant. Let it lay dormant for 30 years. Meanwhile, we keep eating shit into the planet, just crashing, crashing, crashing. Also, make the boy do math, make the girl do feelings. Then you got to make sure that she can go on television. This is very important. Then, when she barges into the news station, we wheel out a giant alien, even though on the footage, it seems like they're only the size of about a five year old, whatever. This is a bigger, maybe older one. Then the big message is, what? The big message is, listen, I just want to be part of this alien board meeting that they had up in their spaceship, where maybe one junior alien went, should we do the arrival thing, where we kind of just land and send a message to everyone that we come in peace, and that we have all this wisdom to share, and this guy goes, no, local Kansas news station is the only way we need a guy with 27 USB sticks that he also, by the way, didn't bother to edit into a highlight reel. That's the only way we'll get out this message. I think that's a bad way of telling the story. I'm sorry. I was asking you about aliens and we ended up here. Sorry, I just have so much to say about this movie. No, I mean, for the aliens that kept crashing, you just felt like the kids were doing like a driving lessons and they kept ending up falling into, that was my tape, because they already got all this way. They come from a very, very distant galaxy. They built these incredibly advanced spaceships and they keep eating shit. That doesn't make sense to me. Here, it's just like, we have 400 gigabytes of this stuff happening. It's like, wow, that must

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happen a lot. This must happen all the time. So why do they hold the wisdom then? You know, I don't know. Again, like, I love a bit of Willing Spencer disbelief. Here, it was just like, and then this can't have been the most practical way of doing this. This is also not the way that makes me feel the most empathy. I'm on such a rant right now. I'm so sorry, because I also have a lot to say about us living in a post-truth society. It's your kind of touching maybe a bit also on, although it wasn't really covered properly in the film, but there's a part also of Jane's character, right, where she questions if there are real god-like figures, what does that do to religion almost? And it feels here almost that you're treating the aliens as some kind of god-like figures that they are far superior than us, because they shouldn't be crashing and all of this. And I think they're not going to get everything right, even though maybe they have conquered the idea of space and time travel. And I think even with, as also what you say with the post-truth era, we see footage of some kind of alien activity or these unidentified objects. So there is a sense that things could go wrong that could be captured on camera in some way that makes it feasible, but I get it with the highlights real of just constant crash. You're gonna upload 400 gigabytes of raw footage directly into Kansas local news, like it doesn't seem like the best way to go about it. Why did it have to be USB 6? Why didn't he just upload it to fucking YouTube, you know? And then all of these things are tackled briefly. It's like the Nolan way of Josh O'Connor, I think at some point goes, I'm just going to upload it and then Coleman remains, it's not the right time, it has to be the Kansas usage. It's just like, yeah, but then tell me why. Well, I think that's a really interesting question because if you look at, there is footage online available to us. Everywhere. But we don't really believe in it or we don't really, it hasn't really changed how we act, necessarily. But the fact that they create this one, let's say viral moment where everybody stops

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still and because there is still some kind of pedigree to the news and what they tell you, it makes people listen maybe a bit differently to if it was just on YouTube and you discover it. I fully see your point. I think wheeling the alien out and putting the alien on screen. I think that would have been a vibe. Yeah. Just this whole thing of like, I mean, the Pentagon recently was like, we're going to release a whole bunch of like alien footage and like spacecraft footage. And we were all like, yeah, what the fuck? We don't care. Show us the Epstein files. Like, I think Spielberg underestimates how fucking tired we are. Like if a spaceship were to land on this very building right now, like everyone would be like, okay, you know, like, I feel, I feel like that's way more the sentiment of the world we live in. And the news, famously, currently, not. something a lot of people adhere a lot of value to unfortunately I believe those institutions are very important however you know as soon as this hits online I just don't believe that the whole world would fall quiet and suddenly there's unity and everyone feels the same but I don't think that's necessarily what he's saying would happen I think he's then saying like with this truth what are you going to do next what do you think people do with it well that's the thing and I think the fact that you see them all experiencing this through their phones and through screens I can imagine they just carry on the next it's kind of like with COVID in a way right that it was this big transformative life experience that we all shared and it hasn't really changed anything after it all just went away we're back to some kind of normal and but I will agree that the kind of strongest criticism I would say is that it's a very liberal boomer that coded kind of film in the sense that it's very simplified in terms of his vision of what life could be like of what the truth looks like of how easy it could be to get this out of also the fact like we haven't even spoken

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about it but in the film it's constantly red blue red blue everything's red everything's blue and it's trying to him creating very simplified version of how divided things are all the two different sizes that people all on but yeah that would be where I could agree with that but I'm I'm happy for him to be in his like sentimental era and for him to like give give us this kind of film as opposed to just some kind of like another war movie I don't see another movie from Spielberg especially not war I want to ask what you made of the stick they have the stick the stick is a big thing in the movie so the stick is a lot of things it's kind of conveniently whatever you want it to be in the moment they have this stick it's alien stick and everyone's like well be careful like you'll explode if you touch it but not Josh O'Connor and not Margaret because you know it and beginning they kind of act like it's an explosive or a gun then it's kind of this Palantir style thing where you can dive into a person by looking at a picture of them you can see through their eyes sure then it's like a remote to turn the power back on it's oh it's also an invisibility cloak that's oddly specific it can cover objects fire trucks and about 70 people but it can't protect them from a heat sensor what do you make of the stick for me it felt very like Marvel coded like one of the infinity stones kinds of things yeah I don't know I didn't really give it much thought it was just felt like some kind of alien technology yeah device literally a plot device exactly so in 1965 Susan Sontag made the argument that science fiction doesn't prepare us

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for disasters but instead vaccinates us against it and I think if you look at all alien movies it basically does that and it's why any kind of disclosure will fall flat and I want to know what you think about this especially with Steven Spielberg and his filmography of aliens and the fact like he ends with something like Disclosure Day and kind of like in the film itself rather than ending up as like this big news report it falls flat made how that affects our own sort of relationship to like the Pentagon releasing all these UFO files and all of this well I think our relationship to the Pentagon releasing files is that at this point I don't think a lot of us really trust what the Pentagon is doing at all so I think it is again as I mentioned to white children I think it's very unique that all of these things are happening kind of only in America for some reason Roswell and all these things it's it's just like the alien seemed to fucking love America and I'm like she isn't that interesting Disclosure Day starts with a first-person point of view of you and a wrestling ring being thrown around it's shot so it just looks so bad and it feels very cheap and everything you're like am I in a Spielberg movie this is like what the fuck am I yeah yeah but what I like about it is like wrestling for me it's kind of a great analogy of like the myth-making that America tells of itself like wrestling is the most ridiculous sport I find because it's all pretend and yet people are like completely divided over and they'll give everything to it it's dance it's competitive dance it's kind of drag it's very drag it's wrestling is basically yeah that's true and so it starts there and then you build up all the suspense and there already it's the red and the blue and like it's very clear people are wearing red hats with American flags on it yeah it's very clear what he's trying to say in that moment but it's a great way into the film because it immediately lowers maybe your expectations of what you're gonna watch so therefore I was ready for whatever Spielberg was gonna give us okay I wasn't it doesn't start maybe in the same suspenseful kind of way or

[00:37:09]

like these sort of slow build-ups that you used to with Spielberg instead you're immediately thrown right in yeah you are immediately thrown right in I did think it was one of those things like oh yeah no I see what you're trying to say it's it's fake and it's mythology and it is that and it's also you never kind of go back to that it's just because again Josh O'Connor is conveniently there yeah for no reason well I think it was a drop-off point that they told a drop-off point with it with the with the war deck war decks war decks guys yeah so next week we're gonna have an episode where we dive way deeper into UFOs with Alexander Bartels as well who is a historian where we're gonna talk a little bit more about like what do these aliens mean I just think can you ever be prepared for what it is do I feel like they're gonna be little gray men no do I feel like there's something out there probably I don't know I kind of feel the same way about it as I feel about religion I don't fucking know like we'll we'll cross that bridge when we get there but do you think cinema has therefore then changed or in well clearly influenced how we perceive aliens but also our relationship to it because we are so used to seeing them on screen that whatever we are shown we are not maybe gonna believe it or take it seriously because we have such a a fantasy in our head of what it could look like what do you think yeah we wouldn't believe it I don't think it's for sure and I mean it's kind of what you see like already although you don't trust a pentagon there is enough sort of empirical evidence to suggest that there is other life forms other technology that we don't know about yeah and it could be still it I mean I'm sure Alexander's gonna have a lot to say about this next week but it could also be Chinese tech that we don't know about like could also be like a weather phenomenon like these orbs that you've been seeing like it could be all kinds of things I still think for example arrival is a more emotional empathetic realistic trail of what it would look like when aliens would come to earth I mean there's just so many different ones there's like independence they were they don't come in peace there's the ones where they do come in peace like I don't know I think if it does happen and when it does happen and

[00:39:13]

we find life on a different planet it'll probably be some sort of amoeba we'll see we'll see we'll see I'm excited to find out I hope I do in this lifetime yeah yeah I don't know I do think again like we've talked about vampires we've talked about zombies we've talked about all these things and I think aliens really kind of have a similar role to reflect again the fears of the time I mentioned in the intro that this kind of all sort of almost irrelevantly plays against the development of DevCon 2 like nuclear war threat it is again that fear of we're not listening to each other guys we're not list it's this powerlessness of we're not listening to each other I don't know I'm actually really excited for people to see this and this is definitely for me not a don't go this movie kind of endorsement. I actually had the time of my life yesterday afterwards talking to my friends about it, not only to be like, what the fuck is the stick and why is everyone a dumb dumb, but also just kind of like, what do you think this means? So I am actually really excited for people to go see it and definitely tell us what you thought. Speaking of wanting to hear what you guys think, we do this little segment called hot takes at the end of every episode where you guys can send in a hot take that you have about movies, a controversial opinion as something that you like discussing with your friends. You can send it to us in a voice note on either Instagram, TikTok, you can send it in an email through celebratingcinema@lab111.nl. We have one today from Andy and it's related to Spielberg. Let's have a listen. I believe since Schindler's List in the 90s, Spielberg's cinematographer has been Janusz Kamiński, who has I think been nominated seven times and won twice for the Academy Award for cinematographer and he is overrated. This motherfucker makes the movies just look wet,

[00:41:13]

they are sopping wet, especially in the post 2020 movies. I'm talking West Side Story, I'm talking Fabelmans and from all I can tell of the trailers of Disclosure Day that too, everything just looks so damp. I feel like 70s era, 80s era Spielberg movies look much warmer and more lived in and now they just look like they came out of a a spryp can. Andy, I feel you man. I definitely think Janusz Kamiński is a good cinematographer. Sure. I'll say that. What did you by the way think of how how Disclosure Day was shot? I didn't find it particularly special. I think he makes a very good point here Andy. It also felt in Disclosure Day very wet and damp. Things are wet. Things are wet all the time. But I think it kind of speaks to what I was saying in the beginning of how like Spielberg's whole film language hasn't really evolved in the last 20 to 30 years and I think that's what... And there is a big cutoff point and I think it's probably mid to late 90s where he just made that switch kind of and then a lot of the reviews and I'll get back to what Andy's saying but a lot of the reviews for this are saying this is the best movie he's made in 20 years and it's like yeah well then name one movie in the last 20 years that would have been like better because Fabelmans said. I definitely enjoyed Fabelmans more than this because I did feel a little bit more mildness toward it because it felt so personal. West Side Story was enjoyable but yeah whatever then other than that yeah kind of yes everything looks wet that's true everything also all the all the blacks are really blue which is something that has been really annoying me in movies lately but then something that has been really annoying me lately that Spielberg loves to do is anamorphic lens flare. It's that fuck ass line in every frame that every director currently seems to be obsessed with basically what you do is these anamorphic lenses are basically lenses that

[00:43:17]

you know the look is great you get a lot of stuff on screen but whenever you backlight them they form this like fucking line and this is truly one of my pet peeves I hate the lens flare and it is in almost every frame of Disclosure Day I will say so I think yeah my gripe is not necessarily wetness my gripe is definitely the lens flare I want it to stop I think that's one of those things we look back on in a few years and we're like oh remember when all movies look like that definitely all right so don't forget to send us your hot takes and check back in next week because we'll have an episode diving deeper into UFOs and aliens and outer space stuff and what that represents in cinema. Some of the best versions of aliens on screen are now screening at LAB111 as part of our We Are Not Alone program — you can get your tickets for that at lab111.nl. See you next week. Stay connected with us at Celebrating Cinema and LAB111 by following @lab_111 on Instagram and Letterboxd. Do you love what we do? Support us by leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform — it really helps us climb the ranks of the podcast charts. This was a LAB111 production, edited and produced by Elliot Bloom and co-produced by myself. Our music comes from Hugo Emmerzael and the artwork is by Studio FFF.