Disclosure Day

Disclosure Day keeps Spielberg working at the level he has done for the second half of his career, where he makes entertaining movies that just lack a sense of true wonder and focus on themes and ideas that, while interesting, become too cliché to create any sort of interest beyond the introduction of those ideas in the first place. Sadly, Disclosure Day doesn't break the streak of Spielberg doing films with tons of potential that don't really hit the nail in the end.

Disclosure Day isn't the worst film of the year, but it may well be the most disappointing. For a start, it's directed by Steven Spielberg, one of the US's greatest living film-makers. And for another thing, it's about a topic that has obsessed him throughout his career: aliens coming to Earth. Instead of a career-crowning masterpiece, he delivers a flimsy, outdated car-chase thriller with no ideas about aliens that we haven't heard before.

Director Michael Sarnoski has done a huge disservice to the original product. It's hard to invest emotionally in the central characters when nothing happens to them despite them making all sorts of blunders.

Steven Spielberg returns to familiar extraterrestrial territory, but Disclosure Day never quite achieves the emotional lift-off it is aiming for. In flashes, it has the markings of an awesome Steven Spielberg masterpiece. As a whole, it leaves you wanting more, but not in a 'leaving Isla Nublar' kind of way that makes you crave a return visit even if it means sitting through disappointing sequels.

It may not dazzle as vibrantly as ET or Jaws, one cannot deny the importance of the story the filmmaker tells with neat effects. And the cherry on the cake is Emily Blunt.

Spielberg's latest is messy, thoughtful and timely.

Steven Spielberg returns to familiar territory with Disclosure Day, a sci-fi thriller that blends conspiracies and extraterrestrial encounters. Led by strong performances from Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor, the film combines conspiracy thrills, forgotten memories and extraterrestrial mysteries.

His latest – a conspiracy thriller in which Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor try to blow the lid off a 70-year-old UFO cover-up – is a rare attempt to pull off those two modes at once, and regrettably ends up bungling both. The result feels oddly empty and, for all its surface-level convolutions, derivative, too: like Men in Black without the jokes.

At 79, returning to stories of the Third Kind with Disclosure Day, Spielberg is still making films in an industry shaped by his own successes, but the remarkable thing is that this beloved unc has still got the sauce. Even now, he grasps that intangible something many contemporary event movies seem to have forgotten: that cinema is at its most powerful when a room full of strangers briefly share the same wide-eyed astonishment.

No living director better understands the magic of movies. For anyone who has loved his movies, Disclosure Day will be an essential addition to Spielberg's rich body of work.

It's an invigorating chase thriller, but where Spielberg once seemed to be leading the culture, he's now following decades of lore and mythology.