Disclosure Day

“Set aside these disappointments though, and Disclosure Day can be fully enjoyed for a thriller, involving the works – from a world 'on the brink' to deeply kept State secrets to braveheart renegades. Emily Blunt and Josh O'Connor are magnetic, with she being funny and empathetic, he sincere and gullible, and both people the world can lean on easily for comfort.”

“Disclosure Day is never anything other than entertaining and grade-A fun; rare enough in the movies or anywhere else, rocketing along with barnstorming set-pieces, exhilarating chases, funny lines and a career-topper of a performance from Blunt who may yet be morphing into a female version of Tom Hanks.”

“Disclosure Day is a thought-provoking exploration of human psyche in a sci-fi drama featuring a masterful performance by Emily Blunt. The screenplay is at times unnecessarily slow-paced and overtly exposition heavy, leaving the audience alienated on more than one occasion. Thankfully, the contrived screenplay is the only drawback of this otherwise, massively engaging and unusual film.”

“Spielberg returns to one of his favorite subjects with a fun and goofy popcorn movie that shows how far he's come in the last 50 years.”

“Disclosure Day is not a commercial crowd-pleaser but Spielberg's greatest achievement is keeping you engaged throughout the film with his masterful direction and storytelling.”

“Spielberg fumbles, falters, but eventually finds his footing. The film is both a thrill-a-minute ride and a philosophical question about who is more dangerous to Earth - aliens or humans themselves. And Spielberg uses all his mastery to mask the faults and, eventually, deliver a climax sequence for the ages.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“This is Spielberg, a moviemaker supreme who has bigger thoughts, larger questions about the universe and is still trying to get answers a half century after he dazzled the world with Close Encounters of the Third Kind. In Disclosure Day, he has made an action movie rivaling the best of 'em with a deeper purpose in an age of calculated misinformation to demand answers to our most ethereal questions and to link them to a larger canvas. It makes this stunning movie the director's most spiritually moving film in a career that is unmatched in simply making us ask what else is out there, and more importantly why.”

“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.”

“Spielberg's latest is messy, thoughtful and timely.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”