Spielberg’s Disclosure Day

Every generation has its own paranoid search for the truth regarding aliens among us. The 1960s had The Invaders. The 1970s saw Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters. The 1980s brought us V, while the 1990s really doubled down with The X-Files and Men in Black. Plus, maybe Roswell hit its stride in the 2000s. Heck, there was even Fallen Skies in the 2010s.  Now, Spielberg takes another bite out of the alien conspiracy apple. Perhaps inevitably, his return to science fiction shares many similarities with some of the aforementioned. Happily, his filmmaking chops remain undiminished, but frustratingly, David Koepp’s screenplay offers few opportunities for the Spielbergian sense of wonder in Disclosure Day, which opens this Friday in theaters.

Dr. Daniel Kellner and his colleagues tried to “quietly quit” double-secret alien tech contractor Wardex, but the boss, Noah Scanlon was not having it—particularly not from an asset like Kellner. The scientist has a truly uncanny ability to analyze numbers. However, he and his fellow corporate dissidents, led by senior Wardex exec Hugo Wakefield, realized the public deserves to learn the truth about UAPs and alien biologics. In fact, Kellner was the one who stole the files for their planned document dump, so Scanlon kidnapped his girlfriend Jane Blankenship as leverage.

Yet, Kellner is more resourceful than he looks. He also has Kansas City weather teleprompter-reader Margaret Fairchild to warn him of any danger. They never met and have no idea who the other is. However, Fairchild just experienced a massive awakening of ESP powers that make Professor X look like a carnival fortune teller.

So, nothing totally unprecedented, right? What really stand out are the scenes of Scanlon “diving”’ into targeted minds. Essentially, through the use alien tech, he forges a predatory mental connection, for the sake of extracting information and even turning his victims into killers. These sequences even have a bit of a Scanners vibe, but that is not a bad thing.

Admittedly, Spielberg directs the heck out of a lot of scenes. The way he depicts Fairchild’s use of her new mystery powers is also dazzlingly cinematic. However, there is no big cosmic wonder. Ironically (given the subject matter), Disclosure Day feels weirdly small in scope. It is also somewhat anti-climatic and misleading. It promises to chronicle the sociological implications of big “D” disclosure, but it never gets that far. Instead, we get the highly conventional thrills of files uploading to satellite feeds.

Clearly, the cast was inspired by Spielberg. Josh O’Connor portrays Kellner as a twitchy oddball, who is still sympathetic in an underdog kind of way. Emily Blunt impresses with the boldness of Fairchild’s nervous breakdown. When you think about, most movie characters are unrealistically pragmatic when forced to become fugitives. In real life, a lot of people would similarly curl up into the fetal position. Likewise, Colin Firth’s Scanlon is a refreshingly complex villain and his portrayal is surprisingly physical.

The English, on Prime

Our cousins in the UK love to sniff disapprovingly at the violence in America, but these Brits brought plenty of it across the pond. The native population bears the brunt of it, but they won’t spare anyone. Cornelia Locke is the exception. She only wants to kill a very specific fellow countryman, but she might have to cut down many more to get to him in writer-director Hugo Blick’s six-episode The English, which premieres tomorrow on Prime.

Instead of the man who shot her Pa, Locke is looking for the villain responsible for her son’s death, the circumstances of which will remain murky for the time-being. Unfortunately, it does not look like she will get far. Richard Watts, a racist saloon keeper and fellow British countrymen intends to kill Locke for the considerable cash she is carrying and then frame Eli Whipp, a former Pawnee U.S. Army scout he trussed up for being uppity.

Of course, a warrior like Whipp (that would be his assimilated name) is hard to kill. Rather reluctantly at first, he will ally himself with Locke. He can tell she has some bad business to conduct, so he would rather make his way to Nebraska, where he hopes to file a homesteading claim (which he could have legally, since he was no longer affiliated with a tribe). Yet, he and Locke can’t help saving each other from the various predators roaming the plains. David Melmont, the man Locke intends to kill is definitely one of them.

Melmont has generated a lot of bad karma, beyond Locke. He was one of the worst perpetrators of a notorious native massacre that still haunts the town of Hoxem, Wyoming. In fact, the atrocity indirectly poisoned nearly every character, in ways that will not be immediately obvious.

As revisionist westerns go, The English makes Heaven’s Gate look like a John Wayne crowd-pleaser. The tragic sweep of Blick’s story is quite powerful, but its relentless historical social criticism gets to be exhausting. The sins of the past just won’t stay buried, which is how it usually works. The first episode is also a darned good traditional western that could almost entirely standalone.

However, Brock gets bogged down in a number of extended flashbacks that greatly slow the momentum of the next two episodes. Locke and Whipp’s ambiguous relationship is the best thing about The English, but they disappear for long stretches of time.

Both Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer are terrific as Locke and Whipp. In fact, Whipp is such a richly complex character, whom Spencer does full justice to, The English could make the thesp (and his Morgan Freeman baritone) a household name. As usual, the always dependable Stephen Rea provides understated but memorable support as the decent Sheriff Robert Marshall.

Edge of Tomorrow: A.K.A. All You Need is Kill

You have to feel for the publishers of Hiroshi Sakurazaka’s light novel and manga, All You Need is Kill. They had a recognizable property with one of the coolest titles ever, but the studio changed the title of their live action adaptation to something sounding like a soap opera or an Edgar Cayce tract—and then they wonder why their tracking is soft. It is a shame, because the eternally recurring battle against alien invaders is rather snappily executed in Doug Liman’s Edge of Tomorrow (trailer here), which opens today nationwide.

The so-called “Mimics” (because they are so blasted adaptable in battle) have overrun continental Europe, but somehow mankind held them off at Verdun. Victory was partly attributed to the development of their Iron Man-like exo-war “jackets” and partly to the leadership of warrior-extraordinaire Rita Vrataski, the “Angel of Verdun” (or “Full Metal Bitch” in the source novel). Embolden by humanity’s first battlefield success, General Brigham is poised to launch a D-Day-like counter-invasion of France. It will not go well, as soon to be ex-Major William Cage (formerly green recruit Keiji Kiriya) experiences over and over again.

Deservedly busted down to private for his incredibly stupid comments to Gen. Brigham, the military PR officer is now amongst the first wave of ground troops set to hit the beaches. Unfortunately, the Mimics know they are coming. Cage is indeed killed in rather short order, as are most of his new comrades, but not before he takes out an unusually large “Alpha” Mimic. Eventually, he learns he has been contaminated by their time altering power through its blood. Each time he dies, his incredibly un-fun day starts afresh. It has to be a clean death though. A transfusion will wash out his Mimic connection, whereas incapacitation would be the worst possible scenario.

Even though it is easy to recognize plenty of familiar military science fiction elements, Liman cobbles them together quite sure-handedly, adding the Groundhog Day twist. The action sequences are intense and brutally honest to the realities of any war. Frankly, there are a handful of moments of 3D shock and awe, but it is mostly unnecessary (as you probably already guessed). The battery of screenwriters also convey as decent sense of the soldier’s perspective and attitude. Yet, the film is relatively circumspect drawing D-Day parallels, notwithstanding the June 6^th release date.

Younger readers might be interested to know Tom Cruise was once one of the biggest box office stars in the world, before he started handing out flowers at the airport, or whatever. This is the sort of role that used to be his bread-and-butter in the 1980s: the callow hotshot forced to mature thanks to the help of a more experienced woman. It might be a familiar arc for him, but he does not slack on the energy level. Yet, it is Emily Blunt who really delivers the grit and action cred as Vrataski. Science fiction fan with also enjoy watching Bill Paxton play with and against his Aliens persona as the hard-charging Master Sergeant Farrell Bartolome.

There are a handful of moments in Edge that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand on end. Unfortunately, the ending feels like a tacked on exercise in Hollywood gooeyness, almost undoing the in-your-face integrity of everything that came before. Nevertheless, there is more than enough amped-up genre action and time paradox-tripping to satisfy high concept, big budget science fiction fans. Recommended accordingly, Edge of Tomorrow opens today (6/6) across the country, including the AMC Empire in New York.