Let us now gaze upon Trump's Big Beautiful Blue Reflecting Pool.....
New U.S. Park Service Poster now placed in front of the Reflecting Pool......
Disclosure Day (2026)
As a lifelong Spielberg nerd, we write this review with a heavy heart.....
To our everlasting sadness, we found that some of the unfavorable reactions to this film were indeed, all too true......
This film most assuredly does not capture that sense of awe and innocent pure wonder we all remember from "Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind" and "E.T.".
And the film generates excitement only in spurts, as mostly it's bogged down by its impenetrable plotting and silly sci-fi gimmickry left over from old 'Star Trek' episodes.
Its central premise, the engine that drives this slow chuggin' train, is that the existence of aliens and other worlds would drive us all into such an existential funk, society would collapse altogether.
Yes, we know. Imbecilic bullshit......but for the purposes of David Koepp's convoluted screenplay, that's the mission statement of the powerful, creepy government supported corporation Wardex, fronted by powerful, creepy Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth).
Wardex, in collusion with the government has spent the last 79 years, capturing, vivisecting and hiding away alien visitors unlucky enough to crash land on earth. You can think of Wardex as a sort of special intergalactic branch of ICE, terrorizing aliens before scooping them up into incarceration. But to borrow the tagline of many a 1990's movie trailer......"everything is about to change".
David Koepp's absurd, ridiculously over-involved storyline pours out an ocean of conspiracy theory molasses that Spielberg's forced to swim through. It's really nothing more than an extended chase, but festooned with some cornball sci-fi technology that sounds like Koepp was making it up as he went along. Try to imagine 'Close Encounters' if Spielberg had devoted almost all its running time to Richard Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon crawling up the side of Devil's Tower. That'll give you a rough idea of what it's like to sit through this film.
Wardex's ex cyber security whiz Daniel Kellner (John O' Conner). swipes all their damning UFO-Alien files, with the help of his ex-nun girlfriend Jane (Eve Hewson). They're out to tell the world and a frantic Scanlon and his heavily armed minions are out to stop them......the chase is on.
Meanwhile, Kansas City TV weather girl Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt in a bravura performance) is suddenly gifted with otherworldly powers, speaking in fluent alien-ese and assorted earthly foreign languages. She only confounds and confuses her live in boyfriend Jackson. (Wyatt Russell, essentially stuck with playing the Teri Garr role from "Close Encounters")
Margaret, by the way, can instantly Jedi mind-trick anybody with her ability to unload an empathetic information dump of everyone's most private personal problems. The relentless Scanlon, however, has access to an alien device allowing him to telepathically carry on personal mind-meld conversations with any of our three 'good guys, Daniel, Margaret and Jane.
Those good guys, with the Wardex stormtroopers yappin' at their heels, desperately race to meet up with Hugo Wakefield (Coleman Domingo), yet another Wardex defector who serves as Scanlon's worthy nemesis and former friend.
Everything we've just described takes a lonnnngggg time to play out, with the actors wading through mountains of exposition that's not all that well explained anyway.
(Along the way, aliens pop up disguised as forest animals resembling CGI'd refugees from one of those terrible Disney live action versions of their animated films. Believe or not, we didn't mind these cuddly 'Bambi' aliens at all as opposed to most critics.....)
You may well ask.....but what's all this mean? And is finding out for sure we're not alone in the universe going to change what sounds like an impending nuclear war with North Korea? Will it make us all gaze dreamily into the heavens, join hands with Kim Jung Un and sing Kumbaya together?
We can only reveal this much - it just feels like it must have been an uphill battle for Spielberg to finally shepherd this movie to its Grand Finale.....but when it at long last gets there, it looks silly, far fetched and then....abrupt. While there's unquestionably whole chunks of 'Disclosure Day' worth admiring, you'll get no warm hug 'Close Encounters'/'E.T. vibes out of it, so maybe don't go into the theater expecting any.
But let's remember that even when faced with a messy, all-over-the-place script like this one, Steven Spielberg remains one of cinema's great storytelling craftsmen......and he skillfully glides through "Disclosure Day" deploying his usual mastery of every single filmmaking art - editing, camera movement, directing of actors and when called upon, unparalleled action. (You'll literally gasp at a combo car and train chase that's already taken it's place as one of one of the director's most thrilling sequences ever.)
(What will stick in our mind within the 2 & 1/2 hour running time.....a brief, heartbreaking clip of the Wardex-Government team torturing a little alien visitor until he/she/it shrieks in wailing agony. We can picture Trump's official Nazi, Stephen Miller putting this clip on an endless loop, so he can watch it over and over, giggling with a tub of buttered popcorn.....)
And more sadness to report. Genius maestro John Williams, composing his 30th score for Spielberg (and most likely Williams' final bow) found little or nothing to inspire him musically here. He provides serviceable enough accompaniment for the imagery but you won't hear his orchestra hitting those iconic heights of his previous collaborations with the director. But during the end credits, you can always close your eyes and use Williams' heartfelt soaring choir to imagine the alien visitation movie you wish Spielberg had made instead of this one.
Then again, maybe in this age of unease, anxiety, rancor, division and conspiracy paranoia, Spielberg's given us a thriller that can lift our hopes only just a little bit and not much more than that.
And that's kind of dispiriting for all of us.
2 & 1/2 stars (**1/2)
(Despite our lowest rating ever for a Spielberg film, we'd still declare it a must see for all movie lovers. Remember, even second rate Spielberg is infinitely better than some other directors at their all-time best.....)
Self-Help for Serial Killers by Asia Mackay (2026)
Someone Else's Husband by Kimberly McCreight (2026)
Dearest Trump Voters:
This weekend, we don't even need to sign off with our usual final line to wish you ill.....
Your Dear Leader, your Fearless Fuhrer did all the work for us......
This Weekend Wrap-Up is just for you, both hardcore Trumpanzees and "But I didn't vote for this!" whiners.....
Enjoy! Enjoy!
Backrooms (2026)
As the end credits came up on this one, we experienced two separate but equal reactions.....
The first: "What the actual **** did we just watch?"
The second: "We may not understand what the actual **** we just watched, but we're pretty damn sure what we watched......might come close to brilliant."
Co-writer and director Kane Parsons, some kind of YouTube, Tik-Tok wunderkind making his feature film debut, has definitely crafted a film worth thinking about, arguing about and filled to the brim with images that stick with you.
We're well aware that for all of the box office money it's scooping up like a vacuum cleaner, it's leaving plenty of viewers annoyed , confounded and convinced it wasn't worth the ticket price.
We agree to disagree. "Backrooms" more than accomplishes what every horror movie sets out to do, if you get right down to it.......to envelop you in a waking nightmare from which there's no escape.
And what a clever bad dream does young Kane suck you into.......the epitome of what's now referred to as 'liminal horror'......a deceptively bland dreamscape that's part Franz Kafka in its bleak outlook and part artist M.C. Escher in its infinite architecture that appears to go nowhere and somewhere all at the same time.
Right at the start, it's implied that this bizarre alternate universe of endless yellow walled backrooms, one leading to the other, is currently under study and exploration by some unknown scientific corporation......and that it's as dangerous as looking for the Blair Witch or wandering through the 'Nostromo' in 'Alien'.
But our primary lead victim is a very normal down-to-earth (and down and out) everyman. Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) bitter, alcoholic, divorced and a failed architect, is reduced to managing an equally failing strip mall furniture store.
To his stunned disbelief Clark discovers his store's basement level contains a fourth dimensional portal into the weird, maze-like Backroom world. He tries telling his empathetic therapist Mary (Renate Reinsve), who's dealing with her own memories of a fractured childhood......but Mary's empathy doesn't extend to swallowing the sheer lunacy of what Clark's describing.
(And let us stop a moment here to credit the outstanding performances by Ejiofor and Reinsve, whose gifted work further elevates the film......)
As horror fans could easily predict, Clark's recruitment of his two young assistant managers to help explore Backroom-ia (or whatever you want to call it) doesn't go well for any of them. It falls to the vulnerable, incredulous Mary to plunge herself in the hearts of darkness lurking within all those countless interconnected brightly lit rooms, each of them bland yet still terrifying in their stark simplicity.
What's it all mean? Good question.
While the film will supply you with an all too conventional explanation for those jump-suited tech guys we saw lurking about at the beginning, the ultimate mysteries of the Backrooms will not be spelled out for you..........(which would account, we think, for those audience members leaving the film scratching their heads, deeply confused and unsatisfied.)
Like many film pundits, we could start to pontificate on our own personal theories on the film's meaning but chances are, they wouldn't sound any more or less perceptive than anybody else's. But that's the pure excitement and fun of experiencing a film that's willing to challenge you, laying out all its crazy ideas for you to absorb and ponder.
If you're seeing the film or plan to see it, we'd love to here your take on Backrooms, so by all means drop us some thoughts at www.thebeachedqull@gmail.com.
Not everybody may like it, but BQ puts this one among the essential watches for 2026.
4 stars (****).
