Disclosure Day (2026)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Disclosure Day (2026) – S. Spielberg

I’m looking back at the Disclosure Day poster now – the one with Emily Blunt’s blue eye in the centre.  You can see her eye has some unusual aster-like pattern in it.  Only on second glance did I notice that her eye and parts of her face are framed by the outline of a bird, presumably a cardinal.  Cardinals do have some symbolic meaning, having to do with a message from a lost loved one or perhaps hope in hard times or even Christian references to the blood of Jesus.  There are some nuns in this film but I’m not sure that’s the link (or is it? There’s some baked-on theology here, questioning whether the presence of life out there means God doesn’t love only us or maybe doesn’t exist, but it doesn’t take).  Perhaps the cardinal is bringing a message from Spielberg’s own past – specifically, a reminder of Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977).  In many ways, Disclosure Day feels like a sequel or replay of that earlier film, where Richard Dreyfuss and Melinda Dillon are incomprehensibly drawn to Devil’s Tower, Wyoming, just in time for an alien spacecraft to land (and take Dreyfuss inside – oops, spoiler). In this film, Josh O’Connor and Blunt instead are mysteriously and incomprehensibly drawn to each other (and then to a television studio), in the same way.  Maybe it isn’t that far from Escape from Witch Mountain (1975) where kids with supernatural powers are chased by Donald Pleasance and evil millionaire Ray Milland.  Here, evil corporate mastermind Colin Firth is trying to stop O’Connor and Blunt, particularly O’Connor who is poised to release evidence that the government has been suppressing knowledge of extraterrestrial life (and that crash landing in Roswell, New Mexico).  We see some of the video that he shows his girlfriend, Jane.  It looks just like you would think (if you ever watched an alien autopsy video). Firth also has an alien device that allows him to mind-meld with people, if he can see their social media accounts. I started to get some faint echoes of De Palma’s The Fury (1978) here and there. But whereas De Palma never was afraid of going freaky, Spielberg keeps his masterful control even though the plot itself feels pretty schlocky. He is good at directing the action scenes – at times it feels as though the movie is one long car chase -- and there’s even a Jackie Chan-styled leap from a car to a train too.  The lead characters make some inexplicable choices though – or really their choices are being guided by, uh, aliens. (Most other characters don’t really have much to do).  Are aliens the Macguffin here? Knowing that Spielberg and writer David Koepp started with the ending (and that youtube clip where the air force flyers see something inexplicable buzz them) and then moved backwards trying to figure out a plot that gets you there tells you a lot about this film.   

 

One Girl’s Confession (1953)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

One Girl’s Confession (1953) – H. Haas

Hugo Haas was a Czech actor who fled the Nazis to the US and became a minor league B-movie writer and director, often starring in his films in supporting roles to his female stars. (Apparently, he was a much bigger star in the 1930s before moving to Hollywood). The films he wrote and directed are known as the Fate and Irony cycle – they seem to have a biggish following. This one, often cited as the best, stars Cleo Moore, a blonde bombshell ogled by other characters and the camera alike (her career does not seem to have taken off and she died young, of a heart attack).  Here, she plays a waitress who steals 25 G’s from her employer (because he had exploited her father in business) and promptly turns herself in to the police (after hiding the money).  After her release from prison (good behaviour), she meets up with Haas, who plays a seedy and sleazy gambler who owns a café/bar.  She agrees to work for him (after fending off his advances) while laying low awaiting her chance to retrieve the money from its hiding place.  A local fisherman woos her but she holds back.  After this, things take a turn for the worse, partly due to Cleo/Mary’s misperceptions – hence the “fate and irony” label. Overall, the acting is pretty flat (apart from Haas himself who is charismatic, if sleazy), the sets are low budget, and the plot feels far too leisurely for a 75-minute feature. I’m not sure I understand the appeal… but perhaps, for the 1950s, there is a sense of female empowerment here? 

 

Are You Lonesome Tonight? (2021)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Are You Lonesome Tonight? (2021) – S. Wen

I guess Eddie Peng may be a star in Taiwan and this may have been a vehicle especially for him, directed with a good deal of panache by first timer Shipei Wen.  Peng plays an air conditioner repairman, Xue-ming, a loner it seems, and, in 1997, he hits a man with his van; instead of leaving him dead in the road, he drags him into the tall grass by the river. We then follow Peng as he suffers moral recriminations, especially when he sees the missing person flyers being distributed by Sylvia Chang, playing the victim’s wife, Mrs Liang. She’s much older but still kind of sexy.  When Xue-ming arranges to fix her air conditioner, you don’t know what’s going to happen. The film feels humid and languid. Are we heading in the direction of Visconti’s Ossessione? Fate hangs heavy on Xue-ming and on the film – from the opening shot, we know he ends up in prison. He lurks around Mrs. Liang’s neighbourhood. The title comes from a scene in a half-deserted bar where a blind singer tells Xue-ming that he once sang a song for the dead man and he will sing it again (“Are You Lonesome Tonight?”). It seems the victim may have been involved in the criminal underworld. Xue-ming overhears people talking and starts to piece things together.  Eddie Peng lost weight for this film and his method acting shows. It’s a slow-burning neo-noir.  Director Wen keeps things visually interesting, with a grungy mise-en-scene and lots of shots from unusual angles or using reflections; lighting and colour schemes reflect the noir theme. Like the Coens’ Blood Simple, this doesn’t try to innovate, necessarily, it tries to emulate.  A bleary-eyed detective and a cold-blooded killer show up rather matter-of-factly later in the picture. No surprises here but Xue-ming’s moral code keeps him on solid footing even as these complications enter.   

 

Hokum (2026)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Hokum (2026) – D. McCarthy

Irish director Damian McCarthy’s third film – and the first after his breakthrough success with Oddity (2024; streaming everywhere near you) – stars Adam Scott, who I guess is an American TV star, but I’d never heard of him (although his latest Netflix film does seem to star Robert De Niro, so “my bad”).  Scott plays a decidedly unlikeable character, Ohm Bauman, a successful writer but rude and willing to punch down on those less fortunate. He’s come to this remote Irish hotel to bury his parents’ ashes, since this was where they had honeymooned decades earlier. However, the honeymoon suite is locked up and no one is allowed to enter, given that there is supposed to be a witch trapped inside.  Bauman isn’t against breaking in but he’s pretty ambivalent about everything (and haunted, perhaps literally, by events earlier in his life). McCarthy creates a lot of atmosphere in this old hotel, especially once we are actually in the honeymoon suite and its environs, but the characters remain rather thin. Throw in a few jump scares and some folk horror references and you’ve got a solid horror outing – full of dread and spooky without requiring gore -- but not something I need to watch again.   

 

Village of the Damned (1960)

 ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Village of the Damned (1960) – W. Rilla

The film starts mysteriously with all of the residents of the tiny British town of Midwich falling asleep, instantly, mid-sentence as it were.  The British military investigates and finds an invisible line encircling the village where to cross it means falling unconscious (even in a low-flying plane).  Months later, all of the women of child-bearing age fall pregnant, eventually giving birth to platinum blond children with piercing eyes. As they grow up, these children prove exceptionally intelligent and, as a group, possessed of a “hive mind”. The “son” of Professor Zellaby (George Sanders) and his wife Anthea (Barbara Shelley) is played by Martin Stephens, who subsequently used a similarly evil tone to play Miles in The Innocents (1961), an adaptation of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James. (I knew I recognised him, even with the blond wig).  This film is an adaptation of the John Wyndham novel, "The Midwich Cuckoos", drawing from the bird’s strategy of laying its eggs in the nests of other species who then raise the offspring as their own. Prof. Zellaby hopes to harness the children’s intelligence for the betterment of the world -- but alas, they are just too evil (with supernatural powers, of course). The bizarre plot is held in place by a script which has characters act realistically, responding logically and sometimes emotionally, in reaction to the strange presence in their lives and village. Suitably creepy.

 

Private Hell 36 (1954)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Private Hell 36 (1954) – D. Siegel

Despite starting his career as a “montage” specialist in the editorial department (and notwithstanding his long association with Clint Eastwood in the ‘60s and ‘70s), I find Don Siegel to be among the least flashy of directors (Eastwood himself follows in his mentor’s footsteps).  Private Hell 36 could just as easily be a TV production with its plain sets and matter-of-fact staging, camerawork, and direction. The editing serves the function of telling the story straightforwardly, without distraction, because I didn’t notice it. Perhaps this basic invisible approach to craft by Siegel allows the story to take centre stage: substance over style.  Here, L. A. cops Steve Cochran and Howard Duff stumble onto $50 bills from a NYC robbery now being circulated in the West.  They trace one to Ida Lupino, a bar singer, who eventually agrees to work with them to collar the fellow who passed it to her, a man who spends time at the races.  There’s a fair bit of legwork and staking out. Eventually, though, Duff and Cochran reach a moral crossroads and a choice which places stress on their relationship, with added pressure for Duff (a family man under financial strain at home) and Cochran (who falls for Lupino and her expensive tastes).  The title references the number of a trailer home, perhaps the most clever thing about the film, which nevertheless does build up a fair amount of tension, as the screws tighten on the characters.

 

Backrooms (2026)

 ☆ ☆ ☆

Backrooms (2026) – K. Parsons

Underwhelmed, I guess, but it isn’t that clear why.  High expectations? As longtime readers know, I’m certainly open to surrealism and weirdness generally.  Backrooms set up its premise well and I was intrigued – when sad/frustrated Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor) pushes through the wall of his discount furniture store’s basement into the yellowy maze of hidden fluorescent-lit rooms, I wanted to explore with him.  The shadowy figures in the distance, the possible danger – it was alive with possibilities.  But somehow those possibilities turned from intrigue to tedium and then to incomprehensibility.  Is there a metaphor here about memories (never accurately recalled, only reconstructed via the present), about past traumas (and how they might gather strength and defeat us), about frustrated dead ends? It seems either too glib or too hard to fathom.  The film felt somehow incomplete, less encouraging me to fill in the gaps with my own interpretations and more missing essential information. Perhaps though it is just my awareness that there’s lore galore lurking somewhere on youtube, available to some but not all viewers (certainly not this one), ahead of time.  A connected story featuring Clark’s therapist, Mary (Renate Reinsve), holds promise for revealing needed detail but ends abruptly (as does the film). A briefly involved scientist remains unexplained (in the film proper).  Of course, I’ve tried to reflect whether my reaction to the film is unfair – after all, I’ve eventually come round to David Lynch appreciation, even if my initial reaction to Lost Highway was similarly uncomprehending.  (Mulholland Drive, in contrast, was immediately recognisable as a masterpiece).  These Lynch films, while bizarre and without clear explanations, provide more details to let the dream logic kick in. Backrooms seems to require a third act, just to provide more fodder for our imaginations (and not necessarily to provide some sort of explicit explanation).  Otherwise, am I supposed to go to youtube to flesh this out?  Some commentary suggests that this is a Gen Z movie -- possibly because director Kane Parsons is so young, but maybe because this generation faces the kind of disrupted trajectories (career and life) that the characters in Backrooms also face (even if the film might be set in 1990 when my own generation was trying to find their footing in what may have been a more predictable world). Speaking of unpredictability, as the film ended, I couldn’t help thinking that most of the replicas of things in the Backrooms felt like artificial intelligence versions of our reality – not quite right and possibly not really serviceable, if they start to stand in for what used to be there.