Disclosure Day: The truth is out there

Disclosure Day (2026) • View trailer

4.5 stars (out of five); rated R, for action violence, gruesome images and some profanity

Available via: Movie theaters

By Derrick Bang • Published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.14.26 

This is 1977’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind writ very large.

 

Director Steven Spielberg’s original story — fleshed out by skilled genre screenwriter David Koepp — hits the ground running, and trusts viewers to catch up.

 

Despite being surrounded by shadowy agents with orders to apprehend them, each
one unexpectedly steps aside as Margaret (Emily Blunt) and Daniel (Josh O'Connor)
slowly walk toward potential freedom.

The film opens suspensefully on a late-night hostage swap. Dr. Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) apparently stole something quite valuable from Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth), head of WARDEX — “Waived Reporting, Development and Extraction” — a shadowy Department of Defense contractor that apparently answers to nobody. 

This is made clear by the fact that Casper Boyd (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), Scanlon’s go-to “dirty work” field agent, kidnapped Daniel’s girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson), in order to facilitate this exchange. It looks fairly cut and dried ... until Daniel raises a small, slender, metallic bipyramid that he holds in one carefully gloved hand.

 

Scanlon and all of his black-garbed associates carefully back away.

 

Daniel and Jane flee, which kicks off the first of this film’s several pell-mell chase sequences. They manage to escape, much to Scanlon’s vexation. (Firth displays an impressive level of barely controlled rage.) But how can they stayhidden, given all the high-tech surveillance resources available to Scanlon? 

 

Meanwhile...

 

Chirpy Kansas City KCXE-TV news meteorologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), after completing a day’s work, returns home to boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell), a low-stress musician and Fruit Loops-loving Everyman. The following morning, before she leaves for the morning shift, they’re startled when a red cardinal flies in an open window and perches on the kitchen table. 

 

And stares at her. She stares back, trance-like, Blunt’s expression suddenly a blank, wordless slate.

 

Shaking herself from this fugue, she rushes off to work. After arriving at KCXE, she suddenly starts speaking in foreign languages ... including, as this scene’s uneasy atmosphere builds, a series of guttural clicks, burps and grunts that don’t sound the slightest bit human.

 

Shortly thereafter, she feels a strange, strong pull to go “somewhere else,” much to Jackson’s bewilderment. Somewhere north. 

 

Throughout scenes with these two sets of characters, disturbing radio reports and TV news broadcasts warn of the rapidly increasing probability of a world-wide nuclear war. The threat level jumps to DEFCON 2.

The Mastermind: A dull, tedious slog

The Mastermind (2025) • View trailer

Two stars (out of five). Rated R, for profanity

Available via: Amazon Prime and other video-on-demand options

By Derrick Bang 

In addition to the flowery words of praise emanating from numerous critics, The New York Times recently named this one of 2025’s Top 10 films.

 

That clearly warranted a look-see.

 

Fully aware that the art heist he's planning is far outside his area of expertise, James
(Josh O'Connor) carefully considers every possible detail.

Having done so, I can’t imagine what all these people have been smoking.

Although I generally respect indie filmmakers who weave compelling stories about recognizably ordinary people — a welcome relief from most of the noisy, soulless blockbusters churned out by major studios these days — writer/director Kelly Reichardt’s ironically titled character study brings new meaning to dull, colorless and tedious.

 

“Colorless” is particularly apt. Cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt’s washed-out palette must’ve been intentional, but the result merely enhances this film’s drab, lifeless qualities.

 

There’s a point at which measured stillness approaches meaningless, intolerable immobility, and Reichardt crosses that threshold far too many times.

 

At the risk of succumbing to the obvious pun, this film is like watching paint dry.

 

The setting is Framingham, Massachusetts, in 1970. The story begins in a local art museum, where James Mooney (a somnambulant Josh O’Connor), an unemployed carpenter and art school dropout, carefully examines four modernist Arthur Dove paintings hung in one gallery. Museum attendance is sparce; a lone guard sits, head down, sleeping at his post. (Is he supposed to be a joke?)

 

We eventually get a sense, based on his later comments during a family dinner, that James wants to make something special of his life. How he lands on becoming an art thief is left unexplained. Has he done this before? Who put him up to this particular assignment? Who’s the fence? How did he get to know the dodgy friends who participate in this venture? 

 

Don’t wait for any answers; they never come.

 

Given the year, it’s conceivable that James, his wife Terri (Alana Haim) and their two adolescent sons — Carl (Sterling Thompson) and Tommy (Jasper Thompson) — could have a house and get by solely on her salary. James apparently has supplemented by sponging off his well-to-do parents; his mother Sarah (Hope Davis) is a soft touch, but his father Bill (Bill Camp) — a circuit court judge — is losing patience with James’ ongoing failure to launch.

 

So: an art heist, in order to make quick cash. Why not?

 

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery — Delightfully devious

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery (2025) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated PG-13, for violent content, bloody images, profanity and crude sexual content

Available via: Netflix

By Derrick Bang

Writer/director Rian Johnson certainly hasn’t lost his fiendishly macabre touch.

 

Although it runs a bit too long, this third entry in the Knives Out series is another gleeful descent into depraved behavior, with a stellar cast dropped into the middle of a twisty whodunit. Orchestrating its slow unraveling, as before, is Daniel Craig’s idiosyncratic private detective, Benoit Blanc.

 

Under the watchful gaze of Police Chief Scott (Mila Kunis) and Father Jud Duplenticy
(Josh O'Connor, right), Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) examines an unexpected clue.

Blanc’s hair has grown longer, and he has left his droll Southern witticisms behind (and they’re missed), but he still cuts a commanding figure in costume designer Jenny Eagan’s debonair outfits.

But we don’t meet Blanc until the second act. Employing his usual penchant for non-linear storytelling, Johnson first introduces us to ex-boxer turned devout young priest Jud Duplenticy (John O’Connor), who regards himself as “young, dumb and full of Christ.” He narrates earlier events while writing … what? A witness statement? A confession? A memoir?

 

Duplenticy lives with the burden of having killed a fellow fighter during his boxing days, the shame of which drove him into the priesthood. But his temper still gets away from him at times, most recently resulting in a “reprimand” that finds him sent to Our Lady of Perpetual Fortitude, in upstate New York’s Chimney Rock (shades of Stephen King!).

 

He’s assigned to assist firebrand Monsignor Jefferson Wicks (Josh Brolin), who rules this tiny parish with a blend of charismatic smarm and thundering, shock-and-awe sermons. In short, he’s a sadistic bully … and proud of it.

 

The primary members of his flock — those who tolerate or cater to Wicks’ whims, or (worse yet) believe in his God-given powers — include:

 

• staunchly faithful church-goer Martha Delacroix (Glenn Close);

 

• tightly wound lawyer Vera Draven (Kerry Washington);

 

• town doctor Nat Sharp (Jeremy Renner);

 

• bestselling author Lee Ross (Andrew Scott);

 

• aspiring politician Cy Draven (Daryl McCormack);

 

• wheelchair-bound concert cellist Simone Vivane (Cailee Spaeney); and

 

• circumspect groundskeeper Samson Holt (Thomas Haden Church).

Emma: Love's labours crossed

Emma (2020) • View trailer

Four stars. Rated PG, for brief partial nudity

By Derrick Bang 

Jane Austen, like Dickens and Shakespeare, never gets old.

 

Director Autumn de Wilde’s lavish adaptation of Emma was one of the early COVID casualties, initially scheduled for theatrical release in late February. The loss of that traditional debut is unfortunate, since the sumptuous efforts of cinematographer Christopher Blauvelt, production designer Kave Quinn and costume designer Alexandra Byrne screamed for a big-screen showcase.

 

The unworldly Harriet (Mia Goth, left) hangs — like a worshipful puppy — on every
morsel of guidance supplied by Emma (Anya Taylor-Joy). Alas, as we're destined to
learn, Emma isn't worthy of such trust.

The film’s arrival on HBO is nonetheless welcome, and Eleanor Catton’s faithfully droll screenplay works just as well on a home screen. But there’s no question the lavish estate settings would have been even more stunning in a darkened movie theater.

 

We’ve not had a straight American adaptation since the 1996 version with Gwyneth Paltrow in the lead role — and a nod to 1995’s Clueless, as a loose modern translation — so it’s definitely well past time to spend a few hours with Emma Woodhouse and her various friends, family and suitors.

 

Be advised: You may want to take notes, as quite a lot of characters are involved in this light-hearted period dramedy.

 

Anya Taylor-Joy is perfectly cast as the aristocratic Emma, not quite 21 years old, whose self-assurance is matched only by her determination to gift everybody with the benefit of her wisdom. Although culturally polished and well-intentioned, her inherent kindness often is overshadowed by a relentless tendency to meddle.

 

Indeed, her older sister’s brother-in-law, Mr. Knightley (Johnny Flynn, technically too young for the role), likely would call Emma insufferably arrogant … but he’s too polite and refined to do so. Instead, they bicker and banter in a manner that allows maximum exposure to Austen’s piquant and slightly snarky dialogue. (She was so far ahead of her time.)

 

As the story begins, Emma’s longtime friend and former governess, Miss Taylor (Gemma Whelan), has just “married well,” and become wife to the aristocratic Mr. Weston (Rupert Graves). Having initially introduced them to each other, Emma takes credit for this successful union, and — after returning home, to the family estate at Hartfield — decides that she’s a born matchmaker.

 

Her next “project”: new friend Harriet Smith (Mia Goth), a 17-year-old pupil at a nearby girl’s boarding school. (When she and her fellow students parade about in their scarlet coats — which occurs numerous times, as this film proceeds — one can’t help thinking of Ludwig Bemelmans’ Madeline, with its “…twelve little girls in two straight lines.”)