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.

Flora and Son: Makes beautiful music

Flora and Son (2023) • View trailer

Four stars (out of five). Rated R, for sexual candor, brief drug use and relentless profanity

Available via: Apple TV+

By Derrick Bang

Like writer/director/musician John Carney, I firmly believe that everybody possesses an artistic bliss which, if discovered and properly nurtured, could dramatically improve one’s life.

 

To her surprise, Flora (Eve Hewson) soon anticipates her online guitar lessons with
genuine pleasure, because of the bond she establishes with her tutor.

Carney clearly values the transformative power of music, which became abundantly clear with 2007’s Once, the captivating breakout hit that made his rep and gave us an Academy Award-winning song: “Falling Slowly.” He followed that with the equally beguiling Begin Again (2013) and Sing Street (2016), both of which enhanced their character-driven pleasures with charming song scores.

Carney’s newest, however, is apt to be a tougher sell: in part because its roster of original tunes lacks a memorable ear-worm, but mostly because — as introduced — this story’s protagonist is thoroughly unlikable (unless one admires relentless, profanity-laced tirades that would make a dock worker blush).

 

That said, one can’t help admiring the unapologetic ferocity with which Eve Hewson plays 31-year-old Flora, a Dublin-based single mother still selfishly trying to make up for the long-ago lost adolescence resulting from the arrival of her now-14-year-old son, Max (Orén Kinlan).

 

Flora is selfish, spiteful, impatient and intolerant, with a an entitlement chip the size of Inishmore on her shoulder. She “works” rather disinterestedly as a daycare nanny, then devotes her evenings to bars, discos and getting laid. As a result, Max has become a surly, rebellious, free-range teenager — who could blame him? — and petty thief who is up to his last chance with the local Gardai (policeman).

 

Flora can’t even be bothered to remember or acknowledge Max’s birthday. When the realization dawns, she fishes a broken guitar from a refuse bin, pays to have it quickly refurbished, and presents it to Max. But it’s a day-late-dollar-short gesture that the boy understandably dismisses with a sniff.

 

At this point, the subtlety of Hewson’s performance begins to shine. (About time, we think gratefully.) When Max is out of range, Flora displays genuine shame and regret; we realize that part of her anger is directed inward, over her inability to be a better mother. She’s dismayed because she never had the chance to learn how.

 

Against all odds, she becomes sympathetic. She also takes a metaphorical breath and slows down.

Papillon: Doesn't fly quite as high as its predecessor

Papillon (2017) • View trailer 
3.5 stars. Rated R, for strong bloody violence, nudity, profanity, dramatic intensity and sexual content
By Derrick Bang

Prison dramas, a cinematic staple since 1932’s I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, have long attracted big-name stars: Alec Guinness and William Holden (The Bridge Over the River Kwai,), Paul Newman (Cool Hand Luke), Daniel Day-Lewis (In the Name of the Father) and Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman (Papillon).

Although initially worried that he might be making a deal with a different sort of devil,
Louis Dega (Rami Malek, left) agrees to accept protection from Henri "Papillon"
Charrière (Charlie Hunnam), in exchange for using some of his artfully concealed cash
to help finance a potential escape attempt.

More recent examples have increasingly depicted a level of brutality that never would have been possible during Hollywood’s golden age — 2014 Unbroken comes to mind — but, at their core, the best examples have endured because of their memorable character dynamics. That’s certainly true of the McQueen/Hoffman pairing in 1973’s Papillon, which remains a classic.

Mounting a remake of that film requires considerable chutzpah, since it’s akin to taking a fresh look at, say, Citizen Kane or Casablanca.

That said, director Michael Noer’s new handling of Papillon is a worthy effort, thanks mostly to the riveting performances from — and crackling chemistry between — stars Charlie Hunnam and Rami Malek. While likely to remain in its 1973 predecessor’s shadow, Noer’s film deserves a chance to acquaint newcomers with this thoroughly gripping saga.

Aaron Guzilowski’s screenplay is adapted from the two memoirs — Papillon and Banco— written by Henri Charrière, the man who supposedly lived these events. (His nickname, “Papillon,” referred to the butterfly tattoo on his chest.) That disclaimer is more necessary today than it was in 1973, because ongoing research suggests that the events in Charrière’s books were endured by multiple individuals, and not just him alone … and that he also may not be the most reliable of narrators.

But the key details are undeniable: Charrière/Papillon was a Parisian safecracker and thief who ran afoul of an underworld gangster, and in return was framed for murder, and sentenced in 1931 to “life” in French Guiana’s notoriously harsh St-Laurent-du-Maroni prison camp: an isolated setting from which escape was “impossible.”

Since Charrière did not complete the sentence that was extended repeatedly due to his “bad behavior,” and given the existence of his two books — published in 1970 and ’73, respectively — we know immediately that “impossible” was an overstatement. Even so, the suspense derives from how things went down. The possibility that Charrière may have exaggerated details scarcely matters; Noer, Guzikowski and their two stars deliver a gripping, wincingly grim drama.