DISCLOSURE DAY**

Bless his heart! Steven Spielberg still thinks that network news is relevant. Steven Spielberg still thinks that if people watch something on network news that they'll believe it. Steven Spielbering still thinks that Roswell is cool. Steven Spielberg is still obsessed with midwest middle-class childhood Americana. Steven Spielberg still believes that, in the words of Woody Allen's MANHATTAN, "you have to have a little faith in people". FFS. Have you not seen the past decade? In the words of Peep Show's Super Hans, "People like Coldplay and voted for the Nazis. You can't trust people, Jeremy." Which is not to say that Spielberg hasn't made a simultaneously schmaltzy AND cyncal film. How else to explain the very deliberate care to tell ticket-buyers in Red States that the existence of aliens is compatible with the Book of Genesis?

Okay so what's the plot? Super intelligent aliens have been making contact with man since Roswell, and man - or at least American men - have been hushing it up and exploiting them ever since. A bunch of rebels (Colman Domingo, Josh O'Connor) steal the video proof and rather than just uploading it to TikTok they partner up with Emily Blunt's TV weather girl to put it out on local TV. That's it.

Now there are a bunch of MacGuffins and side hustles involving Blunt's character being able to suddenly speak a bunch of languages, and O'Connor's character being a maths savant, and Eve Hewson's character having a crisis of faith, but it's all just bollocks really. Colin Firth occasionally turns up in a turtleneck as a cross between Dr Evil and Basil Exposition and almost every line reading of a deeply hackneyed script (David Koepp and Spielberg) prompts unintended mirth.

And my enjoyment is not helped by the fact that Emily Blunt now falls into that category of actor (Bradley Cooper, Emma Stone, Nicole Kidman) whose plastic surgery and over-filled face is a distraction. I spent the entire movie wanting to give her an antihistamine. 

Oh yes, this being Spielberg there's also a weird-ass interlude featuring a Hansel and Gretel house and some poor kid has gone through CGI. I was wondering if Emily Blunt's face is now so waxy and unreal that they were forced to CGI a real kid to make her look like Blunt's younger facsimile.  The CGI is really bad by the way. The CGI animals are rubbish. I have seen a more convincing and emotionally affecting fox on Lego Masters Australia.

It's sad to see an old man stuck in 1987 and churning out sci-fi as if the past thirty years of film-making (or politics for that matter) didn't happen. Has he not watched any Gareth Edwards or Denis Villeneuve? Are we meant to be impressed by car chases that look like the Dukes of Hazzard when we just saw Paul Thomas Anderson break cinematic ground not once but twice in ONE BATTLE AFTER ANOTHER? 

Retire, mate. Retire.

DISCLOSURE DAY is rated PG-13 and has a running time of 145 minutes. It is on global release.

THUNDERBOLTS* - ****

I bugged out of the Marvel Universe after GUARDIANS 1. Too many movies. Too many big bads blowing up cities. Too many sardonic quips from Iron Man. It just all became so same.  But for whatever reason I decided to watch THUNDERBOLTS* and thoroughly enjoyed it!  

The first phase of the MCU is over. The po-faced Captain America type characters are gone.  This is a post-Avengers world. And we are dealing with its detritus and emotional baggage.  I like the beaten up, jaded look of the characters. Florence Pugh's little sister to Scar-Jo's deceased Black Widow looks she's coming off a bender.  The millennial, I-hate-my job-angst is both hilarious and relatable. I like the idea that rather than saving the world she's just a mercenary. I really like the idea that despite all the tedious fight scenes what really matters is having mates with whom one can be vulnerable and tackle all the demons that haunt us. That's a nice message.  

And it's wrapped in a genuinely very funny script Eric Pearson and Joanna Cala and SUPERB line delivery from Florence Pugh and David Harbour as the most ridiculously messed-up and adorable father-daughter superheroes seen on screen. We haven't seen the name Bob deployed for this much comic effect since Blackadder 2.  I also LOVE Julia Louis-Dreyfus in basically anything. Here, she's a billionaire arms-dealer - kind of like the successful version of her character in Veep - who wants to control the mercenaries.  She manages to pivot so quickly it takes your breath away.

Kudos to director Jake Schreier for pulling off a genuinely enjoyable, funny and moving Marvel film. It's certainly a handbrake-turn away from his wonderful ROBOT & FRANK but I am here for it.

THUNDERBOLTS is rated PG-13, has a running time of 127 minutes and is on global release.

22 JUMP STREET

I loved the Channing Tatum-Jonah Hill brom-edy 21 JUMP STREET.  The reboot was fun, clever, and I was genuinely rooting for the two buddies as they took down a nasty drug dealer by posing as kids in a local school.  Sure, the whole concept was hokey but the actors and directors seemed perfectly at ease with that hokiness.  I was trying to figure out what had gone wrong with the only patchily funny sequel, 22 JUMP STREET and I think it comes down two things. First off, there isn't enough warm-hearted bromance before we get to the debbie-downer homo-social break-up.  As a result the bickering to fun-stuff ratio is just off.  Second, we get it: you're smart and post-modern and meta-clever!  All those jokes about how sequels suck, and movie audiences just want the same dang thing over and over, and how the budget all goes on cheesy action shots just made me feel like the movie was poking fun at me for liking what I got in the original and wanting it again.  All that winking at the camera just undermined by ability to sympathise with the characters and that's fatal - because whatever else this movie has, it should have heart.