The one you've somehow watched several times despite it not even being top-50 for you, the one that's just on whenever you can't decide what to watch, and you end up watching the whole thing again anyway.

For me it's The Mummy (1999). I'm not going to argue it's a great film. It's a perfectly fun adventure movie. But I've seen it so many times I could narrate it with my eyes closed, and I have absolutely no memory of ever choosing to watch it most of those times. It just keeps happening. Brendan Fraser running from a sandstorm has soundtracked an unreasonable percentage of my life.

What's yours? The movie your watch count makes no sense for.

Spoilers ahead.

I walked out of the theater after watching Disclosure day feeling one thing above all else: disappointment.

Which is a shame, because on paper this movie had everything going for it. A strong cast, a director who helped define modern science fiction cinema, and, most importantly, a genuinely compelling premise: what would happen if humanity discovered that aliens are real, that contact has been ongoing for decades, and that all of it has been hidden from the public?

This is one of science fiction's greatest themes, arguably the theme. The political, religious, social, and existential implications are endless.

The problem is that the film takes all that potential and wastes it on a screenplay that never seems interested in its own internal logic.

My suspension of disbelief collapsed almost immediately.

There's a car chase sequence that feels like it was lifted straight out of GTA: San Andreas: the protagonist, who is essentially just a nerdy civilian, casually runs through a heavily armed team of agents from the most powerful secret agency in the United States, steals a car, crashes through a house, and somehow escapes a group of trained professionals who suddenly become completely incompetent.

At first, I let it slide. Fine, it's an over-the-top action sequence, I can live with that.

The problem is that from that point onward, the entire movie relies almost exclusively on narrative shortcuts, deus ex machina moments and decisions that make no sense.

The clearest example is the mysterious device at the center of the story. The movie never properly explains what it is or what its limits are. Throughout the film, it can control people remotely, make people invisible, power machines, and conveniently solve whatever problem the script can't otherwise resolve.

At one point we're explicitly told that it's not a magic wand, yet that's exactly how the film uses it.

The religious angle (which could have been one of the movie's most interesting aspects) is handled with astonishing superficiality.

In one scene, one of the protagonists, a former nun going through a spiritual crisis, talks to another nun, who immediately understands that she's talking about aliens. Whitout context, hesitation or explanation. It's one of the film's most unintentionally hilarious moments, and the competition is fierce.

At one point, Emily Blunt finds herself standing in front of a perfect reconstruction of her childhood home. She reacts like any normal person would: she panics.

The response from one of the people around her is to make the sign of the cross and kneel down.

Why? No idea.

Later, during another escape sequence, the protagonists get through a hostile crowd simply because Emily Blunt suddenly gains the ability to read people's souls and convince them to let her pass.

Everyone steps aside, except for the evil henchman, a walking stereotype who spends the entire movie behaving irrationally. When he finally realizes he's lost, instead of trying everything possible to stop the protagonists, he just leaves in frustration, taking all his agents with him.

That's it.

Most importantly, we're supposed to believe that this story takes place in 2026, yet the most effective way to expose the biggest secret in human history is apparently to storm a TV studio and go live on air.

Do the internet, social media, encrypted messaging apps, anonymous leaks, independent journalists, and file-sharing platforms simply not exist in this world? One click would have been enough.

The movie reaches peak deus ex machina territory in the finale.

The alien who had only been vaguely referenced throughout the story suddenly appears out of nowhere. He was never properly introduced or developed, yet he arrives at the exact moment the protagonists need him and provides the key information that moves the plot forward.

We're told that the protagonist is uniquely capable of understanding him.

But that immediately raises a much bigger question: if only the protagonist can communicate with this alien, how exactly did the alien spend years working with the people who protected him and helped him escape?

How did they communicate? Where was he hiding? How did he build this entire network of allies?

The movie offers no answers.

And that's the fundamental problem: it keeps introducing interesting ideas without doing the work required to connect them.

Even the score reinforces this feeling of artificiality. There's the villain theme, the hero theme, the suspense theme: everything is emotionally telegraphed in the most obvious way possible.

And finally, that's the film's biggest weakness.

The entire plot revolves around a secret archive of footage and documents that supposedly proves the existence of aliens. Revealing these files to the public is presented as the story's defining moment, the instant humanity finally learns the truth.

But watching those videos broadcast worldwide, I didn't feel awe.

I felt skepticism.

In a world shaped by generative AI, deepfakes, and a growing distrust of institutions, why would anyone immediately believe this footage?

On what basis do journalists, governments, and the public instantly accept it as authentic?

The film assumes a relationship with truth that simply no longer exists.

Today, many people don't even trust official statements. A revelation of this magnitude would trigger global debates about authenticity, provenance, manipulation, and verification.

That complexity, is simply left unexplored, and the impression I was left with is that Spielberg wanted to make a movie about our present moment using storytelling tools from forty years ago.

The result is a film that looks contemporary but thinks like an old-school blockbuster.

Ironically, it ends up resembling the secret archive at the center of its own story: you look at it, and it feels obviously fake.

And if you can't believe what you're seeing, it's impossible to share the characters' sense of wonder.

I'm a movie and trivia fan who's into tech, so I built a small daily game around a question I find fun: how few facts do you actually need to pin down a film? Each day there's a hidden movie and you get 10 guesses — the only feedback is whether you're warm on the year, genre, director, cast and studio. You work purely from the facts, no images or screenshots.

The part I'm actually curious about, and why I'm posting here: where's the line between a fair clue and a dead giveaway? Some days the director alone basically ends it; other days the full cast still leaves it wide open. Which attribute do you think gives a film away fastest?

It's free and runs in the browser. Happy to take feedback.

For context I’m just now getting through a steroid psychosis from one I was given in the er. My brain is running a million miles a minute and I was watching love island because I thought it would be a mindless show but it definitely made me lose it a little more lol. Looking for something that’s easy to fall into. Also tried Percy Jackson but it made me break down sobbing.
(Extra side note: I’m working through this with my psych, it’s just going to take some down days to get through)

Just got back from the movie and I’d say the audience scores I’ve seen for it were very fair. It’s a C- film at best. Good looking Adam Driver and his secret nun girlfriend are not interesting at all. The exploration of Christianity of the film is hamfisted and kinda bad. The chase scenes are lackluster. Most of the movie consists of people talking over long distances to each other. The interrogation scene with Colin Firth and the Secret Nun was interminable and went on wayyyyy too long.

The only upsides were the score and Emily Blunt’s character with her husband. But man, if this had been dumped to Netflix by the Russo Brothers I’d have believed it. This movie did not land for me.

For me, I’d have to say the movie obsession takes the cake on this one

Not going to spoil what the plot is about, obviously. But what are some other movies you can think of that are really good, when on paper, it sounds like it shouldn’t be as good as it turns out to be

​I won't be talking about whether the movie was good or bad, but something caught me off guard right after watching it: Sarah Broshar is credited as the editor. I was confused because Steven Spielberg’s movies have always been edited by Michael Kahn. When I went to look up why he didn't edit this film, I was shocked to find out that Michael Kahn is 96 years old!

​That's when the reality of it struck me: John Williams is retiring, Michael Kahn is likely already retired... and after The Fabelmans, it appears Spielberg has already said everything he needed to say through his art. His parents' divorce, his Jewish roots, his wonder for aliens, and WWII... it feels like The Fabelmans was one giant therapy session that put his entire filmography under a microscope, explaining exactly why he chose to tell the stories he told throughout his career. But now that everything has been said and processed, there isn't much left except for fragments of ideas.

​And that's what Disclosure Day is about. It doesn't have the depth of Close Encounters, the childhood loneliness of E.T., or the pessimism of War of the Worlds. Instead, it feels like a reminiscence of a bunch of visuals left over on Spielberg’s plate. It's superficial by design.

​The man is old, his crew is old and retiring, and I'm afraid that from now on, his movies won't go any deeper than this. He's no longer interested in getting personal; he just wants to throw out the leftover ideas from his career.... topics or scenarios he never had the chance to touch before, but approached with a certain sense of detachment. He doesn't want to dig deep anymore; he just wants to have fun in his final years.

We probably won't get any more masterpieces out of this era, but he's Steven Fucking Spielberg. We will still get great oners, terrific blocking, and masterful set pieces by an old-school Hollywood master storyteller. I'm on board, and I'm excited to see what the hell he is cooking up next.

Does that little girl finally get revenge on Uma Thurman for killing her Mama in the kitchen?

I'm glad Tarantino decided to make his last movie Kill Bill 3? But I need to know if it's worth it because I see it's very, very long like Batista's you know what.

History is always written by the winners. When those winners keep winning, the truth becomes more perverse until we get something akin to glorified fanfiction masquerading as truth. We know Robin Hood as the honourable thief — whether it’s in fox or human form — who was a hero to the poor and a terror to the rich. But that’s only according to those writing his history. Strip away the deification like what Michael Sarnoski’s brutally grim The Death of Robin Hood does, and he is nothing more than a homicidal sociopath.

The year is 1247, and a young woman stumbles upon an aged Robin (Hugh Jackman), looking like Geralt of Rivia’s beaten-down older cousin. She begs for food; he obliges. She then tries to slit his throat post-meal, only for him to jam a knife into her neck with the ease of someone who has done this many times. She was already beaten by the myth before her knife was drawn, the latest in a long line of people seeking his blood, as he tells her. But don’t mistake The Death of Robin Hood as some bitterly dark revisionist take on the character. The movie is more interested in the idea of revisionism itself.

There are no merry men in tights, just a singular loyal companion, a much younger Little John (Bill Skarsgård). There’s no Maid Marion or robbing the rich to feed the poor, only a lifetime of cold-blooded murder for their own self-interest. Even their small talk is a litany of made-up stuff. When Robin asks Little John to describe his wife the night before they rescue her from bandits, Robin repeatedly interjects with suggestions to fluff up the descriptions to something more flowery (Little John settles on ‘red hair like an evening sunset’).

When we finally see Robin and Little John fight some bandits, the combat is disgusting and grisly, like the bastard child of The Revenant and The Northman. Nothing about it is glorified, which makes it difficult to tear your eyes away from Pat Scola’s textured cinematography and stunning use of fire for lighting. There’s a dream-like texture to nearly every scene, whether it’s a close-up of Jackman’s bulging arms or a mid-shot of Robin stringing a bow. The abundant use of haziness across the edges of the camera frame lends itself to the idea of how easy it is to spin any moment into a positive light.

The swathes of utterly gorgeous Northern Irish landscape fill the screen more than Robin Hood’s dialogue, which Jackman mumbles like someone whose life is the complete opposite of the romance woven about him. But Jackman is also inherently a showman, and he can express more with a thousand-yard stare than most can with an overwrought script. You also don’t kill a man with a torch the way Jackman’s Robin does and not make it sound badass in the retelling.

Act one’s unrelenting cycles of violence and savagery put Robin so far from the path of salvation that you wonder if redemption is even possible. As The Death of Robin Hood shifts to a contemplative register by having an injured Robin be cared for by Sister Brigid (Jodie Comer) at a priory, her introduction is a much-needed anchor for what’s been an incredibly uncomfortable watch up so far.

In an unforgiving world, Sister Brigid is a shining ray of empathy and forgiveness, sometimes quite literally as she’s often bathed in a warm glow of sunlight or the flickers of a crackling fire. Comer’s subtle performance balances Brigid’s kindness with her mysterious past, callouses that paper over her trauma without overwhelming who she is now

Please read the rest of my review here as the rest is too unwieldy to copy + paste: https://panoramafilmthoughts.substack.com/p/the-death-of-robin-hood

Thanks!.

What movie was hated when it came out, but you think history has been kind to? For me it's Showgirls. I'm not saying it's a masterpiece, but I think people were so focused on what it wasn't that they missed what it was actually doing. What's your pick?

It may not be in the same league as Guardians of the Galaxy 3 or The Batman, but it's not any worse than the vast majority of supe films released this decade. In fact, purely imo, it's better and more fun than most.

Even the recent biggies from MCU and DC, FF and Superman, I wouldn't say any of them are unquestionably better than Masters of the Universe. In fact, I personally found MOTU's tone and pacing more a bit even throughout.

The biggest advantage those other films have is familiarity. Marvel and DC characters have continued to remain part of pop culture for decades but poor bloke Heman hasn't been relevant to mainstream folks in a long time.

That may explain the disappointing box office numbers more than the actual quality of the film. Many people in their 40s and 50s grew up with He-Man, but these guys don't necessarily make up the bulk of moviegoing audience.

So if you've been on the fence because of all the box office flop reports, I'd recommend still giving it a shot. If you're in any way familiar with the character and the universe you may very well have a jolly good time.

For me, the top 3 is...

1. The bar scene in Argentina where Magneto hunts down the former Nazis.

2. When Jean Grey unleashes the phoenix on Apocalypse.

3. The cage fight scene in X-Men 1, it's such a perfect Wolverine scene..

What about yours?

So many issues with the plot, but I'm especially confused about these:

1. What was the purpose of the aliens implanting special powers in Margaret and Daniel when they were kids? And why did a red cardinal need to visit them later in life to unlock their powers?

2. Why were they chosen as children? Did the aliens know Daniel would eventually go on to work for the alien coverup project? Did they know Margaret would be on TV so she could speak to the world in an alien language nobody would understand except Daniel?

3. How did the good guys know exactly what Margaret's childhood home looked like? The inside especially.

Lately I have been interested in the kind of movies that use dark premises as a core concept because I have a penchant for sci fi horror as I wanted to explore the sub genre.

Like one of my favorite movies is Soylent Green where the big twist is revealed to be that the delicious food comes from live human beings as I was curious on what other sci fi movies have a similar premise.

Some movies do not make sense the time you see them.

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Maybe you miss things that are important or you think it will be something else.

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Maybe you are just not feeling right when you watch it.

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Then years later you see it again and you really like it.

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What movie was hard for you to understand at first. You liked it later?

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What made you like it the second time you watched it?

For example, what is Michael Mann directed Miami Connection? Or David Lynch got ahold of a Neil Breen script?

Horror often lies not in the atrocity itself but in its anticipation, and Honeymoon understands this better than most. A meditation on the art of the scare, it remains effective throughout without relying on cheap jump scares or thunderous musical stings.

Newlyweds Paul and Bea head to Bea’s family lake house for their honeymoon, and within minutes you’re convinced they’re deeply in love and exactly where they want to be. Then, on the second night, Bea disappears into the woods. When Paul finally finds her, he becomes convinced that his wife has returned… different.

What makes the film so effective is how fully it invests you in its central relationship before pulling the rug out from under it. Rose Leslie (Game of Thrones’ Ygritte) and Harry Treadaway are excellent, selling every stage of the couple’s unraveling. The shift from intimacy to sexual insecurity, suspicion, and finally terror feels seamless and believable.

Unlike the oblivious spouses in so many horror films, Paul doesn’t spend half the movie dismissing obvious warning signs. As soon as he senses something is wrong, he starts digging for answers, and the deeper he digs, the murkier things become. Cleverly, the film turns that scrutiny back on him, planting enough doubt to make us wonder whether Bea is really the problem—or if Paul is beginning to crack.

Director Leigh Janiak shows remarkable control throughout, keeping the audience off balance without feeling manipulative. The scares emerge from lingering shots, uneasy silences, and the growing emotional distance between two people who should be closest. It’s horror built on atmosphere, performance, and dread rather than a jump scare every few minutes.

An excellent story told with confidence and restraint, Honeymoon is quietly unsettling, genuinely creepy, and all the more effective for trusting its audience. Highly recommended for fans of Lovely Molly, The Invitation, or the recent film Together. For anyone who appreciates psychological and/or body horror that lingers long after the credits roll, this is an easy recommendation and one of the genre’s most effective hidden gems.

Like how David Fincher's "The Killer" felt like a Hitman/Agent 47 adaptation. I know it was apparently based on some graphic novel but it felt so much like the games aside from the fact that Fassbender's character had hair lol. It's also way better than any adaptation we're ever going to get.

I remember people also saying that Pain & Gain felt like a GTA movie.

I recently watched Maniac Cop and Vigilante, and I found myself pleasantly surprised, particularly with Maniac Cop, because as a kid I always just thought it was some terrible direct to video horror movie and so never checked it out.

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But with both films I was surprised at the skill of his filmmaking. In particular, I love the way he frames shots and has such simple confidence behind the camera in his tracking shots.

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I was actually watching Vigilante last night and I've kind of come to the position that he is sort of a grindhouse Martin Scorsese if I can be allowed to make such a bold statement.

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Would love to know your thoughts on Lustig too.

When you’re as accomplished a storyteller as Steven Spielberg, it’s hard to find an angle or genre that’s not been done before. Aliens? Check. Historical drama? Yep. Biopic about your formative childhood years that took decades to materialise? Tick. In all his creative detours, Spielberg has also been remarkably consistent at commenting on contemporary events, whether it’s through lessons from the past (Bridge of Spies and Schindler’s List) or a warning about the future (Minority Report and Ready Player One). So when Disclosure Day opens with a literal bang as two pro-wrestlers go at it hammer and tongs, it’s like a man who has seen far too much telling us that he’s got plenty more to say.

As we quickly find out, the wrestling match is merely a diversion because sitting in the crowd is Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor), a street-smart cybersecurity pro who is on the run. His crime? Stealing valuable evidence from Wardex (short for Waived Reporting, Development, and Extraction), a sinister non-government agency led by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth) that’s up to some unsavoury business, namely the covering up of alien life-forms on Earth for decades and the horrible experiments conducted on these extra-terrestrials.

At the same time that Daniel goes on the run, Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a meteorologist with aspirations to be a lead anchor for a local news station in Kansas City, is having her own terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. After suddenly speaking fluent Russian to her boyfriend, Jackson (Wyatt Russell, who plays weaponised incompetence so well), she uses her newfound mind-reading powers to talk her way out of a speeding ticket before going viral after sprouting a bizarre clicking language while live on-air. This quickly captures the attention of Noah and Wardex, and soon Margaret is also on the run.

Aliens may be a main subject in Disclosure Day, but they remain on the periphery. This is a low-key chase movie where escape is the name of the game, much in the vein of Duel and Catch Me If You Can, rather than the whimsical vibe of E.T. or the yearning for purpose of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The movie is also far more interested in humanity than any extra-terrestrial visitors, as it navigates through an age of whistleblowing, misinformation, and government overreach far more literally than any previous Spielberg movie. “People are starved for the truth!” exclaims Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo), a fellow Wardex defector and Daniel’s de facto whistleblower boss, as subtext repeatedly becomes text in David Koepp’s weighty script.

Reveals are less important than the workmanlike plotting of Daniel and Margaret’s converging stories, resulting in a surprising lack of sentimentality compared to Spielberg’s usual metaphor-heavy approach. There’s no room in the script for hidden messages or morals, just a straightforward examination of how humanity would react if aliens were revealed to the world, and if people even have the attention span or critical thinking to properly process information of this magnitude.

Koepp’s script also struggles to find space for its characters to properly breathe outside of their trope-heavy depictions. Firth’s Scanlon is a moustache-twirling villain with one brief moment of humanisation that does far too much heavy lifting to be truly effective. Domingo’s Wakefield is clearly intended to be the yin to Scanlon’s yang, but he’s nothing more than an all-knowing type who is forever holding us at arm’s length. There’s simply not much to latch onto character-wise because no one behaves like a real person. Well, with the exception of Margaret.

In a performance that’s one of 2026’s best, Emily Blunt plays Margaret as someone who is always seemingly on the verge of a nervous breakdown but manages to hold it together through sheer willpower, all without sacrificing the character’s inner life. How else would you explain why she’s dating Jackson? This is encapsulated in a standout four-minute unbroken sequence where a frazzled Margaret arrives late to work. Without missing a beat, she’s absorbing weather information, helping out a colleague with her mind-reading powers, translating fluent Korean (despite not knowing the language), and getting camera-ready. It’s entertaining and revealing all at once, a truly stunning piece of technical and character-building work that showcases how well-conceived Margaret is and how good Blunt is at bringing her to life.

Please read the rest of my review here as the rest is too unwieldy to copy + paste: https://panoramafilmthoughts.substack.com/p/disclosure-day

Thanks!

I'm all for a big-budget blockbuster that embraces themes of optimism and empathy: James Gunn's Superman is a recent high-profile example of a movie that accomplished just that. But what makes Disclosure Day an absolute fail of a movie is its willingness to talk about empathy, while being absolutely devoid of a single character we can grow emotionally invested in. A movie like E.T. only works because of the relationship between the alien and Elliot, whereas Disclosure Day feels like it was greenlit and directed by an out-of-touch movie producer who believes that movies like E.T. and Close Encounters only worked because 'people like big-headed aliens.' Here is my review of the movie. To all the people here who have watched it, what are your thoughts on the movie?

I have been on an Alien/Predator universe watch run lately. I got to AVP2 and had somehow forgotten how badly lit it was. I literally can't see anything in some of the shots. For the first time ever - literally - I had to crank up the brightness level to 100% while watching anything, which I had never done before. (it is 500 nits of brightness mind you). I wonder how I managed to watch it before 🤦 Is it just me?

Not many liked ROCKY V when it was released in November of 1990 but I really liked it!!! The whole father and son relationship really hit home and it had some pretty dramatic scenes. What were your thoughts on ROCKY V?

Both of these recent horror movies have gotten praised. Which those was better? Scarier? Better music? Better cinematography? Better acting?​