KUALA LUMPUR, June 10 — If the fate of the free world depended on making a movie about aliens, which director would you entrust with that responsibility?

The obvious choice would be E.T. storyteller Steven Spielberg.

I wasn't planning on watching Disclosure Day as I haven't been a fan of his films of the last 10 years yet when the chance came to preview the film, ah, I thought, why not?

Much as I admire the breadth of Spielberg's work, I'm not always convinced by its depth.

Disclosure Day from its trailers seems more like a thriller that just happens to have aliens.

A hint of government conspiracy, Emily Blunt speaking in tongues, glowing children and a deer as an unexpected visitor... but what actually is Disclosure Day?

It's a movie about aliens.

Familiar beats, acting too good for material

The premise is right out of a UFO conspiracy textbook: aliens have existed all this time, they have been to Earth and the US government has done its best to cover it up.

Emily Blunt is in fine form as weather girl Margaret Fairchild aspiring to bigger, better things and wants out of Dodge, I mean, Kansas City.

Josh O'Connor by contrast to her shines nevertheless in his very understated portrayal of an Edward Snowden-type (explaining more than that would be too spoiler-y) and Colin Firth is utterly chilling as a world-weary, emotionally checked out spyboss.

The supporting cast are just as solid with Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo and Elizabeth Marvel being particular standouts in their roles.

Now that's my biggest problem with this film; the acting is near-sublime but the script is all over the place, a weird salad of espionage, Cold War and alien conspiracy theories.

Yes, I appreciate the attempt at a more cerebral narrative but the whole "the world is not black and white, it's shades of grey, does the end really justify the means" schpiel has been done better in the Final Fantasy games.

The pacing is like a car with a faulty transmission, sometimes sputtering almost to a halt (there is a panic attack scene that eats more screen time than it should) but then suddenly going full octane without warning.

Let's just say I would be very drunk if there was a drinking game involving how many times a black car appears on screen, and then crashed into another one.

With characters flirting with death, then driving really fast to get away from said death, I wonder if the real moral here is that the US really needs better public transportation.

As someone who works in the media I did find it a little affecting that the film actually still portrays the mass media, or in this case the broadcast media, as still the best way to reach the masses so they will hear what they need most — the truth.

Spielberg even manages a sneaky reference to the current "is this real" phenomena afflicting the state of the news today.

Should you watch it? If you're a non-disillusioned Spielberg fan, yes, immediately book yourself a seat, IMAX preferably, the film is at its most riveting in the wider format and, well, the comfier seats as it's a long ride at roughly 2.5 hours.

The film is flawed, mostly due to the writing but Spielberg still manages to squeeze out performances that are miles above the material and that, I think, makes it worth the ticket price.

Leave the kids at home, though, because the lack of any attempt at humour and the very heavy questions poised would probably put the youngsters to sleep.

But if you want an E.T. with more teeth (though less heart) and a less discombobulated War of the Worlds, Disclosure Day is still worthy of joining Spielberg's pantheon of "I am incredibly obsessed with aliens" cinema.

JUNE 10 — I'm off work this week and no, it's not because I went and lost my head and bought another plane ticket.

My house needs cleaning, my lawn needs weeding and my gardenia plant needs saving from a bad case of the mealybugs.

Next week I have a follow-up appointment with my surgeon to go over the results of my latest mammogram but next week is next week, this week I'm decluttering.

That includes my hobbies; I have belatedly discovered CEX and the joys of trading in my old video games for new video games.

I no longer game on anything but the Nintendo Switch 2 — it's portable, fairly powerful and was worth selling my older Switch for and I don't miss playing on mobile, PC or the PS5.

While I was cataloging what I had, I came to realise I have a fairly big library of digital games (curse those eShop sales) and a decent amount of physical ones.

Except maybe for the upcoming Fire Emblem release this year, I have a moratorium on buying more games and will attempt to clear at least half of my gaming backlog.

"Clearing" also means being able to be honest with myself about whether I will finish a game. 

First on my list A Short Hike — the reviews were great, the price was cheap and it seemed charming enough. You're a bird. With legs. Going on a hike.

But after two hours I got annoyed by all the puzzles, having to map routes, collect enough golden feathers to be able to scale cliffs and talk to increasingly annoying NPCs.

Maybe it was the cancer, but if I'm not doing things that I need to do (eat, show up for work) or want to do (nap, eat too many croissants) I have decided I will just not do them.

Do I need to finish A Short Hike? Do I want to finish it? No and no.

This Marie Kondo-ish approach also serves me well for house cleaning. Do I need this? Do I want this? Two no's and off it goes into the bin.

What do I want to do? Watch Masters of the Universe a second time because it is leaving the cinemas fairly early. Make a grilled cheese sandwich. Figure out how to make decent French toast. 

What do I not want to do? Give too much of a damn about current political machinations. 

The world turns. Politicians remain selfish and mostly stupid. I will tend my gardenias and focus on the more important things in life — like when the LRT3 will open so I don't have to spend 40 ringgit on return Grab fares to 1 Utama. 

Apart from that I will be playing another game — AI: The Somnium Files. I'll tell you about it next week.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.

 

 

KUALA LUMPUR, June 4 — “Holy hell” was actor Lily Collias’ reaction to learning that Patrick Wilson, Amy Adams and Javier Bardem were going to be the leads of Apple TV’s take on the classic thriller Cape Fear.

Collias happens to be playing Wilson and Adams’ daughter in the movie with Bardem playing Max Cady, a role with huge shoes to fill, after Mitchum and de Niro had both played the role.

You would need a solid, and perhaps brave, ensemble to take on a remake of a film, or more correctly films, that also had the likes of Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, Martin Scorsese and Robert de Niro.

“I try to do my own thing,” Bardem said, adding that he felt relieved that in the script he was given the room to do his own take.

Adams, who plays Ana Bowden, the lawyer who might or might not have done a good job defending Cady, said that being on set with Bardem and seeing him “turn the dial” from his usual nice, personable self to a terrifying persona was “horrifying.”

She described it as like being on set and thinking in her scenes with Bardem, “Oh we’re OK...no, we’re not OK.”

How far can tension go?

The thing about thrillers is whether they’re books or movies, you’d think they would work better in one setting than dragged out.

It’s especially risky when the most recent version (before this one) of Cape Fear is considered one of the best films ever made.

Yet if you’ve read the book it’s based on (The Executioners by John D. MacDonald) and watched both film versions, you would note that none are exactly alike, with different endings or slightly varied plot points.

If you, like me, have never gone near the story, perhaps it might be easier as you have no preconceived notions besides oh, Javier Bardem and Amy Adams? Hand me the remote.

Nick Antosca, who was not just the writer but showrunner and executive producer of Cape Fear, said that he called his take Southern Giallo.

“It’s lurid and horrific, but also brightly coloured and vivid.”

He set it in Savannah where he had spent a lot of time and that he felt lucky to be able to have his own solid ensemble going in, considering the iconic names associated with previous versions of Cape Fear.

What sets Apple TV’s Cape Fear apart is having Wilson and Adams playing married lawyers with Bardem being, on the surface, a victim of the justice system.

Antosca leaned into the moral ambiguity of his retelling, saying: “We live in this world where we read a story where someone is the villain, someone is the victim. And then you might read a different news story, and the roles were reversed in the same story. I think that kind of moral ambiguity is very contemporary.”

What to expect

With Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese, the director of the second Cape Fear, both executive producing, it’s right to expect a high bar for this retelling.

For the most part, Cape Fear delivers.

With TV, you get to see more of a character beyond them just reacting in the moment.

The persistent dread, the overlaying of guilt and fear, Adams portrays deftly to the point her stretched, strained nerves become the viewers’.

Bardem, as always, is infinitely watchable and even as the antagonist is almost too charming not to believe and it’s to his and the script’s credit that you begin questioning who to root for.

If you like a slow burn that creeps up on you like guilt and past scores, give Cape Fear a watch.

Just don’t expect the exact same experience or even story from the previous two movie versions so prepare for a few, mostly good, surprises.

The first two episodes of Cape Fear will begin airing this Friday, June 5, with new episodes each Friday through July 31, 2026, only on Apple TV.