Disclosure Day (2026)

To open my remarks about Disclosure Day, I’m revising, respectfully, the script that moviegoers have heard in AMC Theaters countless times since the pandemic began — those immortal words intoned by Nicole Kidman with unnervingly alluring passion. Here we go.

We come to Steven Spielberg movies for magic. And also for meaning.

We have come to Spielberg since the mid-1970s for awe. For a spectacular suspension of disbelief. For indelible images, but also for what he holds back — that sense of a mysterious Otherness just below the surface or just beyond the clouds. We come for adrenaline rushes. For unforgettable characters brought to life by actors who are often giving iconic performances. For innovative cinematography. And for the profoundly moving compositions of his best collaborator, the greatest film-score virtuoso: John Williams.

Because we need these things, all of us — that indescribable feeling we get when our imaginations are enchanted by one of the greatest to ever do it, an artist whose work engages the most demanding critics and the most casual audiences, giving us all so much to feel, and so much to discuss afterward. Even when he’s working within the conventions of a familiar genre, he takes us on adventures unlike anything we’ve experienced before, adventures that, with so few exceptions, we will want to relive again and again. When he’s at the top his game — Jaws, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Schindler’s List, and, to some degree, Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan, Catch Me If You Can, and A.I. Artificial Intelligence — we’re not just entertained, but we’re witness to an expansion of the vocabulary and potential of cinema. Spielberg believes in the powers of love, creativity, and conscience as deeply as he believes in the technical trickery of filmmaking. Thus, he moves us with more than mere thrills and nostalgia. He brings us to the threshold of wisdom, exposing the cancers of human nature even as he reminds us of our world-changing capacity for love. And he brings a capacity for childlike play to almost any challenge.

Heartbreak feels ... well, maybe not good, but real and purposeful in a place like Spielberg’s cinema. And the heroes he’s given us — from Indiana Jones to E.T. and Elliott, from Oskar Schindler to Abraham Lincoln, from Brody in Jaws to the pre-cog in Minority Report — are among the most compelling ever to impress us.

His stories may not always feel perfect. (Let’s note the unfortunate misstep of Ready Player One, and how most if not all of the Indiana Jones sequels sit uncomfortably in a boxed set with the original.) But they almost always aspire to more than mere entertainment. They call upon us to become more fully human by believing in and serving something greater than ourselves: democracy, friendship, love, God — the grand and meaningful mysteries that transcend the human experience.

Steven Spielberg — he makes movies better. In fact, he’s made more great films than almost any other popular American director.

And so, I purchased my ticket to Disclosure Day with great anticipation. This would be the movie that would get my summer break started. And I figured there might be a chance I’d be seeing my favorite film of the summer, if not the year.

I am here to give my testimony...