Disclosure Day

Posted on June 16, 2026 at 6:56 am

A-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for action/violence, some bloody images, and some strong language
Profanity:	A few strong words
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended sci-fi action peril and violence, intense chase scenes, car crashes, explosions, guns, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	June 12, 2026

It’s not a spoiler; it’s right there in the title. Steven Spielberg’s latest film is not about whether there are aliens. There are. It’s about whether the government should tell us what it knows about them, and, if they don’t, whether someone should leak the information. And it is about empathy as the highest form of human — or other entity — communication, understanding, and evolution.

Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor) is the one who wants “disclosure day,” a global release of all the information. As the movie begins, his girlfriend, Jane (Eve Hewson) has been kidnapped by some very intense and well-equipped people who work for Wardex, the shadowy government contractor that keeps the secrets. It is led by Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth). They will echange her for the contents of Daniel’s backpack, thumb drives that contain the entire history of alien encounters and their technology, meaning that it’s also the history of the government secrets about them. Daniel arrives to make the exchange, turns over the thumb drives, and then he and Jane escape with the help of a mysterious sort of carved metallic slightly twisted block about the size of a small bluetooth speaker that must be handled very gently and carefully. It kind of looks like that thing Ryland grabs on his space walk in “Project Hail Mary.” Hmmm.

Meanwhile, television meterologist Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt) is talking to her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell) as they have breakfast and she gets ready to go to work. There’s a restlessness about her. She can’t seem to sit still, and Jackson complains that she always wants to move. And then things start to get strange. She gets stopped for speeding on the way to work and somehow when she looks the cop in his eyes she knows all the details about his morning and what he needs to do to take care of his wife and baby. And then, when she goes on camera to give the weather report, instead of words, gutteral clicks come out instead, and she collapses.

The rest of the story is about Noah trying to stop Daniel from going public, Margaret trying to figure out what is going on with her and how she suddenly knows all kinds of information from different languages to what the people in front of her are thinking and feeling to urgent messages about a man she has never heard of — Daniel.

It is unnecessary to say that Steven Spielberg is one of the most extraordinary masters of cinematic storytelling of all time, but it may be worth saying that he brings every bit of that plus the heart and wisdom of a man who will turn 80 later this year to this film, with a story he created as the final chapter that began with “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” and continued with “E.T. The Extra-terrestrial.” The man whose company logo is a boy and his alien friend bicyling in front of a full moon has always looked to the skies and found it filled with wonder. (Yes, there were scary and desctructive aliens in Spielberg’s “War of the Worlds,” but he says that was more a reaction to 9/11 than a part of this vision.)

While “The Fablemans” was explicitly autobiographical, this film seems even more revealing about Spielberg’s perspective and values. Like most of his movies, the theme of home is central, with a return to a replica of a character’s childhood home is significant and deeply moving to the character and the audience. Anyone who saw “The Fablemans” will remember the impact a train crash scene the young Spielberg saw in “The Greatest Show on Earth” impressed him so viscerally he created it in the first footage he shot. Here, there is an extraordinary train scene, brilliantly shot and edited, harking back to that first moment that began his life as a filmmaker.

Spielberg says this film comes straight from his own beliefs and the consistenct reports from people who have seen…something…that may be known to authorities who do not share it. It also comes from his own spirit, his gorgeous sense of wonder and optimism and spacious humanity. It even encompasses faith. One of the most significant characters in the film is a nun, beautifully played by Elizabeth Marvel, and another character also has a strong connection to Catholicism. She is there to show Jane and us that faith and science are more than compatible; they support and enhance each other. The better we understand science and all aspects of reality, the better we understand that no matter what or how clear our concept of a diety is, science helps us embrace it with more clarity.

The movie rewards rewatching to be aware of all of the choices that went into every shot to tell us everything we need to know about the characters and what was happening but also to appreciate the bigger concepts, the challenge of being aware, the vital imporance of fearless curiosity, and above all, no matter how much our fragile hearts try to resist, the central purpose of finding understanding and connection.

Parents should know that this movie has some intense and exciting scenes of action and peril with chases, guns, and explosions. Characters use a few strong words.

Family discussion: If you met an extra-terrestrial, what would you say? What would you ask? Why was re-creating the childhood home so important? Who should decide what we know?

If you like this, try: “Close Encounters of the Third Kind, “E.T..” and “Project Hail Mary”

Masters of the Universe

Posted on June 3, 2026 at 6:06 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence/action, some suggestive material, and language
Profanity:	Strong and crude language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Character is an alcoholic, played for humor
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended and graphic fantasy violence including swords, explosions, falls, and guns, scary monsters, sad death of parent, characters injured and killed
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	June 5, 2026

I’m not sure who the intended audience is for this new live-action version of the popular 1980s cartoon series based on, or, more accurately, intended to sell a group of Mattel action figures. I don’t think the filmmakers were sure who it was intended for, either. That is both the strength and the weakness of this big-budget adaptation from director Travis Knight, founder of LAIKA’s stop-motion animation studio and director of another toy-based live-action movie, 2018’s “Bumblebee,” about the most endearing of the Transformer, cars-into-robots characters.

The cartoon series was for children. This “Masters of the Universe” is rated PG-13 for action, peril, and violence, has a lot of air quotes and callbacks for the fans, and a surprising number of lightweight but unmistakable suggestive references. This indicates that the intended audience is the people who were children in the 80’s, like the woman in my row who brought her He-Man action figures to the theater and set them up on the balcony railing so they could watch the film. This is the group that yelped with pleasure when Dolph Lundgren, who played He-Man in a 1987, shows up to give the He-Man of this movie some advice, and applauded when Orko shows up at the end to explain what we learned from the story. It is also well over two hours, another reason this is less likely to appeal to children.

This is a story about a super-strong guy with huge, oiled muscles named He-Man and there’s a lot of “be a man” talk, meaning be tough, aggressive, fearless, and impervious to pain. But it also tries to deliver a message that it is fine to be sensitive, maybe as long as you have big muscles and skill with a sword.

But there are also elements of the story that are intended to bring in a new generation of young fans. When it starts to get too intense or scary, there is often a joke, sometimes a very silly one, sometimes more ironic, to break the tension. And after all, the story a very basic fairy tale (drawn from a hodge-podge of myths, legends, and fairy tales), with elements that have appealed to children for as long as there have been stories.

Those elements include the small child who fears he will not live up to the expectations of his father and community who is nevertheless the “chosen” one, signified by his being given the magical sword, physical transformation into an exaggerated, gendered, version of the character, and confrontation with a seemingly all-powerful antagonist.

We hear the story of Adam (played as a 10-year-old by Artie Wilkinson-Hunt), a prince of an idyllic planet called Eternia, known as “the heart of the universe.” His parents are King Randor (a regal James Purefoy) and Queen Marlena (Charlotte Riley). We see him being trained by super-soldier Duncan (Idris Elba). Well, Duncan is trying to train him. Adam is smaller, weaker, and less coordinated than the other young students, including Duncan’s daughter, Teela (Eire Farrell), who is a foot taller than he is, very good at fighting, and his closest friend. The King challenges Adam to a sword fight, and when Adam fails, the King does not hide his disappointment. (It turns out that the long voice-over is Adam telling a date his life story, which prompts her to walk out of the restaurant. This is just one example of trying to have it both ways, putting air quotes about the IP.)

Adam is still 10 years olf when the evil, skull-headed Skeletor (Jared Leto) arrives with his army of attackers and they take over Eternia, apparently killing Duncan and the king and queen. Adam escapes with the magical sword and we then see him ten years later, living in Oklahoma with a slacker roommate who does nothing but watch “The Notebook.” Adam (a buffed-up Nicholas Galitzine) is a middle manager working in human resources, drawing pictures of the characters he remembers, sometimes imperfectly, from Eternia, and obsessively doing internet searches for the sword.

One of those searches is successful, and he retrieves the sword just as Skeltor’s minions arrive to grab it, followed by now grown-up Teela, who gets Adam and the sword and “folds space” to get back to Eternia in just a few minutes. As the ensuing adventures and battles and discoveries and imprisonments and discoveries that characters thought to have been killed are still alive go on, Adam figures out the secret of he sword (you have to say, “By the power of Greyskull! I have the power!”) and becomes the Herculean body, loincloth-wearing, super-strong hero he thought he could never be.

As noted, the unevenness of the film’s tone is a strength in that it keeps things pleasantly surprising, but it is also a weakness because it keeps things confusing. It’s about half an hour too long, with some distracting choices, like an extended sequence with fantasy flashbacks combining Adam’s life in Oklahoma with characters from Eternia.

What does work well in the movie are the performances. Galitzine an exceptionally versitile up-and-coming actor (“Bottoms,” “The Sheep Detectives,” and “Red, White, and Royal Blue”) and here he is game and appealing. The stand-outs, perhaps because of the muddled messages about masculinity, are the women: Mendes as Teela, Sasheer Zamata as Adam’s jargon-loving, confrontation-hating Oklahoma boss in HR, Kristin Wiig as a robot, and Alison Brie having a blast as Skeletor’s enchantress sidekick, Evil-Lynn (names are not very creative in this universe). The production design is also very good, with some exceptionally imaginative details and flourishes in the characters and settings. As one might expect, the fight scenes are dynamic and exciting. It’s more likely to please the former 8 years olds who still have their action figures than newcomers of any age.

NOTE: Stay through the credits for extra scenes.

Parents should know that this film has extended and sometimes graphic violence, with swords, magic, explosives, crotch hit, and gun-like machines. Many characters are injured and killed, including a sad death of a parent. Characters use some strong language and there are several suggestive remarks and double entendres.

Family discussion: What do you think of Adam’s attempt to use his HR skills in Eternia? How are different ideas about what it means to be a man shown in this story?

If you like this, try: the animated series

Movies for Memorial Day 2026

Posted on May 24, 2026 at 10:28 am

Memorial Day is more than the beginning of summer; it is a day to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice. I hope you can take some time to think of those we have lost. Turner Classic Movies has an excellent line-up of classic films. Some more movies to pay your respects:

The Outpost was on my top ten list for 2020, a movie that was sadly overlooked because it came out in the early weeks of the pandemic shutdown. It is based on the book by Jake Tapper. There are war stories that are about strategy and courage and triumph over evil that let us channel the heroism of the characters on screen. And then there are war stories that are all of that but also engage in the most visceral terms with questions of purpose and meaning that touch us all. “The Outpost” is that rare film in the second category, an intimate, immersive drama from director Rod Lurie, a West Point graduate and Army veteran who knows this world inside out and brings us from the outside in. His next film, coming out this summer, is “Lucky Strike,” based on the true story of a WWII soldier trapped behind enemy lines, starring Scott Eastwood.

The Blue Angels Glen Powell, who played a pilot in “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Devotion” is also a real-life pilot who has flown with “the best of the best,” the Navy’s Blue Angels. He produced this documentary that takes us behind the scenes and into the sky, even “inverted” (upside down!) with the Blues.

Air Force Elite: Thunderbirds This 2025 Netflix documentary takes us through the history and training of the legendary flight squadron, produced by Barack and Michelle Obama.

Gardens of Stone James Caan and James Earl Jones star in a film about the 1st Battalion 3d Infantry Regiment (The Old Guard) at Fort Myer, Virginia, the U.S. Army’s Honor Guard. They conduct the funerals of fallen soldiers and guard the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. Francis Ford Coppola directed this touching, elegiac story.

Hallowed Grounds This PBS documentary explores 22 overseas military cemeteries, with stories of the soldiers who are buried there and the people who keep their memories alive.

Taking Chance An officer (Kevin Bacon) escorts the body of a young Marine killed in Iraq. Each stop along the way is meaningful.

Mr. Roberts is a WWII story about a Navy cargo ship, based on the experiences of author Thomas Heggen. Henry Fonda stars in the title role or an executive officer who tries to protect the men from a tyrannical captain. Broadway, and the outstanding cast includes William Powell, James Cagney, and Oscar-winner Jack Lemmon.

Band of Brothers is the extraordinary series from Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks about ordinary men who came together to do extraordinary things as soldiers in Easy Company in WWII.

Red Tails is the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, the legendary heroes who risked their lives for a country that did its best to hold them back.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

Posted on May 21, 2026 at 5:22 pm

B +

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and action
Profanity:	None
Alcohol/ Drugs:	None
Violence/ Scariness:	Extended sci-fi action, peril, and violence, sci-fi weapons, blasters, swords, explosions, very scary monsters
Diversity Issues:	None
Date Released to Theaters:	May 22, 2026

If the words “Mandalorian” and “Grogu” are unfamiliar to you, but you like sci-fi/action movies with a warm heart and visual imagination plus exciting fight scenes and crazy monsters are more important than “Project Hail Mary”-style scientific authenticity, you will enjoy “The Mandalorian and Grogu.” If you are a fan of the Star Wars universe and have watched every episode of the “Mandalorian” television series, you wil really enjoy “The Mandalorian and Grogu.” I’m somewhere in the middle and I thought it was a lot of fun.

A quick refresher for those who are unfamiliar with this part of the Star Wars universe: Mandalorians are kind of like Jedis (with whom they were once at war), but with a wider range of fighting skills and an honor code rather than The Force. They are a clan-based warrior culture from the planet Mandalore. They share some qualities with ninjas, some with knights, some with Western heroes like the Lone Ranger. They wear armor from an impenetrable metal, including helmets that cover their faces at all times. Having their faces exposed is a very deep dishonor.

The three seasons of the television series take place five years after the Empire has been defeated and the democratic regime called the New Republic is in its early stages. The title character is a Mandalorian bounty hunter named Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) who was sent to capture someone who turned out to be an infant of the same species as Yoda. Instead of completing his mission, Din rescues the baby, named Grogu and they have various adventures together. By the time of this movie, Grogu is still quite young, not talking but learning and mastering his powers, including levitation, and they are closely attached.

This film begins with a fight scene as Din takes on and takes out a cell of pro-Empire conspirators and a series of Storm Troopers, filmed like a first person shooter game, introducing newcomers and reminding fans of his extraordinay skills with every possible kind of weapon, plus being able to dodge every one of a barrage of bullets, along with cool gadgets many of which are a part of his armor. Including a jet pack.

“It got messy,” he explains to his boss (Signourney Weaver, fabulous as always). She sighs and gives him a new assignment: the twin siblings of the late giant evil slug, Jabba the Hutt, need Din to rescue their nephew, Jabba’s son, Rotta the Hutt (voiced by Jeremy Allen White) has been kidnapped, and they’ve agreed that if Rotta is returned to them, they will reveal the location of one of the New Republic’s most wanted criminals.

The ensuing adventures include a variety of different settings, from a “Blade Runner”-style decadent city with a four-armed food truck cook amusingly voiced by Martin Scorsese to some cute, gremlin-like tiny mechanics. Grogu is adorable. The contrast between his solomn expression, extraordinary powers, and childlike perspective — wait until you see him try to hit all the buttons on the navigation console of the spaceship — is charming. And when he tries to hide Din from the bad guys, he does something very smart and also very funny. Note the villians here, more like drug kingpins and petulent but cruel bureaucrats than the powerful and scary Darth Vadar and Darth Maul.

Director and co-screenwriter Jon Favreau gives Din a bit of an Iron Man set-up, with his built-in jet pack and cool built-in gadgets. He balances the heart, humor, and excitement effectively and the action scenes are well staged (please, see it in IMAX) and paced. Pascal somehow makes a character in full-body armor and a face-covering helmet feel human, or humanoid, whatever they are on that planet. It’s not especially memorable, but it is fun.

Parents should know that this is a sci-fi action movie with many fight scenes and scary monsters. There are guns, knives, swords, hand-to-hand fights, robots, and explosions.

Family discussion: Din has to choose whether to save another character knowing he is putting himself at great risk. What would you do and why? Colonel Ward decides to help one enemy to defeat a more dangerous enemy. Do you agree?

If you like this, try: the television series, “Andor” and all of the Star Wars ouvre, especially the first three films

Driver’s Ed

Posted on May 14, 2026 at 5:54 pm

B-

Lowest Recommended Age:	Mature High Schooler
MPAA Rating:	MPAA for sexual references, alcohol use, language throughout, brief graphic nudity, and teen drinking
Profanity:	Very strong language
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Teen drinking, drugs and drug dealing
Violence/ Scariness:	Comic peril and violence, crotch hits, car crash
Diversity Issues:	Diverse characters
Date Released to Theaters:	May 15, 2026

Four high school seniors impulsively “borrow” a driver’s ed car from their school and go off on a journey to Chapel Hill in a movie from director Bobby Farrelly that just about makes up for its predictability with its unpretentiousness. This is a “just go with it” movie, with paper-thin characters and contrived situations, but it invites us to go along for the ride.

Sam Niviola (“White Lotus,” and son of Emily Mortimer and Alessandro Nivola) plays aspiring film-maker Jeremy, who desperately misses his girlfriend, Sam (Lilah Pate), already in college. In French class, the teacher catches him texting her and makes his classmate Evie (Sophie Telegadis) read it aloud. The earnest but ineffectual principal (Molly Shannon), more concerned about her job security than educating students or molding their characters, gives him a week’s detention.

An ineffectual but not earnest substitute driver’s ed teacher with both arms in casts (Kumail Nanjiani) takes Jeremy, Evie, and two other students out for a driving lesson. Don’t bother with the explanation of why four 18-year-olds don’t already have their licenses or how contrived it is that they are four ethnically diverse non-overlapping stereotypes who apparently have been watching each other closely since elementary school and have bite-sized story arcs to resolve their issues. Just go with it.

The other two students are Aparna (Mohana Krishnan), the study-all-the-time girl and Yoshi (Aidan Laprete), the apathetic slacker drug dealer. The appealing young actors all do their best to give some life to these paper-thin characters, but struggle with the lightly sketched emotional scenes. Inexplicably, both in terms of narrative and character, the one person who does not get a moment of confession leading to understanding and connection is Evie, whose reason for not having a driver’s license two years after eligibility is that she used to have friends drive her around but she “divorced” them all. This seems ripe for further examination, and failing to give her any kind of depth except for a palpable long-simmering crush on Jeremy might create more of a sag in the storyline if it wasn’t primarily focused on the incidents along the way.

Those include hitching a ride with a high-spirited couple, transporting a refrigerated truck filled with expensive furs they keep insisting have aphrodisiacal qualities, being chased by a determined cop (Bri Giger) who happens to be the former partner of the high school’s thrown off the force ineffectual (do we see a theme about the grown-ups here?) security guard, an encounter with an armed robber/drug dealer, and, in the film’s brightest performance, a. pre-med student (Marley Aliah) bringing an emotional support dog to comfort some sick kids.

It’s difficult to judge this film harshly because it is so soft-hearted that it is even sympathetic to a gun-toting drug dealer and even gives Jeremy a soft landing when he finally makes it to the campus and gets to talk to Sam. If it shifts his obsession with Sam into another relationship as ridiculously quick as Duckie at the end of “Pretty In Pink,” we cannot help but think a happy ending for everyone is just right.

Parents should know that this movie has teen drinking and drug use and two characters are drug dealers. Characters use very strong and crude language, peril and violence includes an armed robber and car chases and crashes and several crotch punches (no one badly hurt), sexual references and brief nudity and a lot of irresponsible behavior.

Family discussion: How did you/will you learn to drive? Why do you think Evie broke up with her friend group?

If you like this, try: a much better teens taking off for a road trip movie, “Paper Towns” and some of the movies Jeremy is inspired by