u/Big-Calligrapher7199

Since it's Independence Day, why not?

New Year's Day: Minority Report

Can't think of any Spielberg film that has New Year's in it, aside from maybe Catch Me If You Can, and I'm saving that for Christmas. But Minority Report is all about the future, both in terms of timeline vs. us here, and one's own future, and so many of us look to New Year's Day as the day from which to plot the rest of our lives, year after year. Plus it's kind of like the New Year's-themed 1947 fantasy film noir Repeat Performance, about changing one's fate... I'll stick with this.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Day: Amistad

Valentine's Day: West Side Story

Easter: Ready Player One

Hey... The main characters are all chasing an egg throughout the film, and it did come out around Eastertime in 2018!

Mother's Day: The Fabelmans

Memorial Day: Saving Private Ryan

Father's Day: Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

Independence Day: Jaws

Labor Day: The Terminal (maybe Spielberg's most class-conscious film: about an immigrant who's taken in by a ragtag group of blue collar workers at John F. Kennedy International Airport)

Halloween: E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial

Thanksgiving: The Color Purple

Hanukkah: Schindler's List

Christmas: Catch Me If You Can

Feel free to offer thoughts, tweaks, and your own list(s)!

If you have the least bit of imagination, it's obvious what comes after the final word of dialogue uttered, anyway. Spielberg and Koepp want you to exercise your brain a little.

HUGE SPOILERS WARNING HERE.

The "cardinal" shows up. Margaret becomes transfixed while her boyfriend Jackson is a bit shocked and amused. After Jackson shoos the bird away, he sits back down at the table. Within seconds Margaret begins speaking in Russian. She's continuing the conversation they were having, about her wanting to go to a bigger media market, and how he does not want to move from Kansas City. She brings up New York or Chicago as possibilities, but just as quickly short-circuits the conversation by saying that it's never a good day for them to talk about such things. Jackson's great failing as a boyfriend is--you guessed it--he has trouble listening. He even preemptively shuts down the audition Margaret had (she was, objectively speaking, terrible, overenunciating words and being overdramatic about the perils of the conflict that could bring the world to nuclear war), upsetting Margaret.

It takes Jackson's bluntness to snap Margaret out of her cardinal-induced ranting in Russian. She has no idea what Jackson is talking about, as he's unsure if she was speaking Russian or Polish or what. He's more than a little bit disturbed and worried.

Moments later, after being pulled over by the cop... And, do note: it's only after the policeman whips off the sunglasses that she can "read" him by looking in his eyes... She gets to the news station studio, and before long she finds herself speaking Korean.

So it has been established by that point that she is capable of speaking the languages of the powers that are instrumental in leading the world into a nuclear conflagration (plus English, which would cover the U.S., Great Britain, and other English-speaking languages).

Once she says, "Listen..." as a plea, is it not obvious that she addresses both the Russian and Korean governments in their respective tongues? This is Disclosure Day bleeding into something of a new take on The Day the Earth Stood Still. The aliens are terrified of what these humans, so richly endowed with empathy, are nevertheless close to the brink of a possible civilizationally-catastrophic conflict.

People complaining about the ending being a letdown just aren't doing the simple cinematic math problem, which is fitting for a film about the universal language of mathematics!

If you have the least bit of imagination, it's obvious what comes after the final word of dialogue uttered, anyway. Spielberg and Koepp want you to exercise your brain a little.

HUGE SPOILERS WARNING HERE.

The "cardinal" shows up. Margaret becomes transfixed while her boyfriend Jackson is a bit shocked and amused. After Jackson shoos the bird away, he sits back down at the table. Within seconds Margaret begins speaking in Russian. She's continuing the conversation they were having, about her wanting to go to a bigger media market, and how he does not want to move from Kansas City. She brings up New York or Chicago as possibilities, but just as quickly short-circuits the conversation by saying that it's never a good day for them to talk about such things. Jackson's great failing as a boyfriend is--you guessed it--he has trouble listening. He even preemptively shuts down the audition Margaret had (she was, objectively speaking, terrible, overenunciating words and being overdramatic about the perils of the conflict that could bring the world to nuclear war), upsetting Margaret.

It takes Jackson's bluntness to snap Margaret out of her cardinal-induced ranting in Russian. She has no idea what Jackson is talking about, as he's unsure if she was speaking Russian or Polish or what. He's more than a little bit disturbed and worried.

Moments later, after being pulled over by the cop... And, do note: it's only after the policeman whips off the sunglasses that she can "read" him by looking in his eyes... She gets to the news station studio, and before long she finds herself speaking Korean.

So it has been established by that point that she is capable of speaking the languages of the powers that are instrumental in leading the world into a nuclear conflagration (plus English, which would cover the U.S., Great Britain, and other English-speaking languages).

Once she says, "Listen..." as a plea, is it not obvious that she addresses both the Russian and Korean governments in their respective tongues? This is Disclosure Day bleeding into something of a new take on The Day the Earth Stood Still. The aliens are terrified of what these humans, so richly endowed with empathy, are nevertheless close to the brink of a possible civilizationally-catastrophic conflict.

People complaining about the ending being a letdown just aren't doing the simple cinematic math problem, which is fitting for a film about the universal language of mathematics!

Anyone notice how Disclosure Day opens with a mass of people (with the arena of thousands serving as microcosm for the entire world) utterly enthralled by the showbiz violence of a professional wrestling match. The only party not continually standing up in adulation of the performers is the film's secondary protagonist, the one we meet first, Daniel, and the Wardex henchmen confronting him.

The opening serves as foretelling of the ending. The film concludes with the world finding itself fixated upon a geopolitical conflict that could lead to an earth-scarring nuclear war. Inverting the beginning, that which was ignored by everyone else in the arena in which the wrestling match was transpiring here takes center stage and is broadcast to everyone in the world at the same time.

Disclosure Day appears to be making a rather scathing comment on how people tend to become cheerleaders for nations either at or nearing war, rooting on babyfaces, booing heels, seemingly perpetually stuck in diametric opposition with one another. Conflicts created from religious differences, racial differences, battles for resources, what-have-you.

It very much feels like a film made out out of COVID (the frenzy of people grabbing as much toilet paper and canned goods and whatnot at the gas station market), a film made in the wake of the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel and the mayhem in Gaza that has followed. The film wants to keep reaching for optimism but it is wreathed in a chilly worthy-of-a-paranoid-'70s-political-thriller cynicism. In a lot of ways it's almost a sequel to Spielberg's Munich as much as it is to other works, both sci-fi and not.

Going to Chicago in about a month. Does Nick Fuentes have any insights into which pizzeria is the best? Best bakery? Best steakhouse? Also, best museums to attend? Best tours to take, if any? Bless everyone here!