Directed by: Steven Spielberg Written by: David Koepp Starring: Emily Blunt, Josh O'Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo, Eve Hewson, Wyatt Russell IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt15047880/

Special guest: Tarek Fayoumi (movieswithtarek.com), director of the Chicago Independent Film Critics.

In this episode of Mindframes, Michael and Dave — joined by returning guest Tarek Fayoumi — discuss Disclosure Day (2026), Steven Spielberg's return to the alien genre and his first big sci-fi swing since War of the Worlds.

The conversation works through Spielberg's recurring obsessions (renegade heroes, shadowy government forces, ordinary people swept into something enormous), Janusz Kamiński's return to the diffused-light, lens-flare look, and John Williams' 30th collaboration with the director — before splitting hard over whether the film's hopeful thesis actually lands. Comparisons run from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., and War of the Worlds to Contact, Minority Report, and Coppola's Megalopolis as a fellow "late master with something to say."

Verdicts split three ways: Michael 2.5/5, Dave 3/5, Tarek 4/4.

Disclosure Day asks whether an undeniable, truthful image can still unite people in a cynical age — Brian Tallerico's "undeniable image" framing, run through the show's central question: not is there proof? but does proof still work on us?

Michael argues the truthful image isn't wounded but dead — a shared reality the film is nostalgic for, but one that no longer functions when people deny what they're shown. Dave counters that the film's real hope is empathy and human-to-human connection replacing the broken image, while conceding Spielberg doesn't earn that buy-in the way his early work did. The film ends not on a revelation but on Margaret turning to the camera, saying "Listen," and cutting to black — proof getting humanity to the threshold, with faith and empathy left to carry it the rest of the way.

Note: recording was split into two files; Part 2 times below assume the parts run continuously (Part 2 offset by ~50:03). Verify against the stitched audio.

• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Steven Spielberg)
• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (Steven Spielberg)
• War of the Worlds (Steven Spielberg)
• A.I. Artificial Intelligence (Steven Spielberg)
• Minority Report (Steven Spielberg)
• Jaws (Steven Spielberg)
• Schindler's List / Saving Private Ryan (Steven Spielberg)
• The Terminal / Catch Me If You Can (Steven Spielberg)
• The Fabelmans / West Side Story (Steven Spielberg)
• Jurassic Park / Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (David Koepp & Spielberg)
• Contact (Robert Zemeckis / Carl Sagan)
• Explorers (Joe Dante)
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick)
• Megalopolis (Francis Ford Coppola)
• Super 8 (J.J. Abrams)
• Watching the Skies (Norwegian sci-fi)
• Poltergeist / Gremlins (Spielberg-produced, 1980s)
• The Outer Limits — "The Architects of Fear"

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Directed by: Curry Barker Written by: Curry Barker Starring: Michael Johnston, Inde Navarrette, Cooper Tomlinson, Megan Lawless, Andy Richter IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt37287335/

In this episode of Mindframes, Michael and Dave dig into Obsession (2026), Curry Barker's micro-budget feature debut that turned into one of the biggest horror phenomenons in years — a $750K film bought for $15 million out of TIFF that went on to gross well over $148 million worldwide, growing at the box office in consecutive weekends rather than declining.

The discussion explores the film's monkey's-paw premise, its working-class Gen Z setting, the moral architecture of Bear's wish, and the central question of whether Bear is the film's actual villain — while comparing the film to Weapons, Pearl, Get Out, The Witch, and Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Empire.

Obsession explores consent and agency — what happens when desire is granted without consent.

The film suggests that Bear doesn't earn or deserve Nikki's love; he eliminates her will and replaces it with his own. As Curry Barker has put it, "love is earned, not demanded," and "any time you wish for something, it's probably going to be selfish." The true engine of the horror isn't the curse twisting the wish — it's that the wish works exactly as asked.

On-air verdict — Is Bear the villain? Both hosts landed on no. He's flawed, selfish, and prolongs the harm once he knows better, but he's the story's antagonist rather than its villain — if anyone is the "real" villain, it's the cursed object itself. Michael's framing: not every flawed person is a villain, and the film is more interesting because its characters are layered rather than purely good or evil.

On-air verdict — the ending. Dave correctly intuited that Nikki originally killed herself in an earlier draft — that actually was Barker's original Romeo-and-Juliet mutual-suicide ending, before his playwright father pushed him toward the survival cut used in the final film. Michael argued the survival ending is more thematically persuasive: if the theme is one person's coercion of another's agency, the resolution should be Nikki's, not a mutual destruction that treats the harm as shared. Bear's selfishness has to die for Nikki to live.

A live reference worth flagging for listeners: Michael cited Naomi Serpell's New Yorker piece "The New Literalism" (March 2025) as a framework for questioning how intentionally — and how literally — modern horror handles its themes of trauma and control.

• Weapons / Barbarian (Zach Cregger)
• Pearl (Ti West / Mia Goth) — Barker has cited this as a major influence
• Get Out (Jordan Peele)
• The Witch (Robert Eggers)
• Backrooms (Kane Parsons)
• Hurry Up Tomorrow (Jenna Ortega)
• Isaac Asimov's Foundation and Empire

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