Producers: Emma Slade, Victoria Dabbs, Roxi Bull, Michelle Morris and Sushant Desai      Director: Nat Boltt   Screenplay: Nat Boltt    Cast: Judy Davis, Miriam Margolyes, Elijah Tamati, Jackie Weaver, Craig Hall, Nathalie Boltt, Tanea Heke, Jonny Brugh, John Bach and Renaye Tamati   Distributor: Blue Fox Entertainment

Grade: C

For some reason filmmakers are convinced that stories about kooky, eccentric nuns are surefire crowd-pleasers, and that seems the principle behind actress Nathalie Boltt’s adaptation of prolific New Zealand author Joy Cowley’s 2013 novel, in which three sisters go to extraordinary lengths not only to save their home from imminent demolition but also to help a young boy grieving the death of his mother.  “Holy Days” strives mightily to be magical and heartwarming, but it misses the mark despite the efforts of a starry cast of veterans in the wimples.

Judy Davis, Jackie Weaver and Miriam Margolyes play Sisters Agnes, Luke and Mary Clare, the last occupants of a rural convent that was once the chief social center of the local community but is now in pretty poor condition.  Agnes, the pragmatic leader of the trio, still sneaks a cigarette when stressed; Luke is the genial gardener who might be called dotty in term of 1974, when the story is set, but today would be described as suffering from early signs of dementia; and Mary Clare is the sweet, good-natured one afraid to break any rules but always willing to help however she can.

As the movie starts, their primary concern is comforting Brian Collins (Elijah Tamati), a boy struggling to deal with the loss of his mother Paula (Renaye Tamati), whose grave he visits obsessively and whom he longs to see again.  Brian’s seething over the fact that his father Joe (Craig Hall) lives with a girlfriend, Liz (writer-director Nathalie Boltt, though she shortens her name to Nat for her behind-the-camera credits), who’s moved into the Collins house and, he fears, is trying to replace his mother.  When the boy acts out, the nuns are charged with imposing a penance, which often involves something like polishing the convent floors—though Mary Claire, who oversees the work, might turn it into fun by sliding down the hardwood with him.

A crisis arises when crusty Bishop Chaylor (John Bach) announces his decision to sell the convent to a developer, who plans to tear it down.   Father Findlay (Jonny Brugh), the pastor who’s a dissolute sort given to drinking, gambling, and watching sports on TV, goes along with the plan despite the nuns’ opposition.  Agnes decides that they must resist, which involves appropriating Findlay’s car to travel to see Patricia (Tanea Heke), an erstwhile member of the convent who was entrusted with the deed to the property with which they can claim ownership.  Since she’s Brian’s great-aunt whom he’s never met, they get Joe’s permission for him to join them. 

“Holy Days” thus becomes a wacky road movie that turns into a round trip, since a clause in the deed requires the nuns to be in residence to prevent the house from being demolished and they must rush to get back by the deadline.  Who knew that one of the nuns was such a master behind the wheel?

But the picture is simultaneously the tale of Brian’s coming to terms with his mother’s death not simply by meeting Patricia, who can commiserate with the boy, but through a mystical experience in which Paula comforts him in a vision.  Boltt throws pretty much everything into the mix in an effort to make the movie a crowd-pleaser, not just some hallucinatory moments set in glistening snow but periodic moments of colorful (if crude) stop-motion animation and bursts of impromptu dance, suffused in an insistently cheery score by Karl Sölve Steven.

But despite the best efforts of its game leads and some nice locations (shot reasonably well by Thomas Burstyn), the movie remains obstinately earthbound, with editor Carly Turner unable to integrate bits involving stolen money and bribery, or a bittersweet ending, smoothly into the strenuously upbeat narrative.

Perhaps all the folderol played better on the page than it does on the screen.  Another “Going My Way” this is not. 

Producers: Kristie Macosko Krieger and Steven Spielberg   Director: Steven Spielberg Screenplay: David Koepp   Cast: Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Eve Hewson, Colman Domingo, Wyatt Russell, Henry Lloyd-Hughes, Elizabeth Marvel, Hetienne Park, Tommy Martinez, Gabby Beans, Jeremy Shamos, Brandon Wilson, Priyanka Kedia, Lora Lee Gayer, Revon Yousif, Elliot Villr, Noah Robbins, Michael Gaston, Lance Hoyt, Brian Cage, and Chavo Guerrero, Jr.    Distributor: Universal

Grade: C

In “Disclosure Day” Steven Spielberg returns to the aliens-among-us theme he last visited more than two decades ago with “War of the Worlds”—though his great achievements in that area occurred in the five-year period that encompassed “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977) and “E.T.” (1982).  His apparent aim is to meld the kinetic energy of “War” with the awe-inspiring effect of the previous films, but he’s only sporadically successful at the former and fails to achieve the sense of wonder of the earlier two films.

“Day,” set in a world that, we’re told, is teetering on the edge of nuclear catastrophe (the worst threat since the Cuban Missile Crisis), begins with a sequence that ironically suggests its intention to beat us into submission.  A wrestler (Lance Hoyt) is pummeling a rival (Brian Cage) in a match shot by cinematographer Janusz Kaminski in up-close-and-ferocious fashion designed to make us part of the action.

But the real victim is quickly revealed to be Daniel Kellner (Josh O’Connor).  He’s a nervous spectator in the first row who’s barely watching the grapplers.

That’s because he’s anxiously awaiting the return of his kidnapped girlfriend Jane Blankenship (Eve Hewson), a captive of the black-suited minions of Noah Scanlon (Colin Firth).  He’s the head of the Wardex Corporation, for which Kellner, an ex-con who’s also a cybersecurity wiz, has worked for years.  Wardex is a firm hired by the deep state to keep close watch over the evidence of extraterrestrial visitations that have been occurring since the Roswell incident of 1947, ensuring that it will never be made public and cause panic.  Kellner has absconded with the digitalized files and intends to release them in concert with a group headed by another ex-Wardex whistleblower, sage Hugo Wakefield (Colman Domingo).

Using an alien device he’s also taken from the Wardex files, Kellner escapes Scanlon’s thugs with Jane and they hightail it to a Catholic convent where she was once a postulant.  (She describes herself as a “novitiate,” apparently meaning she had attained the status of a novice, but garbling the terminology.)  Sister Maura (Elizabeth Marvel), the mother superior of the Monastery of St. Clare, as it’s called, gives them shelter overnight until they depart for a remote farmhouse Hugo has arranged as a safe hiding-place.  But it turns out to be less secure than advertised, since Scanlon uses another alien device to psychically visit Jane and influence her to reveal Daniel’s plans.  Once more they escape his army in a frantic chase, but he then tracks them to a motel where they’ve taken refuge, capturing Daniel while Jane escapes with the files.

Meanwhile a second plot thread unfolds centering on Margaret Fairchild (Emily Blunt), a meteorologist at a TV station in Kansas City, where she lives with her boyfriend Jackson (Wyatt Russell).  She’s marked by peripatetic habits that puzzle him, and he’s totally befuddled by her behavior after an incident over breakfast one morning, when a cardinal flies into their loft and stares at Margaret.  Suddenly she can speak multiple languages and, as an incident with a traffic cop demonstrates, can intuit the thoughts and feelings of others.

During her broadcast, moreover, she suffers a seizure and begins chattering with clicking sounds that result in her being taken to a hospital for observation.  Scanlon recognizes this as a sign of alien involvement and sends his forces, led by his grim lieutenant Casper Boyd (Henry Lloyd-Hughes), to bring her in.  But Margaret and Jackson elude them and are soon on the road.  (By this point you may well conclude that the Wardex folk are an awfully incompetent bunch and wonder how they ever managed to suppress the truth for so long.  As for Scanlon, he spends much of his time berating his staff whenever he returns to his body from one of his psychic peregrinations.)

Margaret’s uncanny abilities lead her to the Wardex facility where Daniel is being held, leaving the increasingly bewildered and undependable Jackson behind.  Using her power to intuit personnel’s interior lives and memories and even to appear to them as important individuals in their lives, she frees Daniel.  Only Casper is unaffected and pursues them, resulting in the movie’s standout action sequence, involving the two cars, a rail crossing, and a speeding freight train.  It rivals anything in “War” and proves that at their best Spielberg, Kaminski, editor Sarah Broshar and composer John Williams can still conjure up the director’s old form of collaborative cinematic magic.

There are plenty of other action scenes in what’s essentially a chase movie, but even the best of them, like one in which a car crashes through that compromised safe house and keeps on going, is at best okay; worse, the repetitive scenes of squadrons of black cars speeding over hill, dale, highways and city streets in pursuit of our heroes prove a bore that contribute to an unconscionable two-and-a-half hour running-time.  (Broshar should really have been more energetic in her trimming.)

Another problem with the film is its extraneous religious sidebars.  The detour to the convent of Poor Clares allows, for one thing, Scanlon to make a rather crummy joke about sharing a power with St. Clare of Siena, the founder of the order, who according to Catholic hagiography possessed (as he does) the gift of bilocation.  But even worse is a telephone call Jane makes to Sister Maura, inquiring whether the existence of proof about extraterrestrials would undermine faith.  The good nun assures her it would not, as it could easily be shown not to conflict with the creation story told in Genesis.  Thanks for the theology lesson, Steven.

That’s symptomatic of the proclivity to toss anything and everything into the mix.  At one point, for some inexplicable reason, Daniel is shown producing, either intentionally or as an unwitting instrument, a crop circle.  One gets the feeling that if some theory linked UFOs to kitchen sinks, there would be one of those here, too.     

In any event, the final act of “Disclosure Day” takes Margaret and Daniel to Hugo and his band of followers.  Hugo’s elaborate reconstruction of Margaret’s childhood home helps her overcome trauma that led her to suppress memories of an episode she (played by Delaney Cuthbert) experienced when she was ten, an episode that included not only that cardinal but other wildlife, as well as a forgotten meeting with the young Daniel (Tyler Renaud).   Of course, Scanlon and his army show up once more, but Margaret’s abilities, combined with a bit of help from another alien gizmo, help everyone to escape yet again.

They all make their way to Margaret’s Kansas City TV station, where they plan to broadcast the files Daniel removed from Wardex to a world on the threshold of disaster.  Naturally Scanlon tries to intervene, but once again he’s thwarted, and after Hugo wheels in a special guest (whose very existence renders everything that’s preceded rather superfluous), he must admit defeat.  The setup is really nothing more than a more technologically advanced version of the final twist of “Three Days of the Condor,” and Spielberg’s film might be seen as a mash-up of Sydney Pollack’s 1975 thriller and the “X-Files” series, the former of which had more excitement and the latter more mystery (and humor).

Moreover, it’s a certainty that the global audience depicted as watching the whistleblowers’ disclosure are much more transfixed than viewers watching this movie will be by the conclusion, which breaks off before Margaret can deliver what’s promised as a stirring message to a fearful, beleaguered humanity.  It was probably a good idea not to include her address, as it probably would have been pretty much the same warning Klaatu gave us as far back as 1951.

It remains to say that “Disclosure Day” is as slickly made as all Spielberg films are—in addition to the behind-the-camera contributors already mentioned, one can name costumer Paul Tazewell and production designer Adam Stockhausen (the batteries of TV monitors filling the wide, wide screen in the finale are impressive indeed).  The visual effects supervised by Matthew Butler are more than adequate, though the alien footage isn’t especially imaginative.

Blunt will be widely praised for her performance as Margaret, and she does capture the character’s mercurial character.  But it’s a showy turn, less effective in the end than O’Connor’s more restrained one.  The rest of the cast do what’s basically competent but unexceptional work–Firth makes a one-note, scowling villain–though Domingo brings hushed gravity to Hugo.

One shouldn’t be too hard on “Disclosure Day.”  It’s a UFO conspiracy thriller that’s watchable enough, but in narrative terms feels curiously old-fashioned and derivative despite its technological flourishes.  Frankly at its best “The X-Files” still carries more of an impact.