Joey’s Home Movies For the Week of August 24th – A Smorgasbord Led By ‘Disclosure Day’ Alongside ‘Power Ballad’ and ‘The Sheep Detectives’

Welcome back to my Home Movies! This week is absolutely loaded, featuring three of my ten favorite films of 2026 hitting shelves. Those movies, which obviously are competing for top pick today? Well, they’re Disclosure Day, Power Ballad, and The Sheep Detectives, which really run the cinematic gamut. Also on the slate? Backrooms, Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu, as well as multiple Criterion Collection releases, so there’s something for everyone here. Read on for more…

Joey’s Top Pick

Disclosure Day

Steven Spielberg returns to the world of aliens and UFO’s with Disclosure Day, which absolutely blew me away. Emily Blunt has rarely, if ever, been better here, while Spielberg tackles one of his favorite subjects in a brand new manner. This flick, while ultimately not for everyone, is one I think stands tall amongst Spielberg’s non masterpiece best. For more proof, my rave review here on the site began like so:

If you found out we weren’t alone, if someone showed you, proved it to you, would that frighten you? That’s not just the tagline for Disclosure Day. It’s also the film’s central thesis, alongside the notion that maybe, instead of fear, it could change things for the better? Working again in the realm of aliens and UFOs, maestro Steven Spielberg is far more focused on the human element, resulting in deep emotions and a full cinematic experience. Whatever you’re expecting this movie to be, Spielberg has some of that for you, but he’s also delivering something different as well. I was thrilled and moved by what he revealed, to the point where almost nothing else so far this year has matched it.

Disclosure Day is both playful and a slow burn, so you have to get on its wavelength a bit. Spielberg makes you earn the final half hour or so, which is among the most satisfying denouements in his career. Hell, the opening shots of the flick are of a wrestling match. That’s probably not what those expecting Spielberg to revisit an alien invasion are prepared for. However, it’s just another way he wants you to check your expectations at the door. He’s already done War of the Worlds. He’s already done Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This is something else, and in my humble opinion, superior to both of those works. High praise, indeed, but justified.

Recommended Movies

Power Ballad

Another John Carney musical success, Power Ballad features Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas doing some very nice work. Is the film doing anything particularly new, Carney wise? No, not really. Is it still one of my favorite movies of the year so far? But of course. My rave review right here on the site began like so:

A John Carney movie follows a certain melody. Whether it’s his smallest film in breakthrough Once, his most star studded in follow up Begin Again, or his most recent work with Sing Street and Flora and Son, music plays an absolutely integral role. It’s not just to the plot, either. Carney does far more than fill his flicks with memorable original songs. No, he also imbues the love of music, of making music, into his characters. To them, songs are saviors (Begin Again was even originally titled Can a Song Save Your Life?). Now, he’s back with Power Ballad, which feels like a mix of everything he’s done before, albeit with a very enjoyable little twist. I was completely charmed by this one, which is as good as anything he’s done yet, as well as ranking amongst the best work of the year so far.

Power Ballad has all the charm of Carney’s work, though this time there’s more conflict in the story. That slight prickliness gives it a distinct flavor amongst his filmography. At the start, you’re pretty sure you know where the film is going to go. Then, the end of the first act has a real pivot point for Carney. From there on, the movie does kind of follow the path you’d expect, albeit a road he’s never quite gone down before. By the end, not only has he wrapped up another feel good gem, but he’s tugged at your heartstrings in just the right way.

Also Available This Week

Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. (4K)

Backrooms

The Breadwinner

Carolina Caroline

Enemy at the Gates (4K)

The Fast and the Furious (4K)

Father Mother Sister Brother

He-Man and the Masters of the Universe: The Complete Original Series + The Secret of the Sword & A Christmas Special (TV)

Identity (4K)

Mirrors No. 3

Perfect Strangers: The Complete Series (TV)

Practical Magic (4K)

Reacher: Season Three (TV)

The Saint (4K)

The Sheep Detectives

Speed Racer: The Complete Series (TV)

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu

The Stunt Man (4K)

United 93 (4K)

The Voice of Hind Rajab

Your Name. (4K)

Criterion Corner

American Dream

From The Criterion Collection: “Winner of the Best Documentary Feature Oscar, Barbara Kopple’s American Dream details the tumultuous 1985–86 labor strike against Hormel Foods in Austin, Minnesota. Fed up with dangerous plant conditions and drastic wage cuts, Austin’s Local P-9 went against the advice of its parent union and, aided by an activist campaign to damage the meatpacking giant’s reputation, conducted a nearly yearlong walkout. But as the strike dragged on, some workers found themselves desperate enough to cross the picket line, dividing a community already roiled by blockades, riots, and the intervention of the National Guard. Following up her landmark documentary Harlan County USA with another uncompromising report from the trenches of working-class America, Kopple captures the human and political costs of one of the most significant setbacks to organized labor amid the unchecked corporatism of the Reagan era.”

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Eclipse Series 49: Five Radical Documentaries by Kazuo Hara and Sachiko Kobayashi

From The Criterion Collection: “Shocking, confrontational, and made with white-hot fury, these radical documentaries—directed by Kazuo Hara and produced by his wife and longtime creative partner, Sachiko Kobayashi—give voice to the outsiders and iconoclasts who wage war against the conformism of modern Japanese society. From a woman willing to risk everything on her journey toward personal and sexual liberation (Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974) to a man whose quest to expose Japanese wartime atrocities borders on madness (The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On), the unforgettable subjects of these films are invited to be collaborators in Hara and Kobayashi’s process, resulting in works of unmatched power and immediacy.”

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Harlan County USA

From The Criterion Collection: “Barbara Kopple’s Academy Award–winning Harlan County USA unflinchingly documents a coal miners’ strike in a small Kentucky town. With unprecedented access, Kopple and her crew captured the miners’ sometimes violent struggles with strikebreakers, local police, and company thugs. With a haunting soundtrack—featuring legendary country and bluegrass artists Hazel Dickens, Merle Travis, David Morris, Sarah Ogan Gunning, and Florence Reece—the film is a heartbreaking record of the thirteen-month struggle between a community fighting to survive and a corporation dedicated to the bottom line.”

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Little Odessa

From The Criterion Collection: “A Dostoevskian family tragedy in the form of a gangster drama, the darkly elegant debut feature by James Gray heralded the arrival of a singular voice in contemporary American cinema. Cloaked in the shadows of New York’s underworld, Little Odessa follows Joshua (Tim Roth), a volatile hit man whose latest assignment takes him back to the Brooklyn neighborhood where he grew up. After his return home, his criminal life collides with the grim domestic world of his abusive father (Maximilian Schell), ailing mother (Vanessa Redgrave), and loyal teenage brother (Edward Furlong). Channeling the brooding fatalism of classic noir, Gray—who won the Venice Film Festival’s Silver Lion at just twenty-five—composes a haunting reflection on violence that begins at home and ripples ever outward.”

Stay tuned for more next week…