Steven Spielberg has always believed we’re not alone in this universe. With ‘Disclosure Day,’ he may make a believer out of you, too.

Steven Spielberg says he is now convinced that alien life has 'visited Earth,' a shift he links directly to recent US whistleblower claims, as he returns to cinemas on 11 June with Disclosure Day, a new film shot in New York and billed as his most reality‑driven take yet on UFOs and extraterrestrial contact.

With 'Disclosure Day,' the director returns to a longtime preoccupation. Two Times staffers explore his ongoing fascination with extraterrestrials.

It's an invigorating chase thriller, but where Spielberg once seemed to be leading the culture, he's now following decades of lore and mythology.

For roughly the first three decades of his career, Spielberg tended to take a fairly sanguine view of aliens, refusing to succumb to the disaster-movie framework of aliens attacking terrified Earthlings. That changed in a big way after 9/11, when Spielberg made a couple of Tom Cruise -starring sci-fi blockbusters grappling with a changed world.

Steven Spielberg’s fourth film about alien encounters is “Disclosure Day,” following “ET: The Extra-Terrestrial,” “War of the Worlds,” and “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” That inspired us to take another look at what Roger Ebert thought about some of the most famous and infamous alien movies,

The following post contains some SPOILERS for Disclosure Day, although not much more than what was shown in the movie’s trailer. It also contains spoilers for Close Encounters of the Third Kind.