Disclosure (1994)

What if a man was sexually assaulted? Disclosure's two narrative highs come from that other male fantasy, however — believing you've captured concrete evidence that a woman has made a false rape accusation. Its emotional high, however, comes from Douglas' preteen daughter saying, "Daddy, I never believed what they said about you." Grim stuff.

Literally captivating in the sense that I was bewildered that such a film exists and was continually wrong-footed when parsing what Disclosure was proposing as ideal gender relations. Although inconsistent, I guess the message was that it's Actually Okay for men and women to work together in these enlightened times, as long as the women are perceived by the men as unsexual, ugly, or they can also banter with the guys on men's terms. Both hilarious and heartwarming to know that so much has changed in the 30+ years since its release.

ps. This film made $214 million.

Dozens of Hollywood productions channeled — and monetized — white men’s anxiety around their own forgettability during this period: think Falling Down (1993), Disclosure (1994), Fight Club (1999), and Office Space (1999). Within this subgenre, American Psycho makes a particularly resonant match with two films released within the same nine-month period: American Beauty (dir. Sam Mendes, 1999) and American Pie (dir. Paul Weitz, 1999). Titled as they are, these three works implicitly position their straight white male protagonists as consummately American.

— Chelsea Davis (Los Angeles Review of Books)