Nothing dates a film faster than its attempt to anticipate the short-term future. These days, technology and society both move so fast that a film or TV show might look visually dated—or feel conceptually dated—by the time it hits the screen. Both were true of the silly, overwrought, Michael Crichton-derived sexual-harassment thriller Disclosure, which focused on the burning question on no one’s mind in 1994: What if the few women breaking through corporations’ glass ceilings used their newfound business-world power to practically rape and then demonize innocent employees like ? Histrionic misogyny aside, Disclosure also dated itself with its focus on a cutting-edge VR company data-storage system, which looks fairly plausible when Douglas is just exploring it, apart from the way it uses vast, cathedral-like rooms to house ordinary file cabinets. But the whole prospect becomes laughable when Moore’s temporary avatar—a 2-D wireframe with her stiff, implacable portrait pasted onto it—comes to erase some key data and winds up unknowingly chasing Douglas’ avatar around those cathedral rooms. It’s like a high-tech paper doll is coming to give him high-tech paper cuts.
