UFO Week - The Program; A Documentary Review

UFO WEEK - THE PROGRAM

My Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SEE IT. An informative and worthy effort from James Fox, one of the very best ufo documentarians in the business.

Day five of UFO Week is here and today we review the highly anticipated new James Fox documentary, The Program, which was released on December 16th and is available on video on demand.

James Fox is unquestionably one of the very best ufo documentarians working today. He has made five UFO related documentaries in the last twenty-seven years, with The Program being his sixth.

Not all of Fox’s UFO documentaries have worked, but the ones that have, like Out of the Blue (2003), I Know What I Saw (2009) and The Phenomenon (2020), are among the very best ever made.

Fox’s most recent film, Moment of Contact, was a major disappointment as it never fully came together as a noteworthy cinematic venture, and so I was very apprehensive about his newest film.

I am glad to say that The Program, while not nearly as good as the masterpiece that is Out of the Blue, is certainly a top-notch document and important piece of the UFO puzzle for any interested in a serious examination of the topic.

The film, which runs a brisk one hour and forty-two-minutes, opens with a discussion of the “Wilson Memo”, a 2002 memo allegedly sent between Admiral Wilson and astrophysicist Eric Davis regarding the secret UFO programs run by various black budget government agencies in conjunction with aerospace and military contracting companies.

The story goes from there and includes discussions with such serious luminaries as Dr. Gary Nolan of Stanford University and Hal Puthoff, as well as lesser-known insiders like former intelligence agency analyst Lenval Logan, DOD research scientist Sarah Gamm, and former Asst Deputy Secretary of Defense Christopher Mellon.

Logan and Gamm in particular make for compelling subjects as they seem like smart people trying to tell the truth while trying to avoid saying anything that would violate any oaths or NDA’s they have signed.

Mellon has become a mainstay in UFO discussions and documentaries and he gives a good interview as he comes across as serious as can be without being a fanatic. That said, I’m a bit wary of the guy with his intelligence background and his insanely rich family background (he comes from the Mellon banking dynasty).

One of Fox’s real strong points as a filmmaker is his ability to properly pace a documentary. His good films flow with an effortlessness that is compelling, and The Program is no exception.

While Fox does appear in many of his films, he is most successful when he is not the protagonist, but just an observer/interviewer.

To his great credit, Fox is masterful with his direct yet easy-going interview style, and he gets the most out of his subjects as is possible.

Another subject examined in the film is the case of Gary McKinnon, a British hacker who broke into U.S. government computer systems searching for secret UFO stuff…and found it. And for his trouble he was arrested and faced extradition and life in prison in the U.S.

What McKinnon discovered hidden away in the government vaults, besides a crystal-clear photo of a UFO, was a list of “non-terrestrial officers” which included names. Quite the unnerving find.

The film then stays in the UK and transitions to a case in Calvine, Scotland where in August of 1990, two Scotsmen photographed a UFO. The British government confiscated their pictures…but one savvy officer held one for himself and kept for thirty years, finally releasing it in recent years.

The photo is extraordinarily good, the story of the two men who took it as told by one of their co-workers, is not. The co-worker sounds like a drunk making up a story as he goes along…and it would’ve been better leaving him on the cutting room floor entirely.

Another issue with the film is the story of Jason Sands, a former-USAF airmen who worked at infamous Area 51. Sands, who was vetted and recently gave private testimony to congress, has footage of a UFO at a firing range, and tells a strange story of an interaction with an alien.

Sands’ story of his alien interaction is definitely outlandish, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. Unfortunately, after having watched the film, I’ve since seen Sands interviewed elsewhere where he tells even more outrageous tales about having to execute an alien at the behest of his superiors in order to guarantee his silence about the program in which he worked. This story is just a bridge too far and makes Sands sound like a committed fabulist or a fabulist who should be committed. I wonder if he told that same tale to Fox and Fox wisely kept it out of his film or if it is a new revelation? Either way, I think in terms of credibility it probably would’ve been better for Fox to keep Sands out of his documentary entirely.

The final portion of the The Program deals with the deep state obstruction of disclosure and features the always reliable Rep. Tim Burchett and Mellon describing the undemocratic government within a government that keeps all the secrets. (As an aside about Burchett, I was recently watching an episode of Finding Bigfoot with my son, an Animal Planet reality tv series from the 2010s – and in one episode the crew goes to Knox County, Tennessee to search for bigfoot and the mayor of Knox County – good old Tim Burchett, is there to help out and discuss his interest in the subject. I wholly endorse him being named director of the Federal Department of the Weird, Wild and Wonderful.)

There’s also a very damning display from the repugnant Bill Nelson, a former Senator from Florida and now head of NASA, who puts on a bullshit display that is so transparently dishonest and full of bureaucratic bluster that it is painful to watch. That Fox himself questions Nelson in an open forum, and then does a split-screen between Nelson blatantly lying about whistleblower David Grusch, and Grusch speaking to congress, is a master stroke.

The reality is that deep state despots like Bill Nelson, Admiral Wilson and their ilk are the tyrants of our age. These unelected bullying bureaucrats run the security and surveillance state that is antithetical to democracy and a republic and keeps us in the dark and in our cage.

The Program is about the UFO programs that men like Nelson and Wilson control, and the knowledge they refuse to share because that knowledge is power and they will never give up their unearned power.

The Program is a solid, well-made documentary that is well-worth watching. Unfortunately, it is only available to purchase and not rent, and the purchase price is $17...pretty steep.

The film will no doubt be available to rent at a much cheaper price in the coming weeks, and as good as I think it is, I think it’s worth waiting to rent it a cheaper price than buy at a steep one.

The bottom line is this, The Program is a very good companion piece to Fox’s earlier films, Out of the Blue, I Know What I Saw and The Phenomenon. As a collection, these films make a great starting point for newbies to the subject, and an excellent library of information for more experienced ufologists.

©2024

Moment of Contact: Documentary Review and Commentary

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT/SEE IT. A rather poorly constructed documentary that lacks coherence. Not worth paying to see but if you’re interested in the subject of UFOs, when the movie comes to streaming check it out for free at your leisure.

Ever since 2017, when the New York Times put their establishment stamp of approval on the UFO topic by running a story which contained previously unseen video of UAP’s (unidentified aerial phenomenon) obtained by Navy pilots, UFO stories have been taken more and more seriously by the mainstream media.

The giggles and eye-rolls which accompanied previous reporting on UFOs and the snarky comments about “little green men” have diminished as serious-faced military men and steely-eyed national security people have stepped forward to say, “hey, something really is happening here, and we better figure out what the hell it is!”.

I’m a UFO afficionado who deep down wants to believe…so much so that I do actually believe, but I’m also compulsively, if not pathologically, distrustful of the government, most particularly of military and intelligence agencies. So, I was excited by that NY Times article that started the recent surge of respectability for the subject of UFOs, but didn’t trust the two men who came to the fore as the faces of the UFO respectability program, Luis Elizondo and Christopher Mellon (of THE Mellon family).

Not surprisingly, as time has worn on that 2017 NY Times article has been exposed as being riddled with shocking inaccuracies and intentional misinformation, and Elizondo and Mellon have been shown to be basically the Butch and Sundance of UFO bullshitters.

To be clear, the establishment media, which is just the propaganda wing of the military and intelligence industrial complex, is not “all-in” on UFOs. Hell, just this past week a story ran in the Times that declared that those famous Navy videos were of “drones or trash” according to “unnamed sources”. That article and its sourcing should be a giant red-flag that a great battle is being waged behind the scenes over the UFO topic and the old guard is not going to go quietly into that good night.

The one thing we can be assured of is that Truth will not be on the agenda when the UFO topic is bandied about in the media or by government, military and intelligence toadies.

That most recent cynical Times article poo-pooing UFOs is a predecessor to a UFO/UAP report that is supposed to hit the public this coming week. The report has been getting a lot of hype in the UFO enthusiast community, with breathless yet familiar claims that “disclosure” of alien life and UFO visitation would be coming in the near future, but the “drones and trash” Times article has poured cold water on that utopian notion.

One man who was vociferously declaring that the upcoming UFO/UAP report was going to be very big news was documentarian James Fox.

Fox captured the recent ‘taken-more-seriously’ UFO zeitgeist in his worthwhile 2020 documentary The Phenomenon, which covered the various UAPs that befuddled Navy pilots in the Atlantic and Pacific and were captured on Navy cameras and instruments.

Other filmmakers have tried to follow in Fox’s footsteps. For example, J.J. Abrams produced a four-part docu-series for Showtime in 2021, lethargically titled UFO, but that was a rather forgettable piece of work.

Another Fox UFO documentary is 2009’s I Know What I Saw, which is well-made but not nearly as good as his very first foray into the subject which was his 2002 doc Out of the Blue.

Out of the Blue is the Citizen Kane of UFO documentaries. It’s a fantastically well-made movie and a truly remarkable piece of work that, despite often being somewhat difficult to find, is a must-see for anyone with even a passing interest on the subject.

The bottom line is that Fox is now, and has been for quite some time, the preeminent UFO documentarian and has made a name for himself being the UFO doc guy.

In recent days Fox has once again been in the spotlight. Hell, nowadays you can’t turn around without stumbling across Fox either on social media or TV because he’s out promoting his new documentary, Moment of Contact, which chronicles an alleged 1996 UFO crash in Varginha, Brazil, which included the supposed retrieval of one or two alien beings.

Moment of Contact was released on October 18th and is currently available via Video on Demand on Amazon and Apple, with the price to purchase (it’s not available to rent) being $19.99.

As someone with a longtime interest in UFOs, who is well-read and well-versed on the subject and who is also a fan of Fox’s earlier work, I was excited to see Moment of Contact, but was less-than-enthused to pay $20 for the privilege, so I waited until I got a copy for free from a fellow UFO researcher.

After having finally watched the documentary, all I can say is that I’m glad I didn’t pay for it.

Moment of Contact is easily Fox’s weakest effort in terms of UFO documentaries.

The story of the Varginha UFO/Aliens is as compelling as it gets, as it covers a UFO crash, aliens and alien retrieval, Brazilian and US military intervention and strong-arm cover-up, as well as human death, yet Fox somehow manages to make a documentary about it that’s as dull as dishwater.

Moment of Contact struggles to keep audience attention because it’s simply much too scattered in its focus, incoherent in its narrative and underwhelming in its execution.

The film’s failures are many. For example, it fails to piece together a coherent timeline of events in Varginha back in 1996 on the night of the crash and the days following. Minor mis-steps, such as constantly changing perspective of an overhead map meant to show the space where portions of the incident occurred, highlight the lack of precision and attention to detail that the subject requires. This inability to give the viewer an adequate understanding of the time and space where events took place, makes for a confusing and frustrating viewing experience.

Another minor example is that the majority of people in the film are Brazilians who speak Portuguese. Fox has an interpreter with him and she repeatedly mis-interprets what people are saying to him, which is evident by reading the sub-titles and contrasting that with what she says to Fox. The mis-interpretations are minor, but once again they speak to Fox’s failure to attend to detail and be precise. How can we trust what the film is claiming if we can’t trust what it is literally being spoken on film?

Fox compiles numerous eyewitnesses and they tell compelling stories, but to the film’s detriment, he’s never able to gather any substantial evidence to back up their remarkable claims.

For instance, Fox never uncovers paperwork proving U.S. Air Force flights into the area which would at least make the claim of US military and intelligence agency involvement substantial. Hospital records of the man who allegedly died after coming into contact with an alien, or even his military records, would also increase credibility, but Fox fails to provide them.

I understand these are difficult things to acquire and that subterfuge is the name of the game for officials concerning this subject, but with no electronic data like radar, or official documents – like flight, military or hospital records, then we are left with just witness accounts from regular people and rampant speculation.

At one point Fox brings the mayor of Varginha in and the mayor tells him he thinks the story is true. This mayor has no connection to the case whatsoever, and considering the city of Varginha embraces the UFO story and may be angling to use it as a tourist attraction, his beliefs have less-than-zero credibility.

The rest of the film feels as half-hearted and superficial as that visit from the mayor of Varginha.

Fox has recently been on social media claiming that there are two witnesses who say there is video evidence of the alien captured in Varginha. He claims these people have seen the video and he is working hard to get it, and once he does, he will share it with the audience.

If in fact Fox uncovers video of an alien, then it’s a true game-changer, but until then, Moment of Contact is a rather vapid documentary into the fascinating story of the Varginha incident that does a disservice to the very complex subject of UFOs.

To be clear, I actually believe the story of the witnesses to the Varginha UFO, I just think Moment of Contact fails to feature them together in a coherent and insightful way, and thus ends up not bringing anything of note to the discussion.

If you’re a UFO enthusiast, Moment of Contact will be frustratingly rudimentary and not worth a $20 price tag. If you’re someone new to the subject, the story might be eye-opening, maybe even too eye-opening to be believable. Either way, what happened in Varginha deserved a much better documentary than James Fox’s rather flaccid Moment of Contact.

©2022