It's marketed as being the final word on government conspiracies and cover ups about UFO contact that we've been seeing in repeated cycles since the time of Kenneth Arnold and Project Blue Book right through Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Stanton Friedman, The X Files and a hundred other personalities and artefacts from culture.

But it's actually a mission statement for The Disclosure Project, a non profit effort by a doctor (Steven Greer) to get the US government to come clean about alien contact and activity on Earth.

Greer and a series of talking heads explain their thesis, and honestly it's the same one you've been hearing since Mulder and Scully asked the same questions. What's the US government hiding on top sercret military bases? Who really holds the reigns of power? I might be wrong as I'd been watching a lot of material about US history around the same time, but Greer/the film might even allude to Kennedy's being assassinated because he was getting too close.

The Disclosure Project is comprised of a lot of very formerly high level officials, scientists, astronauts and military men, all of whom believe in aliens and UFO cover-ups and seem to have insider access the rest of us could only dream of.

There's nothing much in it you haven't already heard from UFO lore several times over – I still remember a book in the mid 90s by some formerly high placed US Air Force officer who claimed humanity came by lasers and balsa wood from the crashed spaceship in Roswell. But if you're a UFO buff there's a lot of new footage and photos you've never seen before, which is cool.

The second half of the movie supports its thesis by drawing a picture of the secretive military/industrial complex that harbours these secrets and will do anything to keep them out of view and fortify their own power.

Will it convince you there are crashed UFOs and bodies of aliens in military bunkers? Not if you don't already believe it. In fact whatever you believe will be further cemented by the evidence here. If you believe everything from Rosell to Area 51 and beyond, this will further convince you.

But there's another dimension to it the film unwittingly presents. It's beyond doubt several agencies and officials comprise an 'off the books' US government whose influence is far reaching, beyond oversight and doesn't include the public face of politics that includes the President and Congress.

That secret government exists because it's human nature to seek and hoard power, and because absolute power corrupts absolutely – but there doesn't need to be aliens, Earth visitation and UFOs for that to exist. Less exciting and more prosaic explanations like plain old wealth and dominance are more than enough.