'Disclosure' is the movie of the moment 23 years too early

It's easier to watch a movie like Disclosure today and scoff at its dated look and occasionally absurd politically incorrect dialogue. And yet, this complex 1994 thriller was more on the ball than you might expect, and it makes for fascinating viewing amid the current climate where an ongoing national conversation about sexual assault and harassment has outed numerous powerful men in politics, entertainment and media as abusers, creeps and criminals. The fact that this film makes a strong woman the perpetrator of inappropriate sexual conduct doesn't make it any less entertaining or edifying. It's tawdry and transgressive -- but it also still makes some surprisingly salient points about the problematic power dynamics that can turn relationships between men and women toxic.

Based on a popular best-seller from Michael Crichton, the movie was a hit when it came out. Audiences were likely seeking another Basic Instinct reprise, but the movie is more concerned with office politics than sexual titillation.

Demi Moore -- as the object of leading man Michael Douglas desire, as well as the thorn in his side -- gives perhaps the best performance of her short-lived career as an A-list movie star. She chews the scenery with gusto and yet never allows her villain to become purely a caricature.

Douglas of course was dinged at the time for playing yet another man-aggrieved-by-an-aggressive-woman, but with a few decades and some hindsight, it seems as if he was the perfect person to play a character like this. He's a sleaze who doesn't know he's a sleaze, and becomes begrudgingly more sympathetic as the movie unfolds. Douglas never gets enough credit as a self-aware actor. He's clearly playing the satire of the sanctimonious nature of his character. If the part were played by a more unassailable hero of the era (think Harrison Ford) it wouldn't be half as interesting.

The cast is filled out with a host of other great character actors like Donald Sutherland, Dylan Baker and an incomparable Roma Maffia, as an attorney who really could star in her very own movie.

Every time the movie seems like it's about to slip off a cliff, it throws us another unexpected curveball. It has a ludicrously complicated plot involving the merger of a high tech Seattle company; but that's really just a smokescreen for a time capsule of 90s-era gender fears and paranoia.

This movie has everything that you would presumably love to hate -- crappy VR, gay panic, castration panic, Dennis Miller -- and yet it manages to pass the Bechdel text and calls out more benign harassment alongside violent behavior. Hell, the Douglas character even makes a sincere apology for his behavior in this movie, something the president of the United States won't even do in 2017.

It'd be incredible to see how a movie like this would turn out if it were made today, although it's unlikely any movie like this could exist now. First of all, it's an adult movie about adults, which has been out of favor for decades now.

Certainly, the character of Douglas' wife, while not a pushover, would likely have more agency and range than she has here. Hopefully, the ending would be more ambiguous, although there is much to savor in how this film comes to a close, and the most obvious change would be that it'd no longer be necessary to have a white man be the mouthpiece for validating the concept of sexual assault.

Still, this is a wildly entertaining film because of its flaws and also because of its merits. This movie is way better than it deserves to be, and it feels so timely right now, even if its special effects are painfully laughable now.

What isn't funny though is that some of the same conversations that occur in this movie -- about how and when to report an assault, about consent, about crude comments and victim shaming -- are still happening now and often those conversations haven't grown more sophisticated or sensitive.