BEFORE: I've kept on track as best I could, but it's been a BIG month for movies already - that mistake of assuming that footage of Robert De Niro would be used in the "Joker" sequel has cost me, because it took TWO films to replace "Killers of the Flower Moon" in the chain, so now I'm behind, and the end of the month is coming up fast. I had two more Channing Tatum movies scheduled, "Stop-Loss" and "Havoc", and then that last one has Anne Hathaway in it, which would have led me here. But I saw a shortcut, Victor Garber was uncredited in "Fly Me to the Moon", but he was definitely in there, playing a U.S. Senator. This creates a short-cut that ALSO leads me here, I can cut those other two movies and get to "Dark Waters" two slots earlier, and bingo, I'm back on track. Five days left in the month, five movies, there's no perfect path, that's for sure, but I can see a shorter path, and that could be a better path, or at least a different path. I can get to my first romance film on February 1 now, without having to double-up - and I'll keep those other Channing Tatum movies on the "someday" list, because you never know, they could be useful later, this year or another year.
I had another pathway, just in case, I could have linked to "Coach Carter", also with Channing Tatum, then linked to "Eve's Bayou" via Debbi Morgan, and that would get me to tomorrow's film just fine, only the chain would still be one movie too long, and I'd have to drop Thursday's film then, I would just prefer to not do that and get there this way, OK? Oh, another problem, "Dark Waters" was on Netflix when I made this chain, but now it's not - it must have scrolled off the service within the last week or so. Anyway, I'll track it down somewhere else, don't you worry about it, this path is still the one we want to be on.
THE PLOT: A corporate defense attorney takes on an environmental lawsuit against a chemical company that exposes a lengthy history of pollution.
AFTER: Well, at least now I know why you can't buy teflon pans any more. My wife and I do go to outlet stores from time to time, and we've bought a few fry pans together - actually when we first moved in together we combined our pans and had a big stack, slowly we've weeded the bad or scratched ones out and replaced them, so now we have an even bigger stack in our cabinet. Yes, we have a big house (for two people and two cats, anyway) but a tiny kitchen - there's just no way to allocate more kitchen space, except we put up a cabinet in the dining room for all her baking stuff. But when we shop for pans I see all the labels on the green copper pans, the red copper pans and the copper copper pans that they're all PFOA free, and sure, that's comforting but also I've been meaning to check out exactly what PFOAs are, and now I don't have to.
Perfluorooctanoic acid, it's a chemical that Dupont used to make Teflon pans, and they dumped a lot of PFOA waste into the environment, and we now know it's a "forever chemical", meaning it's not going to break down any time soon, and you probably don't want to be around it when it doesn't, or even when it does. The usage and disposal of this compound was unregulated for many years, because the EPA didn't treat it as a safety risk. Why? Because DuPont told them it wasn't. Right. OK, so why did so many people who worked in the DuPont plant that made Teflon come down with cancer later in life? And why are all the cows who live near the plant suddenly getting aggressive and having mutant babies? But this couldn't all be DuPont's fault, because they've done so many positive things for the community, if there was any danger in living near the chemical plant, they'd tell people about that, right? Umm, sure.
It's a bit timely to watch this one now, I'm glad I stuck to my plans, because Trump's back in office and EPA regulations are once again non-existent, because they would interfere in Making America Rich Again, or something like that. But we need to remember that the EPA is there for a reason, and when chemical companies are left unchecked, they're just going to dispose of their leftover toxic sludge whenever and wherever they want. Now it seems the more vital any cabinet department is, the greater the chance Trump wants to get rid of it. Are we really talking about getting rid of the Department of Education? With Americans as stupid as they are (generally speaking, of course) how could this be anything but a bad idea? Next thing you know Trump will be saying we don't need the EPA at all, or the Pandemic Response team - remember how well THAT one worked out in 2020? RFK Jr. has already hinted that he wants to stop putting fluoride in the drinking water - great, because that's the ONE chemical in the water that has a positive effect, unlike all the others. Face it, we're doomed.
One dairy farmer who lives near the DuPont plant in Parkersburg, West Virginia, brings a bunch of video-tapes to Robert Bilott, a corporate lawyer in Cincinnati, the farmer apparently knows Bilott's grandmother, and the tapes show all his cows going mad, only it's not mad-cow disease. Oh, yeah, prepare for THAT one to come back around again, right after the bird flu and the monkeypox later this year. Bilott works for a law firm that has a lot of chemical companies for clients, only NOT DuPont, and he tries to tell the farmer that he should probably be looking for a prosecuting attorney, not a defense lawyer, but this falls on deaf ears. When Bilott goes to visit his grandmother in West Virginia, he notices a bunch of townspeople with blackened teeth, and probably thinks at first that they just like licorice a lot, maybe.
But when the evidence of contamination keeps coming in, and Bilott files a lawsuit with a motion for discovery, his contact at DuPont sends over ALL the files, hoping that Bilott could spend years going through all the documents and never finding the evidence he needs. But Bilott is determined, organizes thousands of documents and finds out the hard way about PFOA, then he just needs to find a scientist to tell him what the hell it is, and how bad it would be if you were to drink it. Umm, really really bad, like the gives-you-cancer and turns-your-teeth-black kind of bad. Ahh, so he might have a class action lawsuit here, if he can get enough people in this town to realize DuPont is putting them in jeopardy.
I know what you're thinking, it's West Virginia, like the spare Virginia, we already have a Virginia, do we really need a second one? Well, we don't get to make those kinds of decisions, these are Americans we're talking about, and they have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of whiter teeth and not being poisoned without their knowledge. DuPont offers the farmer a settlement, but the farmer doesn't want their money, he wants to move forward with the case so that everyone will know how dangerous the chemical and the company are. Bilott sends his findings to the EPA and Department of Justice, and DuPont is fined $16.5 million, which is about how much they profit from making Teflon every day or so.
Bilott presses on with his class action, and seeks an agreement from DuPont that they will provide medical monitoring for all the residents of Parkersburg, and if a link should be proven between the PFOAs in their bodies and future illness, then they would be liable for health care and benefits in the amount of $300 million. However, despite paying the townspeople for their blood samples and collecting almost 70,000 samples to test, it takes YEARS to analyze all the data, and during that time, some citizens die, as you might expect, and Bilott struggles financially, taking pay cuts and his marriage and his own health start to suffer from the stress.
Eventually, science does its thing and proves that these forever chemicals don't really mix well with the human body (we're learning something similar now about microplastics) so yay, science, the big evil corporation has to pony up for healthcare! Only Dow decides to no longer honor the mediated terms that they agreed to, seven years before. So great, if they won't deal with the problem all at once, Bilott decides to sue them separately, for every West Virginia resident who wants him to, and the first three cases go his way, for multi-million dollar payouts. Huh, what do you know, suddenly a $300 million lump sum for health care doesn't seem so bad, and DuPont is back on board. Yay, science again, only maybe next time we could try to figure out what chemicals are toxic and dangerous BEFORE we allow them to be dumped into the water supply? Just a thought - but this of course will no longer be possible once a certain President gets finished gutting the regulatory commissions from the inside. So we're back to "We're doomed."
Well, at least I learned a few things today. But I don't base my scores on how much I learned, I base them on how much I enjoyed each film.
Directed by: Todd Haynes (director of "The Velvet Underground", "Wonderstruck")
Also starring Mark Ruffalo (last seen in "Begin Again"), Anne Hathaway (last seen in "Armageddon Time"), Tim Robbins (last seen in "Nothing Compares"), Bill Pullman (last seen in "Igby Goes Down"), Bill Camp (last seen in "Drive-Away Dolls"), Mare Winningham (last seen in "News of the World"), William Jackson Harper (last seen in "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania"), Louisa Krause (last seen in "Here Today"), Kevin Crowley (last seen in "Carol"), Michael Haney (ditto), Michael Joseph Thomas Ward (ditto), Amy Warner (ditto), Bruce Cromer, Denise Dal Vera (last seen in "The Killing of a Sacred Deer"), Barry G. Bernson (ditto), Richard Hagerman, Abi Van Andel, John Newberg (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Barry Mulholland (last seen in "Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile"), Jeffrey Grover (last seen in "The Last Summer"), Jim Azelvandre, Bucky Bailey, Marcia Dangerfield, Brian Gallagher (last seen in "Aftermath"), Teri Clark (ditto), Michael King, Greg Violand (last seen in "Jenny's Wedding"), John Moll, Clara Harris (last seen in "The Old Man & the Gun"), Kelly Mengelkoch (ditto), Bella Falcone, Scarlett Hicks, Amy Morse (last seen in "Jack Reacher"), Aidan Brogan, Nathan Slaughter, Graham Caldwell, Beau Hartwig, Jackob Bukowski, Keating Sharp, Mikel Furlow, Courtney DeCosky, Ken Early (last seen in "Miles Ahead"), Annie Fitzpatrick (last seen in "White Noise"), Wynn Reichert (last seen in "Masterminds"), Mike Seely, Jon Osbeck (last seen in "A Man Called Otto"), Clyde Tyrone Harper, Jennie Malone, Jason M. Griggs, George Zamary, Sydney Miles
and the voice of Elizabeth Marvel (last seen in "The Land of Steady Habits"), with archive footage of Julie Chen Moonves, Anderson Cooper (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), Katie Couric (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Peter Jennings (last seen in "Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street"), John Stossel, Barbara Walters (last seen in "Billie Jean King: Portrait of a Pioneer") and a cameo from the real Rob Bilott.
RATING: 5 out of 10 searches on Altavista (hey, remember life before Google?)
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