Thursday Movie Picks: Environmental Wrongs & Disasters (like Chernobyl)

 

For the 16th week of 2022 as part of Wandering Through the Shelves' Thursday Movie Picks. We go into the subject of environmental wrongs and disasters that are similar to what happened at Chernobyl back in 1986. Either real-life events or fictional that do play into dangers that would harm an environment as well as a community of people. Here are my three picks:

1. Dead Ahead: The Exxon Valdez Disaster

A 1992 made-for-TV movie from HBO starring John Heard, Christopher Lloyd, Rip Torn, and Michael Murphy is an obscure gem that explores what happened as well as the effects it had on the community. It is also a film that explore this conflict between a small town, the fishing industry, and those at Exxon with the Exxon people trying to find out who should take the blame. It is a film that is really underrated and needs to be seen as it play into all of the environmental chaos as well as the bureaucratic mess within Exxon.

2. K-19: The Widowmaker

Kathryn Bigelow’s 2002 is about the real-life story about the Soviet Union’s first ballistic nuclear missile submarine and how its crew dealt with a nearly-fatal nuclear disaster that would’ve launched World War III. It is a film that is flawed in its script but Bigelow does manage to maintain this air of suspense as it play into officers arguing with one another but also a crew that is unprepared for this major meltdown. It is a film that is often overlooked in comparison to other submarine films but it is worth watching mainly because of Bigelow and the performances of Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson.

3. Dark Waters

Todd Haynes’ 2019 film is another film based on real-life events as it play into a corporate lawyer who is asked by his grandmother to help a farmer whose cows had died because of contaminated water. Though the lawyer in Robert Bilott is at first skeptical, he ends up getting a closer look where he confronts the company in DuPont as well as revelations into what he discovered. It’s not just in the contaminated water near this farmer’s land but also the chemicals that appear in simple appliances such as skillets and carpets with many people living with this chemical in them. It is a startling film to watch that showcases not just a corporation’s irresponsibility in what they did to a small town as well as many people but also how they try to maneuver their way through the legal system and not accept responsibility.

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