2019 SLEEPERS
                                                        Part 3


Time for another dose of really good movies from last year that mostly sailed 
under the radar. 
If, like me, you are a sucker for David and Goliath stories, then you will surely like Dark Waters. Mark Ruffalo appears as Rob Billot, a corporate defense lawyer who stumbles upon a very dire situation caused by one of the country’s great companies. The people in Parkersburg, WV, and their animals, are affected by the pollution of the water table and a nearby river. DuPont is the town’s major employer and really the only game in town. A farmer starts Billot on the way to discovering the truth by showing him the mysterious disease and death  of his cattle. Billot digs and digs and discovers that DuPont has been killing these people for years. Tim Robbins is good as his doubtful, but basically supportive boss, and Anne Hathaway is fine as his wife. 
In 1980 Communist China, in a completely misguided effort to control population growth, enacted a policy of limiting couples to having only one child. Violators were severely punished. The main result was that most people wanted sons, not daughters. The number of female babies killed is an unredeemable scandal. Another result was a dearth of marriageable women for many years. The policy finally ended in 2015. One Child Nation is an eye-opening film about this draconian policy. Strangely enough, it is banned in China!
Julianne Moore is the whole show in Gloria Bell and that’s a good thing. Gloria works in a stodgy office by day but by night she dances and has a great time. Unexpectedly, a romance blossoms in her life and she is ecstatic. John Turturo is the love interest. The ending will please most everybody. 
Motherless Brooklyn is the strange title of a pretty good movie. Edward Norton is the producer, director and star. He plays private detective Lionel Essrog, a crackerjack detective who has Tourette’s syndrome. Norton plays this perfectly, including all the twitches and incoherent explosive statements. The plot is complicated, and Norton’s performance is actually the high point, but the story is not hard to follow.
Main criticism- a little long at 144 minutes, the downside of a rookie director. 
Arctic should probably be watched in July or August. Overgard (Mads Mikleson) survives a plane crash near the north pole and tries to survive until rescue can come. A helicopter sees him and tries to land but crashes, killing the pilot and badly injuring the female co-pilot. Overgard tries to care for her and decides they must go for help across the forbidding arctic landscape. The ending is equivocal.
All of the films in this article are available on DVD. All are for adults, though mature kids might go for the first one.