Dark Waters

This is familiar oscar bait but elevated just a tiny bit by Todd Haynes direction. Even if we haven't seen the specific DuPont water poisoning movie before, we've definatley seen the lawyer from the corporate side of the world finding a cause to believe in, fighting it in the face of his partners and even his own wife - his slick city values contrasted with the victims country innocence. Except this takes the demonstration of water poisoning far further than most of those - we see the illnesses and mutations dead on - and we see the mental effects this begins to have on the lawyer in the middle. And there's a deliberate attempt to show just how long and stretched out this case ends up being (material cover about 15 years, with title cards covering a further five). Anne Hathaway's wife character is trapped by the cliches, she does attempt to fight a little against them but .. well, she's 15 years younger than Ruffalo, and ends up having all the standard "wife tries to stop the male lead from doing what the movie is about" stuff that should be permanently retired but somehow still isn't.