• “Dark Waters” (Coming March 3): An attorney who had previously worked on behalf of chemical corporations takes on behemoth DuPont in this expert legal thriller based on a true story.
Robert Bilott (Mark Ruffalo) finds himself in a quandary when a farmer friend of his grandmother’s (Bill Camp) comes to him with an eerie issue: His cows are mysteriously dying and he can’t figure out why. After poring over decades of Dupont’s records, Bilott discovers that PFOA (or C8), a chemical in Teflon, is poisonous to both animals and humans and is causing massive health issues, and he spends years fighting to hold the company accountable.
Ruffalo was inspired to get the rights to the story after reading a 2016 New York Times Magazine story about the ordeal and approached director Todd Haynes to make the film.
“An actor whose presence is always welcome, Ruffalo is splendid at projecting the unusual combination of bred-in-the-bone idealism with mulish stubbornness that made it impossible for Bilott to walk away,” wrote Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan in his review. “Seeing ‘Dark Waters’ makes you wonder not why more people don’t call corporations to account, but why anyone does. And makes us all the more grateful when they do.”
• “Queen & Slim”: After a painfully awkward first (and decidedly last) Tinder date, a young black man and woman (Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith) get pulled over by a hostile white police officer (Sturgill Simpson). As tension escalates in the all-too-familiar scenario, the man shoots and kills the officer in self-defense. Dubbed “the black Bonnie and Clyde,” the couple go on the run and become a cultural symbol of the consequences of systemic racism and police brutality.
Kaluuya and Turner-Smith give masterful performances, as both characters’ initially diverging philosophies ultimately transform and intertwine. And director Melina Matsoukas and cinematographer Tat Radcliffe present a dreamy, music video-esque aesthetic to the timely and tragic story, wrote Tribune News Service critic Katie Walsh in her review.
“Whipsawing between hope and devastation, ‘Queen & Slim’ speaks to this specific cultural moment,” Walsh wrote. “It’s not with a grounded realism, but with an almost operatic sense of melodrama, in the writing, performances and with Matsoukas’ daring cinematic style, where beauty and politics are inextricably intertwined.”
New on DVD March 3
• “Playmobil: The Movie”: A brother and sister end up a part of the Playmobil universe after encountering an exhibit in a toy museum in this computer-animated film.
• “2 Graves in the Desert”: A man and woman discover they’re being held hostage in a truck’s trunk. Stars William Baldwin and Michael Madsen.
• “Ana”: A girl (Dafne Keen) and a car dealer (Andy Garcia) embark on a trip to locate the girl’s father.
• “The Furies”: Kayla (Airlie Dodds) is forced into a game wherein masked men hunt down women.
• “The Sonata”: A violinist (Freya Tingley) inherits her composer father’s estate and discovers a sinister plan.
• “Titans: The Complete Second Season”: A group of teen heroes continue their fight for good in this DC Universe series based on the Teen Titans team.
• “Black Christmas”: A college student (Imogen Poots) and her sorority sisters seek revenge against a campus killer. Out on DVD and Blu-ray March 17.
• “Holly Slept Over”: A former roommate of a married couple stays for the weekend amid stressful social situations. Stars Nathalie Emmanuel, Erinn Hayes and Ron Livingston.
• “Richard Jewell”: A security guard (Paul Walter Hauser) is accused of being the prime suspect in the Centennial Olympic Park bombing at the 1996 Atlanta Summer Olympics. Look for it on DVD and Blu-ray March 17.
On digital HD March 6
• “The Dark Red”: A young woman (April Billingsley) is placed in a psychiatric hospital after claiming her baby has been kidnapped by a cult.
• “Escape from Pretoria”: In the country’s apartheid era, a group of white South African political prisoners (Daniel Radcliffe, Daniel Webber) makes a plan to escape.
• “Final Kill”: A mercenary must protect a couple from a crime family in Costa Rica. Stars Billy Zane, Randy Couture and Ed Morrone.
