There are so many movies about whistle blowers because they’re the closest thing we have to real-life superheroes. They’re smart enough to see a problem, brave enough to do something about it, usually suffer for speaking out, and must have succeeded if their story’s interesting enough to make a movie about them. Karen Silkwood , played by Meryl Streep, works at the only major employer in her small Oklahoma town, a factory making plutonium fuel rods for a nuclear power plant.

After his disastrous Popeye , Robert Altman rebuilt his credibility by making a series of small-budget movies based on plays, starting with Come Back to the 5 & Dime Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean . Cher credits him with launching her acting career, starring alongside an ensemble of women who play members of a James Dean fan club reuniting in 1975, on the twentieth anniversary of hearing on the radio that he had died. It takes place in a small shop in a podunk West Texas town–the ki