This Modern World

WHAT LIES UPSTREAM (B+) - Cullen Hoback, who calls himself an investigative filmmaker, broke bread with me more than a decade ago at the Santa Fe Film Festival when he was still in the feature-film biz, pitching a wonderful little hourlong romp called "Freedom State," about a group of mental patients navigating life after the apocalypse. He was a friendly guy and an earnest filmmaker. He has since embraced the documentary format and went on to solid success with "Terms and Conditions May Apply" in 2013, and now this thorough examination of the horrors that have befallen our nation's water supply.

Hoback focuses on a chemical spill in West Virginia in 2015 that nearly went unnoticed. He is meticulous in following the science and in holding public officials to account, in particular a local director of Public Health who later graduates to the same position with the state and starts to back off his straight talk, giving in to the system. Hoback befriends a rather clueless director of the state's environment department, a frat-boy type in the mold of "Heckuva job, Brownie." Hoback walks in on a back-room legislative meeting where the manufacturers' association -- water suppliers, chemical companies -- are literally drafting an industry-friendly bill to hand to a dim-witted and mean state legislator for him to put his name to.

This is compelling and diligently reported. Hoback connects this one incident to the lead-pipe catastrophe in Flint, Mich., and to the dangers lurking in the water lines from coast to coast.

IN PURSUIT OF SILENCE (B) - A languorous examination of the noise in society that inundates us constantly and the ways in which silence can calm the mind. There are zen acolytes and other experts in silence who use their indoor voices for the crisp 81-minute running time, as well as a young cross-country traveler who has taken a vow of silence. Peaceful nature shots abound, rudely interrupted by buzzsaws and subway trains. Another reminder to slow down and shut up. Try to sit still for it in its entirety.