Everybody’s got water on the brain. The many somethings coming out of our faucets are in the headlines so often you can almost see the words swimming through a cold glass. The authorities continue to insist that a lot of nitrates won’t hurt, while some guy on Reddit did an at-home test that turned the color of a literal warning sign. And with all this very much in mind, Little Big Screen has another stack of dirty water movies to stream this month.
Chinatown (1974)
Directed by Roman Polanski
The chapter of California history that inspired Chinatown was titled “Water! Water! Water!” The film has since written over this history with its own idea of a desert paradise in progress where stolen water fills the pockets of an all-powerful few and sunlight doesn’t disinfect a thing. Chinatown is a masterpiece for many reasons but truer than truth for only one: the ending. Jack Nicholson’s half-decent and half-nostriled private detective, sure enough, gets to the bottom of the water conspiracy, and maybe, more. But here at the bottom of everything, where people like Roman Polanski decide what happens to the blonde woman and the rich creep and everybody else, the view is too clear, too real. All that’s left to be bottled up can only be choked down.
Stream it on Paramount+. Rent in on Apple TV and Prime Video.
Piranha (1978)
Directed by Joe Dante
Dante’s debut, a smart-assed spectacle of shredded flesh and inner tubes, is the best of the Jaws ripoffs, according to the director of Jaws, and the best possible B-movie The Birds, according to me. As far as water-related advisories go, Piranha’s trailer has voiceover narration that could run on KCCI right now with only one minor revision: What if there was something in the water … something small … something deadly … something you couldn’t see until it was too late … What if you went swimming one day and discovered … NITRATES.
Stream it on Kanopy, Peacock, Prime Video and Shudder. Rent it on Apple TV.
Michael Clayton (2007)
Directed by Tony Gilroy
Michael Clayton, set upstream in New York City conference rooms, includes a couple thank yous for Dick Mattox and James Bane of the Iowa Department of Transportation. I asked Bane how his name ended up in the credits of the cult-ish classic-ish legal thriller, hoping to hear about the time he and a shirtless Sydney Pollack rumbled, stumbled, bumbled into whatever Council Bluffs casino shares a parking lot with the Hampton Inn just off I-80. Nope. “Murky” is the word for almost all of Michael Clayton, except for the guilt of the agribusiness accused of poisoning people with the same kind of weed killer that runs off into Iowa’s rivers — and Bane’s answer. The film simply needed to shut down one lane of interstate to shoot on.
(Also, for the record, this is not normal practice for the DOT and Michael Clayton is not Bane’s type of movie.)
Prophecy (1979)
Directed by John Frankenheimer
This pulpy mess of a monster movie has thoughts on many, many things: the environmental impact of the paper industry, land rights in the Pacific Northwest, abortion, how fast a human body would have to be hurled to burst, bloodlessly, against a log. I was thinking about blink-182’s “Feeling This.” The song was written in different rooms — Tom Delonge did the verses over here, Mark Hoppus did the choruses over there, neither knew what the other was doing — and Prophecy feels like this, too. It might not mush together quite like the happy accident of Delonge and Hoppus’ harmonies, but still, the braindead Erin Brockovich over here and proto-Jurassic Park over there do manage to congeal around a stupid-good mutant bear. And no, you’re not too good to love (almost) every minute.
Stream it on YouTube. Rent it on Apple TV or Prime Video.
This article was originally published in Little Village’s August 2025 issue.
