Erin Brockovich

The true story of Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts), a working single mother who, while apprenticing for a crusty country barrister (Albert Finney), discovers PG&E has poisoned and killed hundreds of citizens in the small San Bernadino County town of Hinkley. Director Steven Soderbergh is a gifted stylist, his film artfully lensed and edited, with a vivid sense of detail and engagingly arrhythmic pacing. His work complements Susannah Grant’s smooth and telling screenplay; both endeavor to frustrate cliché. A film sensitive to people often not taken seriously; with Brockovich, her socioeconomic peers in Hinkley, and the law, the film gets it right.