Dark Money (2018)

DARK MONEY  (2018)  ¢ ¢ ¢ 1/2
    D: Kimberly  Reed
We could be fairly early yet in the tenure of John Roberts as chief justice of the United States, but at this point, the case that seems likely to define him is Citizens United, in which a 5-4 court majority equated corporations with people and money with speech, paving the way for levels of electoral corruption that are still evolving and nowhere close to being reversed. This documentary zeroes in on a place that fought back - Montana - a sparsely populated, mostly conservative state with a century-old tradition of policing its elections to counter the pervasive influence of the copper industry. It's not copper so much anymore, it's nonprofits with vague identities and patriotic sounding names that allow corporations, and rich individuals like the Koch brothers, to give as much as they want to the causes and candidates they believe in, with no accountability to anybody. The movie begins and ends on a lake left behind by Anaconda Copper, a body of water so toxic that migrating geese that stop by there die. The metaphorical implications are obvious.