Plastic Paradise: The Great Pacific Garbage Patch (2014)

By Dan Clendenin

           Angela Sun might not be the greatest writer-director, but she's made an earnest film about an important subject — plastic. When we throw it away, it doesn't go away. It never disintegrates and is nearly indestructible. In particular, she focuses on the "island" of garbage that's halfway between the west coast of California and the east coast of Japan, and distributed along the archipelago that includes the Midway Atoll of WW2 fame. Sun visits Midway to document how its beaches, reefs, marine life, and birds are being poisoned by our plastic. There's plenty of blame to go around — the personal responsibility of consumers, and the corporate responsibility of producers like Dow and Dupont. This is the sort of film that is good enough to make you want to dig deeper about a critical cultural issue.