The three-eyed fish in Lake Springfield was the first clue: "Silkwood"

Quick, how many times has Meryl Streep been nominated for an Oscar. Come on ... come on ... what do you say? Seven? Eight? To tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in the world ... oops, wrong movie.

Give up? Let's check IMDB. Wow, 13 times, including 1o for Best Actress. Even if she's won "only" twice, that's not too bad when it comes to an acting career. And that doesn't even count her turn in "Stuck on You." (Hey, I still say that's a funny movie, or at least the funniest movie ever about conjoined twins. "We're not Siamese. We're American.")

Of course, as a thirtysomething heterosexual male, I'm not exactly Dame Streep's target demographic, and a quick scan of her filmography reveals that I've seen ... well, about a half-dozen of her movies, including somewhat forgettable fare such as "The River Wild" and (gulp) "She-Devil." While I also had seen more respectable turns, i.e. "Defending Your Life" and "Adaptation," I was woefully lacking in a firsthand look at what made Meryl the bee's knees when it came to today's top thespians.

Enter "Silkwood," which played recently on one of the HD channels and seemed something I could absorb a lot more easily now than when it first came out more than 20 years ago. Streep plays Karen Silkwood, an employee at an Oklahoma nuclear plant. She, her boyfriend (the esteemed Kurt Russell) and their lesbian friend (the long-stemmed Cher) all like their jobs OK, but it slowly dawns on Karen that all is not right in Radiation Land, and that workers may not be better off because of it.

This kind of conspiracy stuff can make for a decent plot -- expect when the movie is actually called "Conspiracy Theory" -- and "Silkwood" works well. Director Mike Nichols does a decent job easing into the seriousness of things -- first nicely portraying how happy folks are to work at the nuclear plant, then showing how Silkwood's poking around could jeopardize those jobs. He also does a pretty good job of explaining how an average employee could get caught up in all this. Silkwood didn't set out to challenge the system; it just ended up that way.

One thing I'm not sure worked, though, was when the movie stepped away from the doings at the nuclear plant and shed light on Silkwood's personal life. True, this helps make her a real person -- all the back-and-forth with Snake Plissken and Butterfly Butt, as well as the stress over not being with her kids. But it was a little distracting at times, and I might have trimmed those scenes a bit to allow more focus on what brought Silkwood to prominence: her desire to expose possible contamination and general malfeasance at the plant.

Even so, it's hard not to like our man Russell, and we get a solid supporting cast of Movievangelist favorites: Fred Ward, David Strathairn, Ron Silver, Craig T. Nelson, M. Emmet Walsh, Will Patton, Anthony Heald, James Rebhorn and the unparalleled Bruce "D-Day" McGill. Cher's also pretty good in one of her first movie roles, although, again, not as good as in "Stuck on You."

But this is Streep's show, and she nails the role with the right mix of redneck, caring soul and troublemaker. It's kind of a tricky part, and a lesser actor could come off as too indignant -- not right given Silkwood's humble roots -- or too terrified, which also wouldn't work since the nuclear plant guys aren't exactly the Corleones. It's not surprising that Streep is the current gold standard for actresses. After all, not anyone can hold her own against conjoined twins.