CHANGELING

I guess it's time to realise that Oscar Season, like Santa Ana season, is upon us. Once you get a woman screaming and crying and Clint Eastwood directing, you know what's up. And we haven't seen Angelina Jolie screaming and crying since...last year's A MIGHTY HEART, and she didn't take the (best) statue home for that, so obviously, she felt the need to squeeze out a few more tears.

Congratulations, Angelina. You can cry on cue. Now, you will lose every fight you have with Brad ("Oh for Pete's sake, turn off the Changeling tears, Ange!"), but you might just get one of the greatest honors to ever be bestowed on an actress in Hollywood: an Oscar...nomination. That's what they say right? "It's an honor to just be nominated?" Start practicing the phrase. Because unless Meryl Streep is awful in DOUBT, Cate Blanchett sucks in THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON, and Kate Winslet disappoints us twice in REVOLUTIONARY ROAD and THE READER (not freakin likely), a nomination is probably all you're bound to get. But it IS an honor.

In CHANGELING, Clint Eastwood takes us through the familiar trajectory of, "you think THIS is bad? Just you wait!" that we've come to hate/love from his more recent films (see MYSTIC RIVER or MILLION DOLLAR BABY). He slowly introduces us to the true story of a woman whose kidnapped son gets mistakenly returned to her as--get this--another boy. It's an awkward, scary mistake that shouldn't ever happen, and it's completely appalling that it did. That's what draws you in first, the frustration of seeing Angelina's character, Christine Collins, helplessly try to fight against the LAPD. You don't win when you fight the po-po--you lose. But thanks to a Reverend Gustav Briegleb, played by John Malkovich (in a role that has allowed me to forget/forgive his persona in BURN AFTER READING), Christine Collins has a chance. The film is pure Eastwood: raw and emotional and going just a little too far into sadness to make you ever want to see it again.

And despite the jokes, Angelina does put in a solid performance--sure, a bit one-sided with the crying and touching-of-the-lips and the furrowed brow and bouts of screaming and yelling, but she's doing much more, for me as a viewer, in this role than she did in THE GOOD SHEPHERD. In general, it's always a bit hard to get past The Angelina Jolie, the persona, the tattoos, the "I was sexy before I adopted a country of children" part of her, but luckily in this film, Angelina as Serious Actress is starting to emerge. Now if we could just tone down that red lipstick...and/or her lips. There's still work to do.

plot: Give her her son back!
thought: Give me my happiness back!
in five: 3.5/5

Oscar Contender: http://www.changelingmovie.net/