The Changeling

[silverscreenselect]

We saw The Changeling yesterday, and it's a fascinating, well acted movie. Almost everyone in the cast other than Angleina Jolie and John Malkovich are relative unknowns, most of them having done only bit parts and TV work and Eastwood gets remarkable performances from them. It's easy to direct an Anthony Hopkins or a Morgan Freeman since they can practically direct themselves, but to work with people who haven't done this level of work before is amazing. Eastwood at 78 is still cranking out top notch work.

The story is complicated, and some critics say a bit too complicated, but it's based on a true story, and sticks fairly close to the actual historical events. If anything, what really happened is even more bizarre and twisted that what is in the film. There's only one major discrepancy between historic events and what's portrayed in the film.

Spoiler

In the film, the information about the murders at the chicken ranch becomes known while Angelina Jolie is in the nut hatch and the publicity is the reason she is released. In real life, the murders did not come to light until after the disappearance case had resolved itself and Jolie's character was released from the nut hatch. The reason she was actually released was because the impostor boy finally confessed that he wasn't the missing child but that he had made the story up so he could see California.

The movie also has an amazing attention to period detail, part involving sets and props and part involving some graphic work. I would guess this film is going to win the Production Design Oscar.

It's not quite at the level of Mystic River, but it should certainly stack up as one of the best films of the year.

[macrae1234]

We saw Changeling this past weekend and it was a very good movie. I particularly liked Jeffery Donovan(Michael Westin from Burn Notice) as the corrupt Police captain and Geoff Pierson as the lawyer S S hahn

[Sir_Galahad]

This past weekend I watched No Country For Old Men for the first time. Outstanding movie. The only dissapointing part of the film, for me, was

Spoiler

Brolin's character getting killed off. After all the crap he went through only to get killed at the end kind of gnawed at me. But that may have been the intent.

[danielh41]

This past weekend I watched No Country For Old Men for the first time. Outstanding movie. The only dissapointing part of the film, for me, was

Spoiler

Brolin's character getting killed off. After all the crap he went through only to get killed at the end kind of gnawed at me. But that may have been the intent.

It did follow the book pretty closely though. They did condense a sequence with a young lady traveler at the hotel down to a quick shout at a hotel pool. But the main events right down to the ending were very true to the spirit of the book even if some things were left out.

[goongas]

Spoiler

The ending of the movie had to happen because that was the way the killer's value system worked. What he said he was going to do had to happen in his corrupted viewpoint of life. It is the same reason he killed the wife, because he said he would (if I remember the movie correctly)