Saw Clint Eastwood’s new film, CHANGELING, yesterday. Excellent, excellent, excellent.
My guess is that it will be nominated for Best Film, Eastwood will be nominated as Best Director and Angelina Jolie will get nominated as Best Actress. (I keep forgetting how good of an actress she is until I see her in a film.)
Even though it is almost 2 1/2 hours long, the film didn’t drag for a single minute. The set pieces were perfect and you felt like you were in Los Angeles in the late 20’s, early 30’s. Although hardly a “feel good movie”, each character is given time to develop on screen and, shock of shock, even the kid actors were fantastic! The subject material is fairly gritty, and the social norms of the time regarding women are pretty jarring, but at no time does this film seem slightly out of character.
There are a few nitpicks that I am sure others will point out, but if you want to see what might be the Best Film of the year, be sure to go see Changeling! Plus, I think at this point Angelina Jolie has a lock and should make some room on her bookshelf for her Oscar.
Currently at Rotten Tomatoes it sits at 52% (rotten) while “Zack and Miri bleep a bleep” is at 66% fresh. At that’s not even close to being the highest rated release this week.
The folks at Box Office Prophets are less than optimistic about any Oscar chance for this film. While some people like it (obviously), it’s not going to get much attention at awards time.
Who would’ve thought that Kevin Smith would outpoll Clint Eastwood???
The NPR reviewer wasn’t happy with it. I can’t find a link to the review (aired on 10/31) but he thought it was heavy-handed and melodramatic. He liked Malkovich’s performance, wasn’t impressed with Jolie. I got the impression that he thought Eastwood was overrated as a director. I disagree, but I’m no movie expert. It sounds like Changeling is something I’d like. I like melodrama!
That’s not odd at all. Of course a sexy romantic comedy is going to be held to different critical standards than a period drama. That’s as it should be.
Saw it this past weekend. Now, I will admit that I’m a sucker for any movie that pulls off a historical time period really well like this movie did, but I really liked this movie a lot. Overall, my only quiblle with the film is that they had to put so much makeup on Angelina Jolie just to make her look like an ordinary human being that it almost distracts you at time.