Where the homeless quote Milton

Molly Ryman & Robert Evans in …Around (click to enlarge)

I’m thirty years older than the film school characters in ...Around (2008), but the connection seems clear. Forget my gray hair, lined skin and failing eyesight: one look in the mirror, and I still see traces of the fear that motivates young idealists. And in my mind I’ll always suffer the adolescent cluelessness and hunger dogging the film’s principal screw-up, a noncommittal bridge-burner named Doyle Simms. Kudos to Robert W. Evans for his excellent performance here, as he maneuvers through some very real psychological, academic and familial booby traps, the kind that often snare us when we’re Simms’s age, that magic time when he and I (and, in all likelihood, you) thought we had it all together while the glory of youth slipped by our notice.

    Its title reflecting that emotional cul-de-sac, ...Around was written, produced, edited and directed by twenty-five-year-old David Spaltro. Working from autobiographic material, he’s done wonders on a miniscule budget (reportedly $200,000), a combination of script savvy and fortuitous casting. Of the latter, there’s Ron Brice, memorable as an existential street dweller — Spaltro is wise not to underline the irony of an unemployed and homeless intellectual; Berenice Mosca is touching as Simm’s confused mother, stifled by her own misdirected sensibilities; and Molly Ryman is every hetero boy’s fantasy, the creamy insecure blonde willing to wait out her man’s frustrating odyssey.

    Simms is an aspiring filmmaker with no story to tell — at least none he’s conscious of — depleted of funds, disconnected from family and too dumb to kiss the eager girl. (Metaphorically impotent, he’s going without coming.) Sleeping on the streets, working temporary jobs, maxing out credit cards for tuition, scrounging cash and food, he’s compelled without knowing why. Despite all this tragedy at hand, ...Around is ostensibly a comedy, but a human one, where foibles and pitfalls lead down a road to maturity. Along the way, Spaltro reaches in many directions without tidy endings. Which makes ...Around honest, searching and true, a film only as flawed as reality.

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Bury my heart with wounded glee

Mischa Barton

Once upon a time, it was ample punishment for a victim to be chased around by a big ugly monster, or taken under the spell of a vampire, or simply ripped to shreds by a werewolf. “They had faces then,” has been used to describe the stars of ‘Golden Age’ Hollywood, and I guess you could apply those words to the dark denizens of their monster movies as well. But in the 1970s all that changed. I haven’t the time nor desire to mount a thesis on such extenuating circumstances as Vietnam, the death of the nuclear family and Western civilization’s loss of humility and shame — but these things figure prominently in the evolution of the horror film… which has grown more about shock than horror since the original versions of Last House on the Left (1972) and Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) bewildered generations raised on Frankenstein and Dracula.
    It’s nearly painful having to add ‘original versions’ before those titles. Thirty years ago — hell, ten years ago — no one dreamed they’d be remade as they have been, along with other dubious classics of the 70s to form a foundation in new horror fans loath to grasp the poetry of, say, Bride of Frankenstein (1935) or Curt Siodmak’s flavorful script of The Wolf Man (1941). Still connected to gothic literature, those pictures reflected archaic ideals about to curdle from Hitler and Hiroshima. Now, in Walled In (2009) and so many others like it, we’re reduced to raw nerve and human hamburger.
    Based on the novel Les Emmurés by Serge Brussolo, it’s about an engineer (Mischa Barton) sent to a remote apartment building slated for demolition. Determining where to set the charges, she uncovers hidden tunnels within the building that are connected to a serial killer who walled in his victims years earlier. Barton is joined by teenage Cameron Bright, an intense young actor who has given me the creeps ever since he played Nicole Kidman’s ‘husband’ in Birth (2004). As an added bonus, his mother is Deborah Kara Unger, an actress who scored points with me as James Spader’s wife in Cronenberg’s Crash (1996), a toxic masterpiece high on the list of my (not so-) guilty pleasures.
    For the first hour, Walled In dabbles in haunted house territory, or as an extension of the sinister apartment ‘complexes’ of Roman Polanski (Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant), or even as a continuation of Kubrick’s Overlook Hotel. Arms protrude from the walls as they did in Polanski’s Repulsion (1965), grabbing Barton in her sleep. (At one point, she refers to the place as the Bates Motel!) It’s moderately frightening but undone by characters doing too many dumb things — as in spending the night in this obvious hellhole.
    But, then, horror is no longer about being horrified anymore. It’s about being irreparably damaged. During its last third, Barton slides into that sticky abyss where stupidity and irrationality clash. It’s where a new breed of horror fan can wallow in a woman’s descent into the pit of hell. She’s soon covered in blood — isn’t that de rigueur these days? — as her mind teeters over the edge. The horror film no longer carries a regard for recovery, victims must pay. Not necessarily with their lives, but with their humanity, dignity, intellect and love. I’m sure this is somehow necessary in our culture, but I’m just too bored or oblivious to care about the hows or whys.


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The sting

Once a risky gimmick (re: Slaughterhouse Five, The Man Who Fell to Earth), time tripping has evolved into an unfortunate cliché among filmmakers wary of their own material. It must be quite daunting, imagining your scenario could easily fall to boredom in linear terms, causing you to map out elaborate schemes to bounce viewers not only from now to then, but also to alternating periods within that ‘then.’ Unless there’s a hefty payoff at the end of the jumbled journey, some of us may want our money back.
    Duplicity (2009) was written and directed by Tony Gilroy, his second film as director after the impressive Michael Clayton (2007), which had its share of time tripping. There was also a nasty edge to that film, a cynicism about business and lawyers and lies. Duplicity is about those things too, but now in a sting-like setup with the soft center of a romantic entanglement. That’s between Julia Roberts and Clive Owen, both yearning to be cute. He’s too James Bond, and she’s grown somewhat matronly… and therein lies one of many problems.
    You may get a headache keeping up with the shifts — at one point there’s a flashback ala The Exterminating Angel, but the momentary reiteration (a repeated exchange between Owens and Roberts) seems less a nod to surrealism than simply a sloppy gaffe. At which point Gilroy would step in and ask, “or is it?” By that time, there may not be patience enough to entertain the question.

Here’s a novel idea targeted at post-9-11 urban paranoia: city gangs disguised in masks descend on subway cars and terrorize commuters with intricately choreographed hip hop dance routines. During its first fifteen minutes, Step Up 2: The Streets (2008) threatens to breathe welcome, long-overdue life into a dormant branch of the musical, with muscle and verve and passion. Then, as if frightened of its own potential, the scenario (by Toni Ann Johnson and Karen Barna, directed by Jon Chu) detours into familiar Fame territory, losing itself in weak characters and rigged situations, blundering on with way too little dance, even less music and far too much soap opera. There’s the contrived showstopping finale, ruinously shot in the rain, grossly distracting and an insult to a group of fine, attractive dancers. This film should be remade — sooner than later — by filmmakers who’ve got flow… sk1llz… game… whatever.

DVD review: Bob Dylan Never Ending Tour Diaries

Bob Dylan Never Ending Tour Diaries: Winston Watson’s Incredible Journey — Produced and directed by Joel Gilbert. Featuring Winston Watson. 100 minutes. 2009 release.

Review by Nelhydrea Paupér

Back in my day — let’s call it My Back Ages — Dylanology was synonymous with Garbology. That is, the fascination with Bob Dylan and his writing led to a sort of cultish enthusiasm that could cause one A.J. Weberman to literally pick through Bob Dylan’s family trashcan on the curb outside his Greenwich Village apartment, searching for some clues to the Big Questions. Most Dylan followers found this whole exercise repugnant and beneath contempt — yet we still wanted to know what Webberman discovered. What does Bob eat for breakfast anyway… and were there any scrapped song lyrics that turned up amidst the used Kleenex?

    But things have changed. Today Dylanology is a cottage industry. There are, it seems, enough people — like myself — who still want to know what the guy eats and, better yet, what he’s like to work with, to produce a steady stream of books and DVD releases about his life, his work and even his employees.

    I’ve known musicians who’ve worked with him — and know musicians who know musicians who’ve worked with him — and everyone seems to agree that, well, he’s a bit odd (NO! You DON'T say!). But they generally liked him. By most accounts he isn’t overly palsy-walsy — but he isn’t the reclusive, abusive, egomaniacal weirdo many would imagine. When all is said and done the greatest songwriter since Homer is really a hard-working musician who tours almost constantly — despite no apparent financial need to do so — and prefers to play with musicians who are hardly stars on their own. In fact, compared to the bands that guys like Eric Clapton or Rod Stewart assemble — that is, slick, top flight, big-name studio guys — Dylan’s folks are often one step up from bar band musicians. And often that step up came courtesy of Dylan himself. He may be a bigger name than Clapton or Rod the Mod, but he is, musically at least, more salt of the earth.

    Watson Winston, er, Winston Watson — the thoroughly charming star of Highway 61 Entertainment’s new DVD, Bob Dylan Never Ending Tour Diaries: Winston Watson’s Incredible Journey — is exactly that sort of musician. He was Dylan’s drummer for several years in the early-mid 1990s. But before that he had only played with local big-hair bands in his home state of Arizona. When the call came to try out for Dylan it was through a friend who’d been drumming for Dylan and wanted out. So the recommendation came from one no-name drummer for another no-name drummer. And purely based on the guy’s say-so Winston suddenly found himself on stage in Kansas City playing with BOB DYLAN in front of 80,000 people. One night after the call came. Without any rehearsal. Or set list. Or anything.

    Winston did well enough that Bob kept him on for the next few years. Watson, a heavy metal guy of African-American and Native American descent, had relatively little knowledge of Dylan’s work. So he had a LOT to learn... (awww, you’ve got a lot to leeeearnnn…)

    But I digress.

    During his tenure on the Never Ending Tour (‘The Never Ending Tour’ is the nickname fans gave Dylan’s restless, seemingly perpetual tour schedule that’s been going on since the 1980s) Watson was present for the 30th Aniversary Bobfest at Madison Square Garden; the 1992 Olympics; the Frank Sinatra tribute TV special; the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame kickoff concert; plus tours with Santana, the Grateful Dead, Patti Smith and the Rolling Stones. He says Dylan paid well, has an excellent touring staff, never uses a teleprompter to help with the words and gets lots of celebrities like Don Rickles and Raquel Welch turning up at his shows.

    Winston reports that while Dylan was not exactly palling around with the guys on the tour bus — he had his own, separate bus — he was not unapproachable or ever less than nice. He describes his first impromptu breakfast with The Bob, as well as a number of later conversations, nearly all of which were friendly, with Dylan being a supportive and encouraging boss. The one negative encounter was after Watson failed to perform well at a show, resulting in being called to the principal’s office for a dressing down. Which, from Watson’s description, was brief, professional and perfectly reasonable. (You should hear the stories about James Brown). In other words, Winnie Watson provides absolutely no dirt on Bob Dylan. He genuinely likes Dylan, respects him and only speaks highly of him.

    But he’d gladly take a shit on the head of Van Morrison.

    Now, I should say that, in addition to being a huge Dylan fan for, well I mean like forever, I’m also a huge Van Morrison fan. And while I’ve heard plenty of people say nice things about Dylan though the decades, in the 35+ years I’ve been following Van the Man I have never heard or read one single person say anything nice about him ever. Not once. He is, by all accounts, a difficult, miserable, mean, grouchy, moody, nasty sumbitch-I-tell-you-what. If kindness were petals on a daisy, Van Morrison would be one completely plucked flower.

    Watson’s career with Dylan, by his account anyway, was ended by Morrison. After a gig in Norway that Morrison shared with Dylan, everyone sat down for a big dinner and, as Dylan talked with Van about his band, Van suggested — LOUDLY — that he should get rid of his drummer because the guy couldn’t play.

    (Author’s note: I once saw Van Morrison storm off stage at the Palladium mid-set and never return because — well, fucked if I know why. But he never returned. I also saw him start to lose it at the Beacon Theatre mid-song because the drummer couldn’t find the groove he wanted. He kept turning back looking at the drummer, glaring at him like death was imminent. David Hayes, the bass player, frantically led the poor drummer into the groove Morrison wanted. Having played with Van for years he knew full well what was about to happen if they didn’t get it together fast. So even my limited experience tells me Winston’s version is probably accurate)

    But I digress.

    Watson, who seems like a genuinely sweet guy, describes his total horror and nausea that night. And he sees it as the moment he was finished. After the tour ended another tour followed later on but he was done. A touching coda follows when Watson attends a Dylan show a year later. Dylan is friendly to him but blows Watson away when he thanks him for his letters. Watson, it turns out, had sent Dylan a few letters after he’d left the band, thanking Dylan, saying what a pleasure it all had been. In their last meeting Dylan tells him no one who worked for him had ever written to him. The rich, famous, endlessly working star/employer is more touched by a simple, genuine personal gesture than by all the adulation he receives each stop of each tour.

    Charles Dickens, where the fuck are you?

    Watson went on to tour with Alice Cooper and others. But his story trails off before we find out why he’s now working as an electrician and playing in a Dylan cover band. With Scarlett Rivera. Huh?

    That band, Highway 61 Revisited, is fronted by Joel Gilbert, the director and interviewer of this DVD. Gilbert also made the other Dylan DVDs available from Highway 61 Entertainment. They’re all good, entertaining, engrossing and always surprisingly well made. I say surprisingly because the average History Channel documentary isn’t as well put together as these small-budget but creatively and intelligently presented documents.

    So here’s the money shot: Bob Dylan Never Ending Tour Diaries is a blast. Winston Watson is charming, smart and goofy in a way that is totally endearing. It’s no wonder Dylan wanted him around on his tours — Winnie has a vibe that is always sweet and upbeat. Joel Gilbert has put together another of his fun and informative romps through the fascinating landscape of Americana owned and operated by Bob Dylan. Dylanologists eveywhere will agree — it’s much better than garbage.

To order, visit the official website.

Just an old fashioned love song

David Thomson

In one of their useless but always amusing polls, the IMDb asked: “Only three directors have won the Academy Award for Best Director three times or more. Which one of these guys is your favorite filmmaker?” The ‘guys’ in question were William Wyler (809 votes), John Ford (2,092), and Frank Capra (2,652). I’m not surprised that a whopping 4,579 people clicked the “I am not familiar with these directors” box. Yet I can’t help but imagine they’d know who Wong Kar-Wai is, and would blend comfortably with this scenario:

    “I was in a video store, Le Video in San Francisco, renting Wong Kar-Wai’s Fallen Angels. There were two guys behind the counter, very young, and as they noticed Fallen Angels passing through their system, one said to the other, ‘That’s my favorite Wong Kar-Wai.’ The other guy was eager. ‘Does it have two stories?’ he asked. ‘I don’t know,’ said the first guy, ‘I’ve never seen it all.’”

    Ah, fandom. The recollection is from David Thomson’s new book, “Have You Seen…?”: A Personal Introduction to 1,000 Films (Alfred A. Knopf, $39.95), a cineaste’s version of Leonard Maltin’s TV Movies. He provides approximately 500 words apiece on “a thousand films,” as it’s explained in his introduction, “going back to 1895 and ranging across the world — the landmarks are here, the problem films, a few guilty pleasures, a few forlorn sacred cows, some surprises, a thousand for you to see.” The hefty volume should find a permanent home in the private library of every cinephile’s bathroom.

    A handbook for those too often asked, “What should I see?”, “Have You Seen…?” arranges single-page crib notes alphabetically. Face-to-face, this creates a smorgasbord of double feature prospects heretofore unknown to modern man: The African Queen with L’Age d’Or, Ben Hur with Berlin Alexanderplatz, Bringing Up Baby with Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia. Thirty-five years ago, there were revival theaters in Manhattan which would’ve happily used this as a programming guide.

    Some critics have dismissed this collection as a throwaway, the breezy format allowing Thomson to forgo the labor of penetrating analysis. But he’s never been an academic writer. Caught up in his emotions (remember his feverish 300-page dedication to Nicole Kidman), Thomson’s forever — delightfully, unapologetically — enamored with old school charmers like Josef von Sternberg, and all-too eager to recite passages from otherwise forgotten chestnuts such as Fun in a Chinese Laundry. This is where Thomson has me returning for more.

    An inherent honesty enables him to openly admit that his emotional investment colors insight: “The latest films do not fare as well in this book as pictures from the thirties and the forties,” he writes. “Too many new films are gestures trying to grab the interest of kids set on war games and PlayStations. We are so ready for shallow amusement that it may be harder to enjoy profound entertainment…This book may come off as helplessly nostalgic — a tribute to an age that’s not coming back.”

    In the vein of the author’s The Biographical Dictionary of Film, the write-ups (they’re surely not reviews) are pithy and sharp and open for argument. He’s nostalgic, but only to a point. (Landing beyond his parameters, Easy Rider is “unwatchable.”) Sacred cows are tipped for sober thinking (Griffith’s Intolerance “is stupendous, yet it goes nowhere…the sheer pretension is a roadblock”), as yesterday’s trendsetters yellow from obsolescence (Jurassic Park “was a sensation when it opened…but I doubt today that one kid would lift a fat thumb in its favor”). Take issue with such sentiments with caution. Like Pauline Kael before him, Thomson questions the way we inadvertently fall back on duty, obligation and nostalgia — the stuff of imagination and self deception — to form our opinions. However foolish they may one day seem.

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Everybody’s got a hungry heart

If Michael Moore’s films possess the weight of an editorial page cartoon, Oliver Stone’s play like Mad magazine parodies of themselves. Case in point: W (2008), an eleventh-hour reflection on G.W. Bush, played as a cheeseball by Josh Brolin. There’s little point in discussing Stone’s frenetic style — it’s like watching Costa-Gavras’s Z with every other frame missing — but I’ll give him points for the attempt at humanizing a mentally defective bourgeois who replaced substance abuse with political misuse and confused ideology. Richard Dreyfuss has one of his best recent experiences playing Dick Cheney playing Julius Caesar, but Jeffrey Wright’s Colin Powell and Thandie Newton’s Condoleeza Rice come off as a timid, tight-lipped Steppin’ Fetchit and a mousy hausfrau. This must be a dream.

I’m sure I’d need a treatise to guide me through the lofty intentions percolating between the lines of Yasuzo Masumura’s Blind Beast (1969) — and wouldn’t its following demand I call it Môjû? — but what’s there on the screen I found less than inspiring. Not to diminish the germ of an intriguing premise in the blind sculptor striving to create a physical art that transcends the limits of vision. But the two-character study, Eiji Funakoshi as the artist and Mako Midori as a prisoner model, suffocates in his dank studio with all those molded body parts lining the walls. There’s a third character, his mother (Noriko Sengoku), a Freudian threat standing by as ready subtext. The three of them are as dumb as a sack of doorknobs, wandering in an uncanny prediction of things to come: La Belle noiseuse, Cronenberg’s Crash, and, most curiously, Boxing Helena.

The Check It Out Girls

Bob Dylan giveaway

Thanks to our friends at See of Sound, we have three DVD copies of Joel Gilbert’s forthcoming documentary, Bob Dylan Never Ending Tour: Drummer Winston Watson’s Incredible Journey to give away. Running 100 minutes, it’s Watson’s chronicle of his five years on the road with Dylan: “A skilled storyteller, Watson paints an intimate portrait of the inner workings of Bob Dylan’s band, and the mercurial, brilliant Bob Dylan himself.” If you live in the continental US and would like to win a copy, simply send us an email before March 21, 2009. Three winners will be selected at random on March 22. If you’d like to preorder a copy (the release date is April 7), click here. For more information, visit the official website, or play the trailer below:

Sinistre cinema

Carole Gray commands you!
(Click to enlarge.)

It plays fast and loose with movie legend, jumbling vampires, witchcraft and voodoo — and aren’t those gypsies lifted from The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Wolf Man? — which may be why Devils of Darkness (1965) is such a treat. Cheesy and ludicrous, but a treat. Despite my horror leanings as a kid, I never heard of it until recently, after catching up with Curse of the Fly (1965) for the first time in over forty years. No, that one doesn’t, uh, fly (did it ever?), but my eye gravitated toward leading lady Carole Gray, a poor man’s Ava Gardner running around the Fly family in bra and panties in an ill-conceived spin on the Cloris Leachman character from Kiss Me, Deadly. I scoured Netflix to find more of Carole, but there isn’t much. In fact, now that I’ve got Devils of Darkness under my belt, all that’s left is her rocking out with Cliff Richards in the potentially dreadful The Young Ones and some sundry episodes of The Saint TV show.

    For this Carole fix, however, Devils of Darkness delivers. Not to any great extent, mind you, but enough. Playing Tania, she breaks into an Esmeralda shimmy near the beginning, a lot of tambourine shaking and lusty hair-tossing. Petite with dark, piercing, seductive eyes (the Ava connection), I found her disappointingly short in the legs. Regardless, the actress is firmly rooted in this brief but potent display, vibrant and alive, undoubtedly inspired by Maureen O’Hara in The Hunchback. It feels as if the production — a low budget British takeoff on the Hammer product from a fly-by-night claiming to be called Planet Films — simply lucked out when they signed her.

    Tania’s taken under the batwing of Lucifer-as-Dracula going under the nom de plume Count Sinistre (get it?) who demands her for his wife. If you’ve had a few drinks this could become a terrific running gag, because the swishy and wan Count as played by Hubert Noël (he was Henri de Maleville in The Earrings of Madame de…), appears less than interested in carnal relations with any woman. Several centuries later — Tania and Sinistre don’t age: she’s still hot, he still looks like a sack of flour — they’re in a jam with nosy tourists and leave their base in Brittany to kick off a satellite coven in London.

    They’re also after a gilded talisman stolen by William Sylvester, a bland American actor who did most of his work in England. A year earlier he battled a deranged ventriloquist in Lindsay Shonteff’s creepy Devil Doll, and Stanley Kubrick, seeking featureless types to play astronauts, cast him as Dr. Heywood ‘Pink’ Floyd in 2001: A Space Odyssey — he was the one having a video phone chat with young Vivian Kubrick. (If you’ve a sharp eye, you can spot Sylvester alongside Alexander Knox and Robert [Slime People] Hutton in the Pentagon scenes of You Only Live Twice.) Disappearing corpses, bite marks on necks and London in a tizzy, Sinistre grows bored with Tania, relegating Carole Gray to second banana to a voluptuous bohemian so cool she wears sunglasses indoors. That would be Tracy Reed (stepdaughter of Sir Carol, stepcousin of Oliver). Buxom, long legs, with miles of silky red hair, Tracy also shares a Kubrickian connection as George C. Scott’s bikinied secretary in Dr. Strangelove.

    All this and more in 88 minutes. How can you resist?


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Clint Eastwood and the ‘women’s picture’

A movie about a mother and her son, the publicity for Changeling (2008) was quick to point out his abduction and her plight to get him back. As far as box office is concerned, it’s dicey material in a world where mainstream tastes gravitate toward less solemn fare. Especially when the trailer offers a glimpse of Angelina Jolie’s breakdown, howling “I want my son back!” — a tip-off of old school drama. The public, being the predictable lemmings that they are, stayed away: budgeted at $55 million, Changeling earned less than $36 million theatrically. This in the same year when Jolie’s other film, the action vehicle Wanted, earned a hefty $135 million on an investment of $75 million.

    I bring up budgets and grosses not because I believe they reflect quality, but because they do determine what Hollywood will be willing to finance next. Changeling, despite the considerable draw of Jolie and Clint Eastwood as producer and director, is a kind of poison, grim emotional stuff generally avoided by the masses looking for laughs and thrills. ‘Opening weekend,’ that all-important barometer of what flies and what doesn’t in Tinsel Town, hasn’t been charitable to human drama of late, often forcing projects like Changeling to the indies.

    But money is a vital necessity in this production, as we’re treated to a credible recreation of late-1920’s Los Angeles. It’s a richly textured landscape of sleepy suburban neighborhoods and busy city streets with their crisscrossing trolleys. And Eastwood, being the laconic figure that he is, never bombards us with any of it. Under that steely exterior, I think he’s a deeply sentimental man respectful of time, place and personality. Beyond its location and period, Changeling is what used to be called, not a chick flick, but a ‘women’s picture’ — it’s easy to imagine Joan Crawford playing the lead — and I find it both bittersweet and ironic that Dirty Harry should be among America’s leading practitioners of this virtually extinct genre.

    Jolie joins the filmmaker’s small but arresting gallery of women searching for personal fulfillment: Kay Lenz’s starry-eyed lover in Breezy (1973), Meryl Streep aching to break from the mundane in The Bridges of Madison County (1995), Hillary Swank reaching for purpose in Million Dollar Baby (2004). They’re complicated individuals quietly suffocating from male aggression, or from the rules and regulations imposed in a male-dominated society. With Jolie’s Christine Collins, her odyssey begins as a search for her lost son but ends as a tumultuous pursuit for justice.

    The screenplay by J. Michael Straczynski is based partly on a true incident known as The Wineville Chicken Coop Murders, a spree which helped to expose corruption within the Los Angeles Police Department. When they attempted to use her missing boy Walter in a bizarre scheme to boost public support, Christine Collins was subject to the LAPD’s bullying tactics (they committed her to an insane asylum to shut her up) while the Wineville killer — Walter’s likely abductor — roamed free, hacking up young boys with an axe.

    Collins was cajoled into a fraud concocted by the police. After several months they reportedly found her son, but it wasn’t the right boy. With the Great Depression in its second year, and pressure mounting for positive changes within the Department, she was asked, and agreed, to play along with the ruse and care for this boy as her own. But the illusion soon crumbled and she resumed her search, now aided by a high profile minister and radio personality, Rev. Gustav A. Briegleb, whose legal connections enabled Collins to get her day in court. In the end, and for the rest of her life, she never did find Walter.

    Given the unusual nature of the true story, Straczynski’s screenplay is not without its flaws. The discrepancies between the real and movie Christine’s ‘acceptance’ of the fake Walter detours the film to implausibility. Rigged to appear crazy by the LAPD, the movie character need only to have brought forth Walter’s friends or even a photograph to prove the new boy a hoax. As it stands, we’re gently prodded to disregard the faux pas, Eastwood glossing over things with Jolie and all that sumptuous set and costume design.

    He also falters with male characters who’ve been whittled down to stereotype. The villainy of Jeffrey Donovan’s police captain and Denis O’Hare’s psychiatrist is underlined to the point of moustache-twirling, and Jason Butler Harner’s child molester is a throwback to the giggling, greasy — and ultimately ridiculous — serial killer of Dirty Harry. John Malkovich’s Gustav Briegleb is inches away from barnstorming. Only Michael Kelly’s detective is really afforded any prolonged sense of humanity.

    In painting them as caricatures, Eastwood loads most of the weight of Changeling on Jolie, but she’s obviously up for it. Indeed, is there a tougher woman working in Hollywood today? Possessing the right balance of, say, Hillary Swank’s sturdiness with Julianne Moore’s softness, Jolie’s is a subtle understanding of feeling and emotion. Watching her in Changeling, I thought back to the actresses of the era it takes place: Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, Katherine Hepburn…realizing how tied they were to scripted dialog rife with explanation, allowing them so little room to act. Jolie’s performance is never obvious, never arch. She works with the inconsistencies of the scenario and her male co-stars, creating a dimensional character assimilating in a world gone out of control. Watching her in Changeling reminded me of why I love the movies.

Available on DVD

Available on Blu-ray