Originally Changeling wasn’t in my queue because it was yet another Clint Eastwood masterpiece, which feels like an annual event, and Jolie can be disappointing since Hollywood usually does not know what to do with her. A friend urged me to see it, and I am overjoyed that I did. I usually joke that Clint Eastwood could make a movie about rocks, and it would get an Oscar nomination. Jokes aside, Clint Eastwood manages to make a movie based on historical events while making it feel like it is unfolding today. He does not fall into the trope of a courtroom or a true crime drama. It is a simple yet defiant movie that makes John Malkovich a hero, lauds single mothers and prostitutes, decries abuses by institutions such as the LAPD and Los Angeles County Hospital’s psychiatric ward without losing the personal stories behind those abuses. Praise God that Eastwood directed Changeling instead of Ron Howard who mistakes length for substance, would have steeped it in nostalgia and created a forgettable wannabe epic bio pic, couldn’t question an institution without twitching and hasn’t met a trope that he didn’t like-think Cinderella Man. Eastwood wisely cast Jolie probably more for her work in Girl, Interrupted so when the main character of Changeling finally decides to stop being ladylike when society breaks its implicit contract with her, it is more powerful. The cast is perfection-can Amy Ryan be in every movie until the end of time? What is shocking: the real life story is worse.