Changeling

I have begun watching LOST online at Netflix.com, which has freed up my DVDs by mail. So, now I can start watching movies again. The first I have received was Changeling with Angelina Jolie. This was a particularly painful movie for me to watch. I am always torn between researching movies and wanting to be surprised by the plot. This is certainly an instance where I should have done a little more research. Painful plot and story aside, this movie was pretty weak for me. The acting was strong as I though Jeffrey Donovan was brilliant as was John Malkovich. It fell apart in the storytelling. The film tried to tell way too much of the story and was conflicted because of that. It just wasn't set up to be a story about the murderer, or the priest, or the cop, or the LAPD, or the kids, or the parents, or the trials, but it ended up being about all these things at once. I just felt like if they would have set up the film to be about the town and the tragedies then it would have been more successful. Instead, it spend sooo much time with Angelina's character in the beginning that set the tone to be her story. When it turned out to be much more than just her story, it just lengthened the film and chopped it up to distract me. I ended up appreciating a lot more about this film than I had anticipated. Final thought: I truly hope that someday stories like this will never need to be told.