Changeling

Changeling (2008) comes from a real case, and the most unbelievable part of it is the part audiences assume was invented. March 1928, Los Angeles. Christine Collins, a telephone exchange supervisor, comes home to find her nine year old son Walter gone. Months later the police announce they have found him and hand her a boy at the railway station. She says it is not her son. They insist, stage a family photograph for the press, and when she keeps saying it, they have her committed to a psychiatric ward. That is not invented. The LAPD of the period could place inconvenient women in the psychopathic ward without a court order. Christine's case became one of the things that ended the practice. The second thread is the Wineville chicken coop murders and where Walter's trail actually leads. Clint Eastwood does not build this as a thriller. He builds it as a bureaucratic standoff. The most disturbing scenes are not the violent ones but the repeated refusal to believe a woman about her own child. Angelina Jolie was nominated for an Oscar. It runs 142 minutes. Good for: true crime, period drama, and Eastwood. Less good for: violence against children is implied, and there are asylum scenes and an execution.