Oscar Got It Wrong!: Best Actress 2008

The Contenders:

Angelina Jolie: Changeling
Meryl Streep: Doubt
Melissa Leo: Frozen River
Anne Hathaway: Rachel Getting Married
Kate Winslet: The Reader (winner)

Every Parent's Nightmare

Film: Changeling
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on The Nook.

There’s a moment in Changeling that, through no fault of the movie, pulled me out of it completely. It happens in the first half hour and it was completely unexpected. It is one of the first moments on screen of Police Captain J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan). He tells Christine Collins (Angelina Jolie) that her son has been found outside of DeKalb, Illinois. Why does this mean anything? Well, I live in DeKalb, Illinois, and my older daughter in particular is a huge fan of Jeffrey Donovan thanks to Burn Notice. So for just a moment, it was Michael Westen talking about my home town.

Changeling takes place in the early 1930s during the Depression. Christine Collins lives with her young son Walter (Gattlin Griffith). One day, picking up an extra shift at work, she comes home to find Walter gone. Eventually, the police return her son to her, but it is obviously not her boy. This replacement Walter, who insists that is who he is, has been circumcised and is three or four inches shorter. He also looks nothing like Walter. Christine is naturally insistent that the police have returned the wrong boy, but Captain Jones and doctors on the police payroll insist that he is.