Review: Clint Eastwood's latest film and it's star, Angelina Jolie, are sure to be a Oscar contenders

The long dry season of mediocre films is over. Clint Eastwood's new film "The Changeling" will pick up Oscar nominations for best film, best director, best actress, production design and costumes.

Only moments after the opening credits I wrote in my notebook "heavy." The word was shorthand for a seriousness not often seen in modern films. The look and reproduction of 1920s Los Angeles, and especially Angelina Jolie's performance, made me sit up and pay attention. It's clear that hot young writers and filmmakers have once again been lapped by a 78-year-old man. It should be embarrassing for the majority of Hollywood that Eastwood consistently "cleans their clock."

"The Changeling" is the true story of Christine Collins, a telephone company supervisor living as a single mom in Los Angeles in the late 1920s. One ordinary day she is called into work on her day off and must leave her son alone. Though he is just old enough to spend the day by himself, Christine is wary. But being a single mom, she must do what she must.

At the end of her work day she rushes home to find her son gone. There's no sign of struggle, no note and no one saw him at anytime during the day. He's vanished. After waiting the 24 hours required by the police, he's finally reported as missing. For the next few months Christine spends work breaks and all her free time checking with police departments and missing person bureaus to no avail.

Five months later, the police announce they have found her son, but at the reunion it is obvious the boy is not hers. The police challenge her mental stability, bully her and eventually convince her to take the boy home and at least act like a caring mother. After trying her best — maybe she was distraught and not thinking correctly — she finds this new boy has shrunk three inches and is circumcised. When she refuses any longer to work with the police, she is committed to a psychiatric ward for child neglect.

What follows is a bizarre tale of incredible police corruption, an incredibly sad tale of family loss and a series of tragedies that eventually will change a city. More outstanding is that this all occurred because of the will of a single mother.

That there aren't enough great roles for women to play has been said enough that we all should imagine it's true, and I'll hazard a guess that is why I've never thought much of Jolie's acting. Sure she's done some quality work, but mostly it's been on the order of the mentally ill, action thriller or the waif. But here she's made her career.

Her performance alone moves "The Changeling" into classic film status that guarantees a long life on TV and in rental stores. She's the new Meryl Streep, Kathryn Hepburn or even Bette Davis. That being said, she would be wise to choose her future roles carefully. With a silly computer-laden action flick she could throw it all away.

It's interesting that in his 70s Clint Eastwood is doing his best work. He's said that it's probably due to his not caring anymore what people think. He's said a good story is a good story and no matter how hip or skilled at new technology you are, you can't make a poor story into a good film. With the good story, he advises, everything else follows along. Clint Eastwood's great and qualified success should be a lesson for the film industry.