Hi, this is Dana Stevens, Slate's movie critic, and I'm here with a Slate spoiler special podcast on The Changeling, the new Clint Eastwood movie starring Angelina Jolie.

So I'm here with Julia Turner, Slate's deputy editor. Hi, Julia. Hi, Dana. And we saw The Changelang

together last night. Walked out of it. Neither of us really impressed, but I think I liked it a little more than you did.

I have to say that these Clint Eastwood woman in trouble movies, it's not a movie I would ever go see on my own recognizance.

It just seems like drama without nuance and a lot of plotting, melodramatic excuses.

Plotting with 2Ds, not 2Ds, not 2Ds.

Yeah, yeah. Plotting.

There's plenty of plotting, but the whole thing is very plotting. There's plenty of plotting, but the whole thing is very plotting. So I was interested to see it sort of as an exercise. Do I dislike this movie? As much as the trailer suggests, I will dislike this movie. And you did? Yeah, it was just complete schlock. I mean, within it, he's a good, you know, storyteller. And it's sort of this gripping drama about a woman in the 1920s, a single mother.

Based on a true story, we should add.

Yeah, whose child disappears one day when she's away at work and her quest to get him back, which we can get into a little bit further on.

But basically, it was pretty schlocky and predictable, I thought. What did you think?

Well, I mean, during the unrolling of the movie, I have to say that I was fairly involved with it,

this is what Clint Eastwood does to me that I always resent. It's not that I even like his movies

while I'm watching them. I resent that manipulation and that schlock factor. This was completely

true with a million-dollar baby as well, which I guess you're referring to when you talk about the Clint Eastwood Woman and Trouble kind of movie, the plucky, strong, Clint Eastwood woman, but yet a victim at all times. I even cry in some of the parts where you're supposed to cry, but I'm angry about it the whole time because, as you say, he operates completely without nuance whatsoever. And I guess my principal problem with the movie, which we can get into is that, you know, there really was no moral nuance whatsoever. And I guess my principal problem with the movie, which we can get into, is that, you know, there really was no moral nuance whatsoever, and it's a moral drama. So it's fairly

uninteresting to watch an absolutely angelic, beautiful, kind, loyal, trustworthy mother, look for her

beautiful, wonderful son who's also established as this extra nice little boy who does heroic

things for other people, when all of their opponents are these sort of scowling corrupt Irish cops who have absolutely no nuance to their character either.

Yeah, there just was not a single character in the entire movie who was surprising.

So it was a little bit dull.

Well, let's, I want to get to Angelina, which is obviously the sort of the reason that we saw the movie and the main thing that we want to talk about this sort of huge, outsized celebrity at its center and really the only very famous actor cast in it.

John Malkovich is the only one whose face is really even that recognizable.

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