Milk Changeling

To hide away from the heat yesterday, I made the mad dash in the hot, hot winds and smokey air, down to Nova. Along with half of Melbourne it seems, escaping the hottest Melbourne day on record.

Once I had left the house, there was no going back, and seeing a tram pass on the line, I jumped in a cab in order to get to air conditioned comfort sooner. When I got to Nova, I joined the long, long line for the box office.

All three of my possible movie choices had been sold out for the next session by the time I made it to the front of the line, so I purchased tickets for the following time slot, and the one after. I then braved the heat and found something to eat along Lygon Street.

Wasting time in Borders with an hour to kill, I researched my next potential trip, before making my way up to Cinema 10 and my allocated seat. To a filled cinema, we watched Sean Penn transform himself into Harvey Milk, in Milk.

The story of Milk, his struggle to become San Fransisco's elected supervisor, running an openly gay campaign in the world of Jesus-fearing politics. Starting from protests about Coors beer and their discriminatory employee policy about gay men, to battling the Anita Bryant movement across the US.

Penn, a long time favourite of mine, is sensational...and James Franco also caught my eye! Powerfully told, leading up to the assassination, which was shocking and unexpected, the film is told by Milk setting his story on tape, just in case.

In out cinema and into another, I moved into a near full Cinema 2 for the Changeling. This movie ripping your heart out, over and over! Angelina is the screen's presence, playing a character who pulls you into her plight.

Exposing corruption within the LA police force in the 1920s, and then the standing of women, and mental health processes, with every fold of the story I had to remind myself that this was based on a true story.

Christine Collins' plight, played by Angelina Jolie, starts when she is called into work and needs to leave her son at home alone. When she returns, he is gone. Seeking help, she receives very little...until amazingly, in a time when so many things are going wrong with police activity, they have found him five months later. But it's not him, and she knows it instantly. But playing on women's mental fragility, they convince her to take the boy.

John Malkovich, a local preacher over the airwaves, gets involved in an ongoing quest to expose such police fallibility and dishonesty. He's rolling baritone is one anyone would follow, but his strong political activism makes people listen, and he helps Collins' plight.

The fashions in the film are striking, with Ange wearing a hat and a gloves always, and coats from the 1920s to die for.

Flashbacks to Girl, Interrupted, where Ange collected her first Oscar, the mental institution scenes are confronting. Her depiction of Christine Collins may well just have scored her another.

Emerging from the dark, cool theatre, the air outside had finally dropped from it's 46C, the highest temperature for Melbourne on record.