Review #32 - Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)

Well, enough of yesterday's unpleasantness. I am not one to wallow in anything, especially self-pity and remorse. So, dear reader, today we forage ahead.

I just finished watching "Good Night, and Good Luck." Here's what the back of the box has to say:

"It's 1953, and the piece of talking furniture called TV is still a novelty in America's living rooms. On it, Sen. Joseph McCarthy uses fear, falsehoods and belligerence to become arguably the most powerful man in the land. On it, newsman Edward R. Murrow, who's had his fill of the senator's tactics, fights back. That pivotal clash of two titans is the focus of director/co-writer George Clooney's award-winning "Good Night, and Good Luck". David Strathairn portrays Murrow, the principled "face of television" who maps his strategy with his producer and confidant, Fred Friendly (Clooney). A deft ensemble plays staff members in the bustling battleground that is the CBS newsroom. McCarthy is in the mix too, intercut into the action via real-life footage. Don't touch that dial. A media and a nation are going to change - while on the air."

So, this film was nominated for wagon-load of Oscars, including Best Picture. I don't know if it actually won anything, because the big Blockbuster sticker covers up that part of the case.

The whole thing is in black and white, which is fortunate if you are a guy, because it makes you look classy - and unfortunate if you are a girl, because it makes you look like a wrinkled hag. Our hero plays a supporting character who is so poorly developed and superfluous to the plotline that I can't even remember his name, and I just watched the film, like, 15 minutes ago.

I'll buy that this was a decent film. I will not buy that this was worthy of a "best picture" nod. In my humble opinion, this is how the Academy decides its Oscar nominations. If you make a decent, but not necessarily great, film about something to do with our constitutional rights, it will be nominated. If you give a decent, but not necessarily great, performance in any kind of film, and then you drop over dead before it's released, you will be nominated. And in that case, you'll probably win, instead of someone who probably deserved it more for his role in Tropic Thunder. But I digress.

I'm sorry to say that character development pretty much fell by the sidelines on this film. It was an inside-the-studio snapshot of what was going on in the world of Media vs. McCarthy. Realistically, the only thing that separated this film as a dramatic work from, say, something you would see on the History Channel is a few dramatic stares from Murrow and a lot of smoking.

The movie was okay...so I give it an okay score - 7.5.

Good night, dearest reader - and Good Luck.