Review of Good Night, and Good Luck. (2005) by Kris A — 11 Nov 2011

I've already seen two of the movies up for Best Picture at the 2005 Oscars, so I thought I'd try to see the rest before the day of the awards itself. I've already seen Brokeback Mountain and Crash, so that left this film, Munich, and Capote.

Anyway, this film was highly provacative. The story of one journalist taking on Senator McCarthy and his crusade against communism may not be the most interesting of ideas, but writer/director George Clooney did a great job with it.

I was surprised at how much this film resonated with the current political atmosphere. Using fear and scare tactics to influence the public isn't new, and it's sad how many people can't learn from the past.

Concerning the film itself, I thought there were excellent performances all around and the script was very good. However, the pacing seemed to be a little fast and things resolved themselves really quickly that I didn't have enough time to be emotionally invested in any of the characters.

In fact, some of them seemed to add nothing to story. Their stories felt like padding to elongate a short story (this film is only 90 min). While not the most entertaining of films, this story felt very important, and it's a shame that the people who could really learn from it will probably never see it (I guess what would you expect from a country where the number one movie in the box office right now is Big Momma's House 2).

Hopefully one day, teachers will show this in their history classes.