Good Night, and Good Luck

A film eliciting much passion this weekend is Good Night, and Good Luck, co-starring, co-written and co-directed by George Clooney, concerns CBS newsman Ed Murrow's 1954 clash with Communist-hunter Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Ty Burr in the Boston Globe calls the film, "a hermetically sealed period piece so intensely relevant to our current state of affairs that it takes your breath away ... a call to civic responsibility and renewed purpose in broadcast journalism that demands to be seen and discussed by audiences of all ages and political stripes."

Jack Mathews in the New York Daily News calls it "the biggest little movie of the year -- and one of the best ever about the news media."

On the other hand, Stephen Hunter in the Washington Post accuses Clooney of painting a totally black-and-white scenario -- leaving out "nuance, context, empathy, anything that suggests the larger truth that nothing is as simple as it seems. The film, therefore, is like a child's view of these events, untroubled by complexity, hungry for myth and simplicity."

And just for the record, we at The Hollywood Bureau, absolutely loved it.