good night, and good luck – 5 stars

watch the trailer. again, if you’ve seen it already. i wanted to myself, to get a taste and help me remember the feeling i got watching the whole thing over thanksgiving weekend. and the only reason i’m still bothering to write anything about it now is because i realized it came out over a month ago and if i don’t act quickly, my millions of readers might miss out on the opportunity to catch this in a theatre.

because it really deserves to be seen that way, for several reasons. one is that black and white was absolutely the only way this film should have been put on a screen, because it’s full of light and dark and fantastic in its contrast (not in a stark sin city kind of way, but in a great, rich, textured way that gives it character and seriousness), and those silhouetted shots pop so much better in a big, dark auditorium. another, because in a way it’s a quiet movie. they didn’t soundtrack the hell out of it to give it weight, but let the silence of certain moments speak its own piece; let the sounds of the newsroom be its own music when things get singing in those halls. sure there was some excellent period music used appropriately, but the kind of stillness you need to get the most from certain scenes is only possible in the wide open blackness of a theatre.

and most of all is murrow’s voice. if david strathairn — who’s been in a ton of movies but may as well have been debuting in this role — doesn’t win an oscar nomination for this i’ll eat this keyboard i’m typing on. his steel expression and confident monotone give murrow’s eloquent newscasting a quality someone my age probably can’t even fathom from a televised broadcast: unshakable integrity. i walked out of that theatre wanting to be that man.

most of all, though, i have to hand it to clooney and the writers and producers (mark cuban? nice!) for making a movie that doesn’t feel it has to slow down for an audience that isn’t smart enough to follow. i haven’t been so stimulated by dialogue all year. a room full of crack newsmen, whipping ideas back and forth, overlapping, intertwining, and not stopping to breathe or crack a joke for our benefit, finally got me excited to be watching six people talking in a room. can there be more movies like this, please? ones that challenge me to follow them instead of leading me down a gentlly padded path to an obvious conclusion?

overall this film will almost certainly be one of my top two of the year (move over wedding crashers!…i kid), and i just couldn’t wait for that wrap-up list to make it known — so that hopefully someone else might benefit from my boredom one afternoon in texas as much as i have.