Good Night, and Good Luck: Good movie.

This instrument can teach, it can illuminate; yes, and it can even inspire. But it can do so only to the extent that humans are determined to use it to those ends. Otherwise, it is merely wires and lights in a box.
- Edward R. Murrow, on television, in his 1958 speech to the Radio and Television News Directors Association (RTNDA)



Good Night, and Good Luck (2005), about broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow and the CBS news room, and their decision to take sides about Senator Joseph McCarthy's tactics, is a mighty good movie.

Of course this is a simplified view of Murrow, a small part of his career, and the role he and his news team played in the reaction against McCarthy. All movies about historical events or figures, because of the constraints of effective storytelling and of cinema, are simplified. But taking it just as a movie, I had no complaints.

You see that? Yup, I said "no complaints."

The performances were great, I loved the black and white, and I was completely into the story and characters. And using existing footage of McCarthy to play himself was brilliant -- to have an actor play him, no matter how faithfully, would never have created the same visceral response in viewers who recognize or remember the actual footage.

Whether this movie is a realistic representation of events is not my topic here. Good Night, and Good Luck is a great story, well packaged. Additionally, any movie that might inspire people to look more closely at history, and as a result critically consider the present and future, more than deserves it's space on the shelf.