Good Night, And Good Luck Reviews
Top Critic
It's a modest but powerful affair, and a fantastic mood piece.
... it telescopes -- with no loss of accuracy -- Murrow's last few fifties hurrahs as the hardest diamond in Bill Paley's 'Tiffany network.'
Rarely moving a facial muscle except to exhale smoke and brimstone, Strathairn wonderfully recaptures Murrow's deadpan delivery style.
| Original Score: 3/4
It's an interesting way to represent the past, though the use of space, actors, and archival footage seems more theatrical than cinematic.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Clooney continues to improve as both a writer and director, showing huge advancement from his underwhelming 2002 helming debut Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Good Night, and Good Luck may be simplified history, but it's almost consistently well-crafted.
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| Original Score: 3/4
The bottom line on Good Night, and Good Luck? See it. Now.
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| Original Score: 5/5
Clooney's message is clear: Character assassination is wrong, McCarthy was a bully and a liar, and we must be vigilant when the emperor has no clothes and wraps himself in the flag.
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| Original Score: 4/4
Mr. Strathairn does capture much of Murrow's formal manner, particularly the measured cadences of his sentences.
Clooney makes an elegant argument that something of vital interest is still at stake in this story. It would take a stubborn soul to disagree.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Good Night, and Good Luck stands, tall, solid, impressive and expressive joining not only the best films about journalism, but also those about real Americans.
| Original Score: 4/4
The sad conclusion of Good Night is that while we have made no more room for Murrows in this world, the potential for McCarthys lingers. In which case, good luck indeed.
| Original Score: B+
As an actor, George Clooney is often compared with vintage stars like Cary Grant, but with his latest work he aligns himself with history's great directors.
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| Original Score: 4/4
There's no sense of nostalgia to the picture, no wistful romanticism or longing. Instead, the movie has a steely, dead-serious vitality -- a sense of immediacy and urgency that makes it seem it could be happening right now.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Do you respect the corporate line or do you cross it? Clooney, who in his life wears the hats both of the entertainer and the 'actorvist,' gives us an intelligent, electric film that knows this question is as timely now as it was for Murrow.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
See it, to see what the news once was -- and to see what movies can be.
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| Original Score: 4/4
I'm betting David Strathairn, who plays Murrow with a sense of wry self-awareness, will be nominated for an Academy Award.
| Original Score: B+
Mr. Clooney doesn't sacrifice story and theme for sermonizing, which is perhaps Good Night's most impressive feat.
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| Original Score: A
Clooney, who gained weight to play Murrow's producer, Fred Friendly, has made a solid film and his sense of humor remains intact.
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| Original Score: 3.5/5
We're not sure if Strathairn is playing Murrow or channeling him. Either way, we're impressed.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Part docu-drama, part thriller, and part cautionary tale, the movie offers something to everyone who craves more than escapism from the cinema.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
I found it to be one of most intelligent and insightful movies ever made about the television news business and about the profoundly un-American practice of labeling dissenters as traitors.
Strathairn's Murrow is poised at the center of this quiet whirlwind and this 'actor's actor' deftly weaves many aspects of the broadcaster's mercurial personality within the movie's tight time frame.
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| Original Score: 4/4
The film, therefore, is like a child's view of these events, untroubled by complexity, hungry for myth and simplicity.
George Clooney's second directorial outing couldn't be more topical, though the events it chronicles occurred over half a century ago.
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| Original Score: 4/4
Part drama and part civics lesson, Good Night, and Good Luck is an entertaining slice of American political and cultural history.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Good Night, and Good Luck says two things, at least, and they are worth repeating: There is always the chance for one good man to make a difference. And in 1954, Edward R. Murrow did.
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| Original Score: 4/4
A passionate and rousing piece of filmmaking -- a civics lesson with the punch of a good melodrama.
Good Night, and Good Luck will probably need a little bit of luck (and good word-of-mouth) to succeed, but seek it out: It's a terrific film.
A hermetically sealed period piece so intensely relevant to our current state of affairs that it takes your breath away.
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| Original Score: 3.5/4
Good Night, and Good Luck couldn't be more unlikely, more unfashionable -- or more compelling.
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| Original Score: 5/5
In his second outing as a director, Clooney expertly evokes the revved, split-second drama of the early days of live TV.
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| Original Score: B+
Clooney's brilliantly orchestrated and seriously respectful movie can be seen as a grim shoulder tap, lamenting the social irresponsibility of what Gore Vidal likes to call the 'United States of Amnesia.'
Clooney's account of Murrow's historic assaults on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, in 1954, imitates many of Murrow's best qualities.
In ninety-three tight, terrifically exciting minutes, Clooney makes integrity look mighty sexy.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
This is serious grown-up entertainment with a sense of history and a sense of style, the kind of picture almost no one knows how to - - or, perhaps more accurately, can find the means to - - make anymore.
The biggest little movie of the year -- and one of the best ever about the news media.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
George Clooney's film about the CBS newsman Edward R. Murrow is a passionate, thoughtful essay on power, truth-telling and responsibility.
By far the smartest American film released in 2005.
| Original Score: 4/4
This is a mesmerizing film from start to finish, directed by Mr. Clooney with admirable self-assurance, and a miraculous 90 minutes.
A vital chapter of mid-century history is brought to life concisely, with intimacy and matter-of-fact artistry.
