Stonking film. Really thoughtful, engaging, well-acted, evocative and worthwhile. Go see it—or watch it on video; it doesn’t necessarily need the big screen.

Cineworld have just seen fit to inflate their prices, and they already charged an arm and a leg for food of dubious nutitional value, but Good Night, And Good Luck was worth the £6 ticket and >£5 natchos+small drink. Well, actually, I still resent paying £5 for a stack of natchos and mediocre salsa, but the film did compensate to a large degree.

It’s about Ed Murrow, a CBS broadcaster in the 1950s, whose political investigations helped bring down Senator McCarthy. Filmed in black-and-white, it captures beautifully the mood of the 1950s, from the naff office furniture to the sharp suits, to the every single person smoking continuously.

The parallels with today’s political climate in the U.S. are clear, and Murrow’s eloquent pleas for a more intelligent and principled news media still ring true, even as they seem less and less likely to be heeded. However, it stands up as a piece above and beyond the present political stituation. While it may have been produced in part as a reaction to a stormy political climate, it is also a fascinating story of a particular piece of American history. It is also fundementally a story of a few principled people making a positive difference. It’s rare, in fact, as a gritty, poltitical film which is basically up-beat. The good guys win.

It’s a small film, low budget, unassuming, but it’s also an eloquently constructed piece of entertainment. As eloquent, in fact, as Murrow himself.