This film is not haut cuisine. It wasn’t made by a cordon bleu director and it didn’t cost $8M to prepare, but it has been made to a good recipe with fresh actors, and cooked well. It is decent, nourishing, home-made filmmaking. Enjoy it with friends, a big bowl of pasta and a decent bottle of wine. Continue reading →

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.

Aye, it’s a very good filmed musical.

Frankly rather stagey, though.

The starting scene, for example, in Bialystock’s office, is tiresome. It seemed like an imitation of another kind of film. And I’m not saying this because I saw the original; I never saw the original. It just feels like they’re simply impersonating a musical film comedy of the ’30s or ’40s, and they are making a commendable stab, but not quite, of recapturing the physical humour. It’s tiresome.

The song and dance numbers are where it really opens up. They’re vibrant, and imaginative, and integral to the story. They seem to fit into the story better than those in, say Chicago—possibly because The Producers is a comedy and can plain get away with breaking the bounds of reality for a few song and dance numbers. In fact they poke quite a few other jokes at the 4th wall, and they do carry them off (with positive aplomb).

However, much of the direction and acting is too broad for cinema. In too many shots, the camera could have been twice as far away, and the gag, or the move, or whatever would still have worked, or worked better. The director doesn’t seem to quite know what to do with a motion picture camera (except in the musical numbers, and that’s probably only ’cos the Director of Photography boned up on Busby Berkeley before filming).

Also, it could have ended sooner. It doesn’t feel overlong; just that there’s a lot of plot and if they had cut the last few scenes or so you would still be getting value-for-cinema-ticket .

Uma Thurman played the bombshell role beautifully. Will Ferrell was appropriately mad and crazy. Nathan Lane was perfect… except… Bialystock is supposed to be boning old ladies for money. That’s sick and twisted, and didn’t seem quite ever to be mined for all its comedy potential. Nathan Lane’s fault, or the writers’? I dunno. Matthew Broderick is generally decent. However, I think a better director could have pulled a steller performance from him, rather than a generally-decent one.

Watch it for the musical numbers. However, I’m guessing that the original (1968) version is a better film.