Good Night and Good Luck

This film opens with a scene in which Ed Murrow warns his audience of how television can easily and was in fact rapidly becoming a means of mere and vacuous entertainment and was not being adequately utilised as a means of education, investigation or as a vehicle for change and good. For a speech made in 1958 it showed remarkable prescience and awareness by the speaker.

This is a challenging and engaging film which uses media coverage from the day to give the effect of a docu drama rather than a fictional movie. The resulting film is fast paced and informative as it follows the succesful attempt by Murrow and Friendly to stand up to and question the tactics of Senator Joe McCarthy during the infamous McCarthy era witch hunt.

There are many different layers to this film as it covers the story one of the most interesting to me was the parallel stroy of the young married couple who had to hide the fact of their marriage from the network as it was against company policy for colleagues to be married. When they were eventually discovered it was put to them that it had been in the company's knowledge all along that they were married but now that they were forced to aly off staff they were being approached to have one party resign in order to save the job of another person who wasn't breaking company policy. It wasn't clear which one would be resigning but I guess it was the wife as condidering the era the film was set in she would be the more likely candidate. The fact that the film was focused on the fight against injustice in society by a news room team and yet there was injustice happening under their noses struck me as a brilliant parallel and was just one of the impressive achievements in this film.

Match Point

Woody Allen's long awaited comeback to the silver screen is a real treat. He introduces the characters slowly and gives you tantalising insights into their hearts and minds without ever really showing you the real people, it is generally just hte facade that they use to portray themselves to the general public that is shown in the movie.

Jonathon Rhys Myers portrays the protagonist of the piece impecably. He is cool, aloof, manipulative and dangerous but these facets of his personality are revealed piecemeal to us until he becomes the only character we really understand and as a result and despite of his actions he becomes the only character for which we have any real sympathy for.

Scarlett Johanson plays a needy, poor, white trash American, aspiring actress who becomes caught upin the games and manipulations of upper crust English sociey without ever really seeming to understand what game it is that she is playing. She is very much the victim of the piece and while she justifiably deserves our sympathy it is very difficult to feel sympathetic towards her.

This film manages to turn on its head all that we are taught to believe about morality and right and wrong. The theme that life is based on a series of lucky calls and that there is no real free will at all is what drives this story.

It's a fascinting and entertaining movie and one that I would have no hesitation in recommending.

Munich

Spielsberg's latest offering is about as far removed from ET as Schindler's list and then some. This is a taught, emotional, depressing and difficult movie to watch.

I found myself wishing I wasn't there at that moment watching it at various different stages during the film and felt very confused and upset on leaving the cinema.

It's not that it's graphic in a visual way. I think it's graphic in an emotional way, which is something you don't get very often in a movie. Added to that is the fact that the emotion is itself understated and therefore creeps up on you and hits you when you really aren't expecting it.

For my part I felt it went on far too long I was itching to leave after 2 hours, I had had enough. The boy felt differently he reckons it's a masterpiece and he's not wrong it's an excellent film, but I wouldn't send people to go see it. You should make that decision for yourself.