Only two this week…
11:14 (Greg Marks, 2003)
At 11:14 pm a car accident takes place near an overpass. It all happens very quickly, and it takes a little while to get into the groove of this fast-paced thriller, which is as much a dark comedy as a meditation on the seemingly random nature of connected events. Director Marks presents a sequence of events out of sequence so that the puzzle for the audience becomes finding the connections in this mystery rather than figuring out whodunit.
It reminded me of several other films such as Outside Ozona, Memento, and Three Days in the Valley that play with the flow of time and seeming random characters as fate veers towards some connecting calamity, but this film keeps within its limits and pushes those tenuous connections to the forefront. Worth watching, but will probably be forgotten in a few months. Three stars.
Good Night, and Good Luck (George Clooney, 2005)
I meant to see Good Night, and Good Luck when it came out, but then it’s one that I figured would play just as well at home. I was right, and that’s no slam on the movie; besides, it seemed especially appropriate to see Good Night, and Good Luck on a television since the film so eloquently takes us back to a time in which television was new and seemed to hold so much promise for those who believed in its power.
Clooney does a masterful job capturing a specific moment in history, that moment when the media still did its job. Shot in black-and-white and set to a bluesy/jazz soundtrack the film immediately evokes the 1950s as I imagine that time to have been. The photography is beautiful (of course there’s nothing cooler looking than people smoking in a well-lit black-and-white movie) and makes this film as enjoyable for its aesthetic value as for its content.
The content, of course, is what makes this movie so important. The viewer must have at least a basic knowledge of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s attacks on America and an awareness of who Edward R Murrow was because it jumps in at the moment when Murrow decides to go after McCarthy at great professional risk to himself and the entire CBS network.
Anyone aware of US history knows how this ends, but it’s interesting to see the role the media played in exposing McCarthy’s corruption and anti-American agenda. Mostly, though, Good Night, and Good Luck is saddening because at its heart is the implicit reminder that the media that once kept a watch on government is gone, now having been replaced by a media establishment whose idea of reporting is nothing more than ‘He said’-‘She said’ without analysis, without questioning, and without seriously taking to task those in power.
Good Night, and Good Luck attempts to remind us that part of the price of freedom is to vigorously question those in power, and that that is why we have a free press.
The saddest truth, though, is that the media gives us exactly what we want. Four and a half stars.
James Brush is a teacher and writer who lives in Austin, TX. He tries to get outside as much as possible.
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