seeing red; George Clooney portrays Edward R. Murrow's fight against McCarthyism in "Good Night, and Good Luck", while Julian Fellowes's "Separate Lies" chronicles an unlikely love triangle.(Movie Review)

Does any other movie star take as many chances as George Clooney? While the guy comes off as an easygoing throwback to Old Hollywood-a handsome romantic lead who's also a man's man-he's actually possessed of a rare daring. Clooney has consistently used his box-office clout to take chances on risky personal projects, from his dead-serious Solaris remake to the HBO comedy Unscripted. Now he's directed and co-written (with Grant Heslov) Good Night, and Good Luck, a tautly made and supremely timely new movie about TV news. Set during the fifties Red Scare, it tells the story of how the celebrated CBS reporter Edward R. Murrow-played with chain-smoking flintiness by David Strathairn-took on Senator Joseph McCarthy, a tyrannical bully who felt no qualms about ruining innocent people by accusing them of Communist ties. Theirs was a deadly battle that threatened Murrow's career, the reputation of his associates (played by, among others, Patricia Clarkson and Robert Downey, Jr.), and the future of CBS itself.

Selected to open the New York Film Festival, Good Night, and Good Luck serves as further proof that Clooney, who costars as Murrow's producer Fred Friendly, is much more than just another actor dabbling in directing or pontificating about politics. He has genuine filmmaking talent. Although his directorial debut, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, was ultimately more dazzling than emotionally involving, it was also one of the more stylistically audacious first films in recent years. Fluidly shot in black-and-white, the new movie shows greater artistic control, neatly interweaving fiction and archive footage to evoke the harrowing paranoia-and modest victories-of media life during the blacklist years.

But Good Night, and Good Luck isn't merely a historical drama-it has a sharp contemporary sting. Clooney ...