Two almost-perfect nights at the movies

This weekend's Netflix offerings were so entertaining and so close to "right on," I almost hate to quibble philosophically with them, but what the heck.

Aeon Flux and Good Night and Good Luck are from different universes for the most part, but they both have positive things to say about freedom and the rights of the individual. There's just these moments ...

And I confess while I enjoyed Aeon Flux a great deal more than critics and the box office had led me to expect (There I go again, the Serenity fanatic thinking disappointing box office has something to do with quality), there's a flaw in the plot that undermines its creds as a tome to liberty: The people of Bregna live under the dictatorship of a family named Goodchild, and the struggle turns out to be between the malevolent dictator brother and the benevolent dictator brother.

When the good guy wins (does the good guy ever lose in modern flicks?), the ruling council strolls up to him and a spokesman says, "We're waiting for your orders." The good guy replies, "You're not part of this?" and in a moment that must have made my buddy Wally Conger cringe, the spokesman says, "Whatever we are, we're not anarchists. There have to be rules."

So, except for the "joy of monarchy" theme and the perhaps-inevitable equating of anarchy with chaos, Aeon Flux is an entertaining diversion - I suppose any movie with Cherlize Theron in "pretty" mode will be an entertaining diversion.

Good Night and Good Luck is the acclaimed dramatization of Edward R. Murrow's well-known effort to document the assaults on freedom that accompanied the fear of communism in the early 1950s, especially as personified in Sen. Joseph McCarthy, although as Murrow correctly noted, "He didn't create this situation of fear - he only exploited it."

The movie and accompanying DVD featurette are brimming with great Murrowisms; perhaps the best one to direct to those who believe in the Wilsonian/Bushevite American Empire is "We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the results. We proclaim ourselves, indeed as we are, the defenders of freedom wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home."

But halfway through the otherwise interesting featurette, it takes a wrong turn and the speakers start talking about how much better it was when the Federal Communications Commission required television stations to devote a certain percentage of their programming to news and "the public interest" because the airwaves belong to "the people," doncha know. It's kind of jarring for the makers of a film that demonstrates the misuse of state power to reminisce about the good old days when the state kept its iron thumb on the electronic press.

Still, the overriding theme of these two movies is liberty and standing up for the rights of the individual - so why quibble? These films sure beat 24 hours spent cheering Jack Bauer on as he runs roughshod over the Constitution to protect the innocent and preserve our security.