Why the affection? Maybe because "Crash" fails to wallow in the ugliness of the racism it presumes to dissect, offering a hopeful coda for a few, if not all of, its characters.

A traffic accident in Los Angeles involving a black police detective (Don Cheadle) and his part-Puerto-Rican, part-El-Salvadoran girlfriend sets the story in motion. The film shows that this interracial relationship is burdened by the suspicion and lingering racial prejudice between the two, but prejudice is by no means confined to these characters. Other "Crash" characters include a racist cop (Matt Dillon) and the two people he harasses – a successful black television director and his wife (Terrence Howard and Thandie Newton) – as well as his offended partner (Ryan Phillippe); a district attorney and his wife (Brendan Fraser and Sandra Bullock), who are carjacked by two black thugs (Ludacris and Larenz Tate); a Persian shopkeeper who wants to buy a gun to protect himself against the vandals who have broken into his store; and a Mexican locksmith whose clients (the shopkeeper and the carjacked woman) distrust him.

The message of "Crash" seems to be that some racists can be redeemed, while some upstanding people secretly harbor racist instincts that can be deadly, given the right confluence of events. The film’s blunt racism is matched only by its profanity-laden dialogue, but "Crash" also includes a few powerful scenes and a recognition within some of the characters of their own failings. Rarely, however, has character redemption seemed like such scant payoff for a feature film.

GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK

Come with me now, back to a time before the CBS News scandal about George W. Bush’s military documents, to the days before Dan Rather stormed off the CBS Evening News set when a tennis match ran two minutes overtime – back to a time when CBS News journalists were heroes.

George Clooney directs and stars in "Good Night and Good Luck," an impressive, timely film about the nature and purpose of journalism, and its privileged role in questioning those in power. In this case, Edward R. Murrow’s aggressive questioning of Sen. Joe McCarthy, who was on a crusade to root out Communists and Communist sympathizers within the United States.

The film opens with a sober text scroll, informing us that “few in the press were willing to stand up against McCarthy, for fear that they too would be targeted.” The story that unfolds bears this out, as Murrow (David Strathairn), along with his producer, Fred Friendly (George Clooney), use their "See It Now" broadcast to question why an Air Force lieutenant has been publicly humiliated and labeled as a security threat, based on documents that the military refuses to divulge. Murrow uses additional broadcast time to go after McCarthy, who eventually appears on Murrow’s program to respond to Murrow’s allegations.