I’m trying to squeeze in all of the best picture nominees before the Oscars – I’ve already seen Lincoln, Les Miserables and Silver Linings Playbook and yesterday, we saw Argo, the latest joint from Ben Affleck, who is not nominated for Best Director or Best Beard, and he really should be nominated for both.I thought Argo had everything and, of the flicks I’ve seen so far, Argo is my pick for best picture by a beard at 9.5 out of 10, just edging out Silver Linings Playbook at an even 9.
My understanding is that the climax of the film doesn’t follow the event exactly as it happened, but I’m OK with it – Argo is a movie, after all, and not a history book, and, as we all know, artists will take poetic license.
I’m surprised Ben Affleck didn’t get a best director nomination – he does a wonderful job of using handheld camera work to convey tension when necessary and more fluid techniques during lighter scenes. I particularly liked his 70s like establishing shots of locations in LA and the old, grainy Warner Bros. logo at the start of the film.
I won’t ramble on like I did when I talked about Les Mis and Lincoln – I’ll just say that Argo is an immaculately cast, well-directed film full of both tension and levity, and tension is tough to pull off when the audience knows how the story ends. I highly recommend this flick.
Edited by Jamie Insalaco
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Not the most perfect movie I saw last year, but is still an entertaining flick about a top-secret mission nobody ever knew about. Sadly, we all know how it ends and that’s what kind of sucks all of the energy out of this flick in the long-run. Good review Jamie.
I think I liked Argo so much because I knew what was going to happen but I was still very much engaged, right until the end.
What was your favorite movie of 2012?
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