Something to watch tonight: Wednesday 28 January

Argo (Affleck, 2012)

Long-time read­ers of this news­let­ter (and its pre­ced­ing blog) will know that I have a tend­ency to go on at length about my trip to the Telluride Film Festival in 2012.

As accred­ited media, I was entitled to go to the pre-opening night mys­tery screen­ing at the Chuck Jones — Ben Affleck’s Argo:

Chuck Jones’ Theater is a con­ver­ted con­ven­tion centre ball­room with interi­or design by the great anim­at­or him­self – walls covered with amus­ing recre­ations of fam­ous paint­ings using the great Warner Bros car­toon char­ac­ters. Jones was a reg­u­lar here at Telluride until he became too frail to travel and this year we are all cel­eb­rat­ing his 100^th birth­day. In early years, he designed the fest­iv­al poster and his char­ac­ters adorn the lan­yards of all attendees.

Argo was briefly intro­duced by Mr Affleck him­self, who told us that we were the first pay­ing cus­tom­ers to actu­ally watch the film: “I know you didn’t actu­ally pay, but you know what I mean.”

I’ll review it prop­erly when it hits NZ cinemas – don’t want to peak too soon – but suf­fice to say that Argo is one of the most sat­is­fy­ing Hollywood pic­tures in years. It’s a tense geo-political drama which at the same time works as hil­ari­ous Hollywood satire and an against-the-clock thrill­er. Affleck has really hit his straps as a dir­ect­or and the sharp script by Chris Terrio should be receiv­ing some gongs at awards sea­son. That’s an unqual­i­fied “recom­mend” from me.

This is from my even­tu­al review of Argo in the Capital Times of 31 October 2012:

Near the end of 1979, the new hard­line rulers of Iran – incensed by the US government’s sup­port for the pre­vi­ous des­pot – stormed the embassy in Teheran and held the occu­pants host­age for over a year, long enough to wreck President Jimmy Carter’s attempt at re-election and to define American rela­tions with the Persian Gulf for anoth­er thirty years. That side of the story is rel­at­ively well-known. The secret story of the six embassy staff who escaped, hid in the Canadian ambassador’s house, and were then spir­ited out of the coun­try dis­guised as a Hollywood film crew? Not so much.

Thanks to the recent declas­si­fic­a­tion of the CIA and State Department files, the weird and won­der­ful story of Argo can be told, and – this being a Hollywood story about a Hollywood story – it gets a bit of a punch-up to make sure none of the enter­tain­ment poten­tial is wasted. So now, Argo is “inspired by a true story” rather than “based on a true story” and it is also the smartest and most enter­tain­ing Hollywood pic­ture for grown-ups this year.

Directed by Ben Affleck (who also stars as Tony Mendez, the CIA agent who hatched the plan), Argo is sim­ul­tan­eously a polit­ic­al drama with some smart things to say about the US engage­ment with the Middle East, a bitchy Hollywood satire with plenty of gags about the van­ity and delu­sion of the movie busi­ness and a tense ‘race-against-the-clock’ thrill­er that is executed as well as any­thing by William Friedkin. While 40-year-old Affleck shows that he now has the chops to com­pete with the very best, it is Chris Terrio’s script that is most likely to win a naked gold dude come Oscar-time.

That turned out to be an incom­plete pre­dic­tion. Terrio did indeed win an Oscar but so did sup­port­ing act­or Alan Arkin, edit­or William Goldenberg and pro­du­cers Affleck, Grant Heslov and George Clooney when it took home the prize for Best Picture.

Also reviewed in that Capital Times column: French com­edy The Intouchables (so suc­cess­ful that it was remade in India, Spain and the US), loc­al horror-comedy Fresh Meat (dir­ec­ted by Danny Mulheron), har­row­ing doc­u­ment­ary abour gender-cide, It’s a Girl, Andrea Riseborough and Clive Owen in a thrill­er set in Northern Ireland, Shadow Dancer, P.J. Hogan “shambles of a film” Mental:

Like an Ocker Mary Poppins, this house-keeper unleashes their inner strength and their vital per­son­al­it­ies, wreak­ing hav­oc on the con­ser­vat­ive com­munity. The film is a mess (which I think is partly the point) but the sav­ing grace is the cast, all of whom – LaPaglia, Collette, Gibney, Kiwi Kerry Fox and American Liev Schreiber – get a moment or two to show us what they can do. Schrieber’s Aussie accent is the best by an American that I’ve ever heard.

Where to watch Argo

Aotearoa: Streaming on Prime Video or ThreeNow (free with ads)

Australia: Streaming on Prime Video or HBO Max

Canada: Streaming on Prime Video, Paramount+, Crave or Starz

Ireland: Streaming on Prime Video

India: Streaming on HotStar

UK: Streaming on Prime Video

USA: Digital rental