Double Feature

I went and saw two movies today: Argo and Zero Dark Thirty. I'm not much for stereotypical chick flicks. I like realistic espionage films though. Both of these films delivered. If I had to pick between the two which was a better made film, I'll go with Argo.

First and foremost, I now know why everyone is saying that Ben Affleck was robbed when he wasn't nominated for the Academy Award for best director. Much of the films effectiveness was a direct result of directorial choices made by Affleck. Shooting on film in a 1970's resolution really helped it feel accurate. The use of actual news footage also played heavily into that. The Iran Hostage crisis took place in 1980 when I was 5 years old. It is probably  my earliest memory of Televised news programming. Such a thing is liable to make a person feel a little old, but I'm okay with that. Ben Affleck chose to make a movie which told a compelling story which was classified for many years. A fake movie was devised so that a CIA operative could masquerade as a film producer and bring out 6 Americans who were stranded at the Canadian Embassy in Iran under the cover story that they were a film production crew scouting locations for said fictional film. Argo is an engaging and gripping film which had me at the edge of my seat for about the last half hour.

Zero Dark Thirty was not as good as The Hurt Locker. Then again I think that chocolate ice cream isn't quite as good as a really well made vanilla, but I will still enjoy the chocolate. Zero Dark Thirty is the fictionalized account of the CIA's search for Osama Bin Laden and his eventual capture. This film has some serious sensitive points. It shows American-Made torture methods as being effective in extracting usable information. That bothers people. It bothers me. It doesn't bother me that it was portrayed in the film if that's what really happened. Is that what really happened? Probably. Torture isn't an effective method of extracting information, but it isn't a 100% failure either. In war, your hands get dirty. That's the way it is. Zero Dark Thirty paints a picture of what it might have looked like to be engaged in that search over the last decade. The minor points that I was impressed with, were the anachronisms. Little things that changed in the background as time progressed. The main character was using a Blackberry that would have been on the market in 2008 (Hey kids, I work for phone company. I notice these things). In my opinion, the best performances in the film belonged to Jason Clarke and Mark Strong. Even ignoring the fact that they are both flawlessly faking American dialects, they both put in very strong performances in their respective characters. Likewise, I'm unsure why Jessica Chastain was nominated for an acting award, because her role didn't seem to require a great deal of presence. I mean, she did better than I could, but even so - the role itself just didn't seem to lend itself to an award worthy performance.

Side note: Doctor Who and Torchwood fans, look for John Barrowman. He plays a CIA guy and has two lines.

The next movie I'm going to go see is The Impossible. Almost saw it today, but decide that today was going to be all about espionage.