Argo

Ben Affleck has struck gold. Producing, directing, and starring in this thriller that, last weekend, four weeks out, was the highest grossing movie of the past weekend. And for good reason.

We were among the many who went to see Argo last weekend. The movie is true edge of your seat fare. The challenge of a historical movie, one in which we know the ending, is to create real drama. After all we know as we watch the movie that the plane carrying those being rescued will get in the air, they will evade the Iranians, and the plan to get them out will work.

Still, with these challenges, Affleck makes it work and work beyond compare.

The movie tells the story of six American embassy workers who escape from the takeover of the embassy by the Iranian protestors. Hidden by the Canadian embassy for a time what becomes clear is that they need to be brought out of the country before the Iranians discover their presence. Affleck as CIA agent Tony Mendez comes up with a plan, a crazy plan, to create a fake movie to provide cover for getting those embassy workers out of the country.

Casting in the movie is brilliant. Alan Arkin and John Goodman play the Hollywood types brought in to help create the supposed movie. Arkin is perfect in his role but truly needing to be recognized is Goodman. Is there anyone acting today that is better at these character rolls than John Goodman. Familiar faces abound in the movie, most however are not those one can put a name to but we know that we know them. Kyle Chandler of Friday Night Lights fame makes an appearance as Hodding Carter.

The movie in all respects however is all about Affleck. He dominates this movie and it is a good thing. His character is an agent who takes his job seriously and has a sense of responsibility toward each and every person he is to help.

As we watch a movie we often wonder about how it will age, this is a movie that could easily become a classic. A fantastic movie.

The Company Men

his movie explores what happens when those of us who have it made no longer do. Ben Affleck plays a regional sales manager for a ship building company who has it all. The great house, the Porsche, the country club and then one day----he is let go after a wave of corporate down sizing.

Chris Cooper plays an older employee let go who finds himself practically unemployable at his age and is being crowded by expenses that never stop.

Tommy Lee Jones and Craig T Nelson play the CEO ( Nelson ) and his first employee when the company was starting out. ( Jones )

Tiring of Jones contunual fighting him on the job cuts Jones himself gets his walking papers. Jones remembering his own blue collar roots is upset by what is happening to the good employees who worked for the company.

This is a good movie. It moved a little slow and the subject matter of men losing their jobs hits a little home for me. While Affleck's character loses his job and then his house eventually working for his brother in law buidling houses. This character of the brother in law played by Kevin Costner has an honest decency that is perhaps the most accessible and least flawed character in the movie.

A good movie. Perhaps a lesson on what is important and what is not. A wonderful cast. Tommy Lee Jones is a great actor and Craig T Nelson is always underappreciated.