Wes Anderson's grand scheme movie

 I use a notebook during screenings to keep track of specifics -- dates, locations, and colors. Things like that. If my handwriting were better these notes would be more useful, but even as they drift toward indecipherability, they serve as a memory aid.

  During the screening of director Wes Anderson's The Phoenician Scheme, I reached a point where I stopped taking notes. I couldn't keep up with the surfeit of detail that cropped up in Anderson's carefully constructed sets, each of which becomes a kind of destination that can outweigh the importance of where the story might be headed.

    Anderson tends to indulge in detailed design, so much so that it's only a mild overstatement to call his scenes  dioramas with actors. There's world building and then there's world building that feels chiseled; movies such as the Phoenician Scheme flood the screen with their drolly express detailing.

     The Anderson aesthetic is richly displayed in Phoenician Scheme, but the movie also includes dull stretches that take us from episode to episode, some set off by title cards expressing variable amounts of wit.

      So what's The Phonecian Scheme about? A greedy tycoon named Zsa-zsa Korda (Benicio Del Toro) aims to control the resources of a fictional region called Modern Greater Independent Phoenicia. Zsa-zsa's ambition sends him to a tour to raise funds for an intricate infrastructure project.

     Kate Winslet's real-life daughter Mia Threapleton plays Korda's daughter Liesl, the character who brings the movie's father/daughter theme into focus. Korda wants Threapleton's Liesl to take over his empire, choosing her over his nine sons, the equivalent of non-player characters in video games.

     The problem: Liesl is on the verge of taking her vows as a nun, an occupation that would limit her ability to play Zsa-zsa's ruthless game. To the extent that it's possible, Liesl adds moral fiber to Zsa-Zsa's project: Unlike her father, she refuses to use slaves to help with any required construction. 

     A scorecard might be needed to keep track of the actors who appear in small roles. Tom Hanks and Bryan Cranston turn up in a sequence involving a strange H-O-R-S-E-like game of basketball. Anderson also makes room for appearances by Riz Ahmed, Benedict Cumberbatch, Mathieu Amalric, and Scarlett Johansson. 

     Michael Cera gets more screen time as Bjorn, an insect collector who travels with Korda and Liesl. He serves as Liesl's tutor and Zsa-zsa's "guy Friday."

     The performances fit into the Anderson's deadpan presentation of a playful weirdness that extends to costumes (a striking set of pajamas) or personal appearance (Cumberbatch's graying two-tone beard).  

     Set in the 1950s, Phoenician Scheme seems more subdued than previous Anderson efforts, although it begins with a plane crash that might be read as a commentary on the preposterous inhumanity of contemporary action sequences. Zsa-zsa we learn has survived many plane crashes. He's like man living on perpetual borrowed time. Perhaps that's why he seems a bit bored with himself.

      Anderson's devoted fans who wouldn't miss one of his movies. Should others venture into The Phoenician Scheme they may have to settle for quiet appreciation of the environments Anderson creates and his occasional displays of audacity -- e.g., the basketball sequence. 

       I'm not sure where to rank Phoenician Scheme

in Anderson's extensive catalog. The movie struck me as one more stop on a continuing journey, something like a restaurant with a forgettable main course, but lots of tasty side dishes.

'Argylle': a spoofy but hollow spy game

 

   The screen bursts with activity in the unashamedly silly Argylle, but too little of it matters.

   Known for his work on the Kingsman franchise, director Matthew Vaughn lifts tongue into cheek for a multi-layered espionage spoof that casts Bryce Dallas Howard as Elly Conway, a successful spy novelist who gets caught up in the real thing. 

   The title stems from one of Conway's characters, a  debonaire agent known as Argylle (Henry Cavill) who squares off against an evil consortium known as The Division.

  Conway's pet cat Alfie accompanies her everywhere, peering out from a plastic window in her backpack. And, yes, the cat -- or some CGI version of it -- eventually figures in the story.

   Vaughn jams the movie with names and faces, offering cameos from Dua Lipa, Ariana DeBose, John Cena, and Samuel L. Jackson. Jackson spends much of his screen time watching an NBA game. Aside from a punchy  opening scene, the others seem inconsequential.

    Vaughn includes extended work from Sam Rockwell, as Aidan, a real spy who meets Elly and, in the film's early stages, emerges as her protector. 

     Bryan Cranston turns up as the head of The Division and Catherine O'Hara plays Elly's Mom. 

     Most of the characters have dual identities, a ploy that mostly serves to muddy the already murky waters. Know, though, that Elly sometimes watches real-world characters morph into her fictional creations, blurring lines in a way that's not particularly confusing but becomes repetitive.

      Jason Fuchs's screenplay includes a few clever touches and a bit of amusement. Vaughn goes for broke when he turns a major fight sequence into a dance number shrouded in clouds of red smoke. In another fight, he makes clever use of an oil slick.

       And, yes, there's a big plot twist. And, no, it probably won't knock you out of your seat.

       Neither does Argylle, which feels like an evocation of similar movies -- some directed by Vaughn.  Little more than a helping of CGI-fueled cinematic play, Argylle  overstays its welcome at a length of two hours and 19 minutes.

       But play isn't enough to save the day -- or a movie that doesn't seem to have much else on its mind.

   

Wes Anderson visits the ‘50s in ‘Astroid City’

 

  In Astroid City, director Wes Anderson returns to the 1950s to create a self-consciously expressed artificial environment in which he can ... well ... I'm not sure exactly what. 

  Astroid City overloads on the dry visual wit that has distinguished Anderson's style. Anderson's movies (The French Dispatch and The Grand Budapest Hotel) are so strenuously stylized that one can only assume that we're meant to revel in the cleverness.

   In this case,  Anderson creates a phony desert landscape in which he locates the town of the movie's title. The story and its characters feel like miniatures encased in high-quality plastic, Bakelite perhaps. 

   I guess the question arising from all this is whether Anderson's approach transcends playful amusement? The dialogue and some of the issues (the rise of atomic weapons) suggest he has more in mind than chuckles.

   Whether you can make that leap with him seems to turn audiences into supporters or detractors or, just as likely, those who are simply confused. Watching Astroid City, I alternately found myself in all of those categories. 

     One of Andreson's best sight gags involves a highway constructed in the middle of Astroid City. The road ramps upward and then ends abruptly, suggesting that the town's early optimism ran out of gas. Make what you will of that. I laughed.

   Anderson populates Astroid City with a large and notable cast.

   Jason Schwartzman plays Augie Steinbeck, a war photographer who's traveling with his four kids and the ashes of his late wife, a once loved woman whose remains have been stored in a Tupperware bowl. 

   To add to the story, the little town plays host to a mini-convention of Junior Stargazers. A funny Jake Ryan portrays Augie's son Woodrow,  a nerdy Stargazer with a serious scientific bent. 

    If all this weren't enough, Anderson adds another meta layer. We know from the start that everything that unfolds in Astroid City is part of a television play that's introduced in black-and-white sequences by a character called The Host (Bryan Cranston).

   Later Adrien Brody will turn up as Schubert Green, the man who seems to be directing the play which was written by Conrad Earp (Edward Norton).

   Of all the movie’s many actors, Brody alone seems entirely comfortable in this world. He retains a sense of fluidity that other actors can’t always achieve when visiting AndersonWorld. 

   As you probably can tell, Astroid City can be regarded as a scorecard movie. You'll need one to keep track of the many actors who pop up. Jeffrey Wright plays General Grif Gibson, a military man who addresses the Stargazers. 

    You'll also find appearances by Matt Dillon, Steve Carell, Hope Davis, and Liev Schreiber.

   More notable is the work of Scarlett Johansson who plays movie star Midge Campbell and who -- during the course the play we're watching -- converses with Augie. Both characters speak from their motel rooms, observing each other through windows.

   Midge pops back and forth from the play to black-and-white behind-the-scenes sequences that show us what's happening backstage at the production.

    Other characters also appear in both realities.

   The performances are molded into the movie's deadpan style that's enjoyable if you pick out highlights, notably a dance sequence led by Montana, a cowboy played by Robert Friend. 

    A scene in which an alien lands in Astroid City is as funny and beautifully executed as it is cheesy -- in the manner of third-rate 50s sci-fi.

    And, oh yes, Tom Hanks.

    Hanks pays the grandfather of the Steenbeck brood; he shows up for the burial of his daughter's ashes and connects the movie to the grief that drives Augie and his kids.

    For the most part, the appearances of the movie's many actors lack the joy of  recognition that sometimes can be derived from a large, recognizable cast. Here, they come and go without fanfare.

    Astroid City looks like one of those towns that were constructed for atom bomb tests and, at various points, we see mushroom clouds in the background. The town is named for an astroid that long ago smashed into earth, leaving a portion of itself as a valued memento.

     Anderson divides the movie into acts, which heightens the sense of remove that he creates; for me, at least, this is both Anderson’s strength and weakness. His characters can be more like objects than people and they operate in the coded way that fits the rest of the film. 

     At times, Astroid City has a piercing brilliance that I found captivating. Overall, though, the movie proves fitfully enjoyable, something we observe as if looking through a microscope meant to satirize and dissect cliched images of lonely Western landscapes. If they were paintings, they might be admired for their cartoon-like clarity.

    My advice: Grab what you will from the passing tray of oddities, ignore what baffles you. Sometimes Astroid City feels like a collectors show of mid-Century bric-a-brac; best to take it booth by booth.

Wes Anderson's distinctive 'Isle of Dogs'

Stop-action animation, a great voice cast, and strangely insular atmospherics make the director's latest appealing.

I’m not a total fan of Wes Anderson, the director whose work includes The Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Moonrise Kingdom and The Darjeeling Express). But there’s no arguing that Anderson is one of the few directors working today who follows his imagination wherever it leads him. To enjoy his movies, you must accept his apparent unwillingness to curb his idiosyncrasies or to tailor his work to popular expectation. You must accept -- and perhaps even welcome -- what feels like the willed insularity of Anderson's world.

In Isle of Dogs — Anderson’s latest — the director employs stop-action animation to create a story in which a Japanese mayor banishes all the dogs in his city to an island where the city dumps its trash.

Every dog lover will recognize this as a horrible situation and Anderson doesn’t shrink from the inherent sadness of a society so cruel that it condemns a species that has done nothing to deserve being ostracized.

The city's authoritarian Mayor Kobayashi (voice by Kunichi Nomura) -- a lover of cats -- takes a sadistic approach to an epidemic of dog flu that turns once faithful companions into health hazards. Totally committed to his own power, Kobayashi refuses to change his mind even when a researcher develops a serum that will cure every flu-carrying pooch.

Although it feels all of a piece, Isle of Dogs is a linguistic mash-up. The abandoned dogs speak English and the Japanese characters speak Japanese (no subtitles). There's also an American exchange student who, of course, speaks English. A reporter for a high school newspaper, she crusades to topple Kobayashi's rule.

The animation is impeccable and creative — from doggie expressions to cityscapes to the forlorn trash heaps where the abandoned dogs roam. You'll also find outstanding voice work from Edward Norton, Bryan Cranston, Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, Greta Gerwig and more.

Cranston’s mangy Chief may be the most distinctive of the dogs. A stray who doesn’t believe in trying to please humans, Chief warns others that he's not afraid to bite.

Sometimes when I watch an animated movie I can’t help trying to visualize the human actor behind the animated character.
Cranston’s voice is unmistakable, but — for the most part — I forgot about who might be doing the voice work and immersed myself in the visual environment Anderson and his team so ably create.

Anderson bows to Japanese film culture — often in humorous ways. At one point, for example, he employs a bit of the score from Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai as a wry commentary on the action.

I wouldn't call Isle of Dogs a kids' movie, although it centers on 12-year-old Atari (Koyu Rankin), a boy who steals a small plane, crashes on Trash Island and winds up helping to rebuild a bridge between dogs and humans.

One question seems unavoidable: Does Anderson’s movie have a seriously deep meaning? Is it an allegory or simply another display of Anderson's eccentricity?

I’m not sure where I stand on the question, an uncertainty about Anderson's work that has bothered me before. But I also find his artistic expressions personal and intriguing, full of small touches that can be as pleasing as the film’s overall design.

Toward the end of the movie, a dog and his new family are served heaping bowls of red meat, something of an apology from the previously abusive humans. Each puppy gets the same food -- only in tiny bowls. I’m not entirely sure why this detail made me smile. Perhaps because it’s emblematic of Anderson's approach, placing irresistible bits of minutiae against backdrops that seem to have been created with something that might be called "cockeyed control."

Three Vietnam veterans take to the road

Richard Linklater's Last Flag Flying , a moderately successful mix of humor, sorrow and the bonds of brotherhood.

In director Richard Linklater's Last Flag Flying, three Vietnam veterans reunite for a sad task. One of them has lost a son in Iraq. The mission: To bury a young Marine.

Two former Marines are played by Bryan Cranston and Laurence Fishburne. Steve Carell 's Larry Shepherd -- nicknamed Doc -- served as medic in the Navy and wound up alongside Cranston and Fishburne's characters in the heat of Vietnam combat.

Last Flag Flying is based on novelist Darryl Ponicsan's sequel to The Last Detail, which was made into a 1973 movie starring Jack Nicholson, Randy Quaid and Otis Young. Ponicsan co-authored the screenplay for Last Flag with Linklater, and the movie has some (but not all) of Last Detail's comic bite.

It's 2003: The movie's principals may have thought that their war-time experiences were safely locked in the vaults of the past, but their journey forces them to come to grips with their war-time behavior as well as with the nature of the sacrifices all young men make when they go off to war.

Low key and steeped in the kind of naturalism Linklater favors, the director's moderately affecting look at the deep-rooted impact of war begins when Doc tracks down Cranston's Sal Nealon, a boisterous fellow who owns a Norfolk, Va., bar where he seems to drink as much as he sells. The two then set out to find Fishburne's Richard Mueller, a tightly wound former Marine who has tried to push the war and his wild youth out of his consciousness. He has become a reverend.

Doc, who was dishonorably discharged from the Navy, is younger than the others and going through a particularly bad patch. Not only has son been killed in action, but he recently lost his wife to cancer. Doc refers to his Bad Conduct Discharge (BCD) as a Better Career Decision, but it's clear that the military made Doc something of a goat. Doc has not had an easy time of it, but somehow has avoided trapping himself behind bars of bitterness.

Questions arise about how Doc's son died. The Marines want to enshrine the young man as a hero, but the details of the young man's death turn out to be more horrific than heroic.

When Doc learns the truth, he refuses to have his son buried in Arlington National Cemetery. Despite the urging of a Marine colonel (Yul Vazquez), Doc won't allow the Marines to propagandize his son's death. He insists on burying the boy in his hometown of Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Military protocol requires that the young man's body be accompanied to its resting place. J. Quinton Johnson plays the young Marine assigned to this grim task: He joins the three older men as they make their way north from Delaware, where they have traveled to pick up the body.

As is the case with any road movie, the personalities of the men emerge as the trip unfolds: Cranston's Sal is happily boorish; Fishburne's Mueller has given up drink and tried to live a life of serenity and prayer, but you get the feeling that his newfound propriety can't entirely protect him from his past. "Doc" proves the quietest of the trio, a man whose soul droops with the weight of grief and regret. Doc found stability and peace in family life -- but, now, even that has been taken from him.

There's plenty of bickering as the men move toward the movie's sad finale, and some of the screenplay's bits feel labored: Sal's attempts to bring his compatriots into the 21st Century by buying them cell phones, for example.

Linklater mutes any political messaging. By the end, he makes it clear that these men aren't interested in honor or even patriotism. They claim a devotion to the Marine Corps, but what they really seem to cherish is their relationship to one another, bonds forged by a shared experience none of them ever will fully digest and which always will threaten to consume them. Still, like the Dude in The Big Lebowski, they abide -- psychic wounds and all.

Wishing 'Trumbo' had been better

Bryan Cranston commands the screen in a bio-pic that's regrettably wooden.

During the Black List period of the late 1940s and 1950s, Hollywood shamed itself, joining a national witch-hunt designed to root out Communists from cultural institutions that presumably were being subverted.

One of the people caught in this maelstrom of chest-thumping, patriotic excess was Dalton Trumbo, the Colorado-bred screenwriter who had written movies such as A Man to Remember (1938), Kitty Foyle (1940) and Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944). Trumbo also wrote Johnny Got His Gun, an acclaimed 1939 antiwar novel which won a National Book Award and which shook me to the core when I read it in high school.

In 1947, Trumbo was subpoenaed to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He was found in contempt of Congress for telling the Committee his political beliefs were none of its business. As a result of his defiance, Trumbo served nearly a year in prison, and was blacklisted by Hollywood studios for the next 13 years.

Desperate to support his family, Trumbo -- part of a group dubbed The Hollywood Ten -- turned out scripts for the King Brothers, schlockmeisters who didn't give a damn about politics.

Trumbo also persuaded other writers to pose as the authors of scripts he wrote. Trumbo's screenplay for Roman Holiday won an Academy Award. Screenwriter Ian McLellan Hunter fronted for Trumbo, and received the Oscar.

It wasn't until Spartacus (1960) that Trumbo's name again appeared on a movie screen, thanks mostly to the courageous insistence of Kirk Douglas, the movie's star.

OK, that's the background.

In the bio-pic Trumbo, Bryan Cranston, an actor of considerable command, plays the title role. Cranston captures the writer's wit, commitment and contradictions. Trumbo was a leftist who liked the trappings of wealth, and made no bones about hungering for recognition.

In a sometimes wooden and prosaic movie, Cranston does the kind of stand-out work that may earn him a best-actor nomination, even if -- at times -- it feels as if he's doing a one-man show on Broadway. In some ways, Trumbo is a one-man show rather than a richly developed movie, but it has its merits.

As the viperous Hedda Hopper, Helen Mirren gives the movie's second best performance. Hopper was a flag-waving right winger, as well as a power hungry gossip peddler who could make or break careers and didn't let those she wrote about forget it.

Director Jay Roach faced a difficult problem in making Trumbo. He's dealing with Hollywood personalities, some of whom are so well known they resist being played by other actors.

Michael Stuhlbarg comes close to capturing Edward G. Robinson, an actor who supported those who were being demonized by HUAC, but who ultimately named names. David James Elliott has the thankless job of portraying John Wayne; he finds the intonations in Wayne's voice, but we've all seen John Wayne and ... well ... you know how the rest of the quote goes.

Dean O'Gorman portrays Kirk Douglas, one of the story's heroes.

Louis C.K. creates a portrait of deep-seated depression as Black Listed writer Arlen Hird, a composite character who never quite understands Trumbo's preoccupations with success. Put another way, Trumbo wasn't exactly a purist when it came to politics.

As the crassly entrepreneurial but fiercely loyal Frank King, John Goodman steals every scene he's in. Diane Lane plays Trumbo's wife, Cleo. Elle Fanning has a nice scene as Niki, Trumbo's oldest daughter, a firebrand in her own right.

Roach's previous efforts include Meet the Parents, Meet the Fockers and Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me, not exactly the best preparation for this kind of material.

Trumbo doesn't fully engage the ideological battle the Hollywood Ten fought or, perhaps, more accurately, the war that was fought against them.

But even this CliffsNotes version has some emotional clout, a testament to the inherent power of the story, to Cranston's charisma and to the fact that Trumbo's suffering was, by any measure, entirely unnecessary.

'Godzilla' stomps into theaters

A monster movie that provides the right kick.

The new Godzilla -- though far superior to Roland Emmerich's 1998 edition -- offers plenty of room for criticism and carping.

Let's get that out of the way first.

-- As an engineer working in a Japanese nuclear plant, Bryan Cranston seems so agitated you half wonder whether his character has been doing some of Walter White's meth.

-- Juliette Binoche is in the movie, but doesn't make it much past the first reel.

-- The movie's human hero (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) seems so generic, he might have wandered in from the set of another action movie.

-- Wisdom? Only if you think the 1954 original can help you unlock the key to successful living. The biggest lesson you can take from Godzilla is an admonition: Don't get crushed.

Problems, yes, but damned if Godzilla isn't full of monumental fun, a major helping of B-movie entertainment that's presented with so much seriousness, it can't possibly be taken seriously.

Credit director Gareth Edwards with understanding B-movie tropes, as well as with a willingness to trash several American cities in a movie that builds (or rather stomps) toward a climactic battle in which Godzilla takes on two hideous-looking creatures known as Massive Unidentified Terrestrial Organisms -- MUTOs for short.

Think of them as skyscraper-sized bugs.

Sure Godzilla could be more careful about where he puts his feet down, but we feel more empathy for the Big Guy than for most of the humans in the film. And let's face it, some of the people are simply there to be squashed, human sacrifices en route to what's bound to be a box office epiphany.

The movie opens in 1999 with Cranston's Joe Brody working in a Japanese nuclear facility that's threatened by increased seismic activity. Disaster hits, and Joe suffers a big loss.

Fifteen years later, Joe -- fueled by grief and obsession -- still lives in Japan. He believes a massive coverup is concealing the true cause of the nuclear meltdown.

Brody's grown son (Taylor-Johnson) -- now a Naval officer -- leaves his wife (Elizabeth Olsen) and young son to travel to Japan. He hopes to help his "nut-case" father who has been arrested for entering the quarantine zone that was ravaged when the nuclear plant blew.

Young Brody soon learns that his father is right in his suspicions.

Edwards (Monsters) doesn't so much tell a story as he hammers together bits of narrative, but he hammers loudly and with resolve, creating a suspenseful atmosphere until he unleashes the wanton destruction that gives the movie its real kick.

Two schools of thought emerge about how to deal with the rampaging monsters. David Straithairn plays an admiral who thinks that the solution may involve luring the creatures out to sea and going nuclear on them.

Ken Watanabe plays a scientist who opposes the military solution. He seems to have a strange concern for Godzilla.

Noisy, senseless and fun, Godzilla saves most of its gargantuan thrills for its finale.

A special nod to Alexander Desplat, whose score ripples through the proceedings like an eerie warning of terrors to come, sometimes sugesting more than the movie's able to deliver.

Not surprisingly, Edwards leaves the door open for a sequel, but he seems to know what's essential about the 60-year-old franchise. He works with enough brio to satisfy genre fans while underplaying grand thematic pronouncements about humanity's fatal arrogance.

That's probably a good thing.

'Argo,' one of the year's best

An entertaining new thriller from Ben Affleck tells a far-fetched but true story.

The new thriller Argo -- impressively directed by Ben Affleck -- brims with fakery, much of it deadly serious.

Affleck perfectly blends a near-satirical take on Hollywood hucksterism with a pulse-pounding thriller about the rescue of six Americans who were hiding in the Canadian ambassador's home in Tehran after the 1979 start of the Iran hostage crisis.

Argo revolves around a plan so bizarre, it almost requires extra suspension of disbelief. But wait. That's not entirely true. Though enhanced for entertainment purposes, Argot tells a true story.

In it, Tony Mendez (Affleck), a skilled CIA agent, poses as a Canadian money man to cook up a scheme in which he'll fake the making of a major Hollywood movie. Mendez will then enter Iran, claiming that he's on a location-scouting mission.

The fake movie -- called Argo -- supposedly requires arid backdrops for its Star Wars-like story. It's also supposed to serve as a cover for the escaping hostages, who'll pretend they're part of the movie's crew.

Lacking any other ideas for rescuing the six Americans, the CIA adopts what it considers "the best bad idea" available.

Skillfully using real footage throughout, Affleck begins with a quick prologue tracing the rise and fall of the Shah and his replacement by Ayatollah Khomeini. This refresher course sets the table for a movie that spans improbable psychic distances: from Washington to Hollywood to Istanbul to Tehran.

Affleck brings frightening power to the moment when Iranian throngs overrun the U.S. embassy, allowing us to experience what it might be like to find ourselves in the midst of a hostile crowd fueled by its idea of righteous anger. The storming of the embassy is as harrowing as some of the Hollywood scenes are amusing.

For the record, the mob held 52 Americans hostage in the trampled U.S. embassy while the six Americans on which the movie focuses made their way to the Canadian ambassador's home.

Affleck receives whip=smart support from John Goodman, as savvy Hollywood make-up artist John Chambers, a specialist in prosthetics, and from Alan Arkin, as the cynical producer of the fake film.

If there's any justice, Arkin's performance as Lester Siegel will earn him an Oscar nomination in the supporting actor category. Is there anyone better at making a wisecrack sound like the unassailable voice of experience?

The movie's other stand-out performance belongs to Bryan Cranston, Mendez's boss at the CIA, a Washington-based agent who must fight his way through various obstacles to provide Mendez with the back-up he needs to make his crazy plan work.

Chris Terrio's screenplay recognizes that people under extreme duress often try to cover their stress with humor. When Siegel says he wants a credible script, he reinforces the point by insisting that if he's going to make a fake movie, it damn well better be a fake hit.

The Hollywood scenes are entirely justified because the success of Mendez's scheme depends on establishing the aura of a credible production. The assumption is that the Iranians will check to see whether Argo qualifies as the real deal. It costs the CIA $15,000 to option the Argo script, which has been languishing in turn-around.

I don't know how much liberty the screenplay takes with real events, but Affleck wisely engineers the movie for maximum suspense, tightening the screws of tension as he goes.

The only performance that gave me any pause was Affleck's. Bearded and sporting 70s length hair, Affleck tends toward unmodulated seriousness. Maybe it makes sense: As the movie's director, he probably didn't want to dominate a story that has lots of moving parts.

I don't think there's false note in Argo until an ending that has Mendez reuniting with his estranged wife. Perhaps Affleck felt the movie needed an epilogue to balance with the prologue that began it.

But considering how much has been accomplished prior to that, why quibble? Argo reminds us of what we should expect from a lot more mainstream movies: terrific stories told with insight and style.