Fargo - F =

This weekend I watched Argo (2012).

It's been a good three years since this movie came out, just under the five year retrospective period that has been floated for looking at critically acclaimed films for whether they hold up as important films. This is an idea to avoid giving out best picture Oscars for movies like Crash winning over Brokeback Mountain, or the English Patient winning over Fargo. Both Crash and the English Patient kind of disappeared from the zeitgeist while Brokeback Mountain and Fargo had greater social and artistic impacts.

Argo famously was not nominated in the best director category but won the Best Picture award. Oddly, this film holds up well with some of the other nominees while some of the greater Oscar darlings Zero Dark Thirty, Lincoln, and Life of Pi have quickly faded into being forgotten.

After three years Argo still holds up as an entertaining movie. It's actually very close to being a comedy and the cast was as deep as any other movie of 2012 even as the house guest actors are more on the obscure side of casting.

If it wasn't based on a true story it would be bizarre. I realized about half way through that it's almost the same plot as the Interview with Seth Rogen. The plot of The Interview is to get Americans into a forbidden country under the guise of show business to pull off a major spy plot of international ramifications. The Interview just has more killing and Lord of the Rings jokes and allusions. More than one finger is lost in the journey of the two friends into North Korea compared to Mount Doom.

Letterboxd review.