For a film based upon a dysfunctional family’s struggle across America to enter their daughter into a beauty pageant – Little Miss Sunshine should go down in history as a modern classic; an absolutely wonderful cinematic release. With an outstanding cast, Little Miss Sunshine hit home with an original storyline that delivered humour, real emotions and heartfelt relationships between the characters. By the end of this film you will have laughed and cried, gotten emotionally involved and maybe a little confused – and it’s one of my favourite films.

At the very beginning of the film the family sit down for dinner, Olive (Abigail Breslin) finds out that she has been given a place in this year’s Little Miss Sunshine beauty pageant – she lets out a scream of joy and runs around the house getting things together to take with her. Olive’s mom, Sheryl Hoover (Toni Colette) and her dad, Richard Hoover (Greg Kinnear) argue how they are to get there due to not being able to afford travel expenses. After a heated discussion they finally settle on driving the 1000 miles in their minivan.

During the course of the family’s road trip the family experiences are both laughable and heartfelt, being comedic yet sometimes sad, you begin to fall in love with each character and relate to them on different levels. Little Miss Sunshine focuses on pushing forth the idea of living the American Dream – with Richard trying hard to become a motivational speaker, but failing – ironically, since his speeches are about winning. Olive is striving to become a beauty queen with the help of her WWII veteran, heroin addicted grandfather. Olive’s brother Dwayne (Paul Dano) has taken a vow of silence until he achieves his dream of becoming a RAF pilot and their uncle, Frank (Steve Carell) is being forced to stay with them whilst he recovers having just attempted suicide.

The inspiration of the story came from an article Michael Ardnt (who wrote the film) read in a newspaper, where Arnold Schwarzenegger was quoted speaking to a group of high school students: “If there’s one thing in this world I hate, it’s losers. I despise them” – Ardnt then began to develop the story for Little Miss Sunshine on this principle: “I thought there’s something so wrong with that attitude…I wanted to…attack that idea that in life you’re going up or you’re going down. So to a degree a child beauty pageant is the epitome of the ultimate stupid meaningless competition people put themselves through”.

Dwayne towards the latter part of the film memorably says, “You know what? Fuck beauty contests. Life is one fucking beauty contest after another. School, then college, then work…fuck that. And fuck the Air Force Academy. If I want to fly, I’ll find a way to fly. You do what you love, and fuck the rest.” – a speech that Ardnt will have made sure, made its way into the script in order to emphasise the entire meaning behind the film in a very subtle but obvious way.

Little Miss Sunshine was nominated for several Academy Awards, and came home with Best Original Screenplay for Michael Ardnt and Best Supporting Actor for Alan Arkin. “Grandpa” played by Arkin was well deserving of this award, however all characters played a vital role in the films success, each character being so important to the story and understanding the different relationships between the family.

I love Little Miss Sunshine, it’s a fantastic independent epic that demonstrated not only a shocking realism to dysfunctional family relationships, behaviours and hardships, but demonstrated it in such a way that it wasn’t miserable, it wasn’t depressing – it was moving, smart and very funny.

Ben Affleck’s Argo is a helluva thriller. One of the best Hollywood has released this year. I’ve personally disliked his other directing efforts, not because they were bad, I actually think they are very well made. Gone Baby Gone had me until it’s ridiculous ending and The Town is an engrossing crime melodrama that felt like a blue collar ode to Michael Mann’s much better film Heat. But here Affleck nails it. Everything about Argo is top notch. Roger Ebert has been saying that this is the film to beat for the Best Picture Oscar. While I’m not going to go all in on that bet it’s a safe bet that Argo will nab probably around 6-7 nominations come February.

Ben Affleck stars as Tony Mendez, a CIA agent whose job is to go into risky situations and rescue people. Mendez comes off as a company man. He gives his all to his job, so much so that his wife has left him with their young son. When we meet Mendez he is passed out on his bed after a night of boozing. His phone rings and he is called in to work on an emergency.

His boss played by Bryan Cranston updates him on the situation. The American embassy in Iran has been penetrated by an angry mob and hostages have been taken. But a handful of Americans have escaped and are hiding out at the home of the Canadian representative. The film opens with the embassy siege and Affleck gets his film off to a grueling start. The angry mob chants outside violently, loudly. Everyone inside can feel it coming and you can almost see their hearts beating out of their chests.

So now we have a problem. A few Americans are stuck in a house in the middle of a city with millions of people who would kill them if they were to be found. While a bunch of paper was shredded before everyone evacuated the embassy, the Revolutionary Guard (think the Iranian KGB, kinda) start forcing kids in sweat shops to put together the shredded paper to see information.

Now the Americans have to get out before their pictures are put back together and the RG find out that there are other people missing. You might be wondering why Iranians are mad enough to storm the American embassy. Let me explain. Iran was run by a guy who was not well liked around the globe (especially the U.S.), so they (the U.S.) took him out of power and installed a new leader. He was not well liked in Iran and they basically got rid of him. The ousted leader fled to the U.S. where he was granted asylum. The people of Iran demanded that he be returned so he could stand trial and ultimately be hanged. When their cries went unheard, they protested and eventually stormed the embassy.

The CIA has some emergency meetings on how to get the Americans out. Some of them are straight up laughable. One of them involves the hiding Americans to ride bikes over 300 miles to the Iraqi border. This idea is banking on the idea that they don’t get any flat tires or you know, like dying from exhaustion. Now let’s be honest. Mendez’s idea isn’t exactly great either. Wait, what’s his idea? Well I’m glad you asked. His idea is to make a fake science fiction film that has some exotic location shoots that would require an Iranian backdrop. Each of the hideaways would have a different job whether it’d be the director, screenwriter or camera man. Mendez flies in to Tehran gives them fake identities they are to learn in a day. There is a fantastic sequence where they are touring a crowded market for a location shoot.

Unfortunately, you just can’t fly into Iran with this idea and expect them to buy it. Mendez realizes that he needs some actual Hollywood filmmakers to bankroll this idea and promote this. So he flies off to Los Angeles to talk to filmmakers who would be interested. He happens to know a guy who does make up/fx work for films. He is played by John Goodman and let’s be honest here. This is John fucking Goodman we’re talking about. He is welcome in any movie as far as I’m concerned. He’s great here.

Goodman is essentially a link for Mendez to a producer needed to pass the word around town of this fake movie. That producer is played by Alan Arkin. Arkin is great in the film but seriously, he could do this film in his sleep. Regardless, he and Goodman have some terrific scenes that really let the audience breathe during the really tense sequences in the film. It was only a few years prior that Star Wars set the world aflame and with its success they think a new space epic would be a good film to sell to the Iranian government. After looking for hours they stumble upon the script. That film is Argo.

Argo succeeds for many reasons. First of all, it’s very well made. Affleck nails down the era whether it’d be the clothes, hairstyles and general feeling of the period. Even the old school Warner Brothers logo that the studio rocked in the 1970’s is used and to me that alone put me into the mood the film was trying to get across. Secondly, it’s very well-acted. Other than the aforementioned actors, Affleck casts veteran actors in other supporting roles and all of them are more than up to the challenge. Tate Donovan, Clea DuVall, Rory Cochrane and Christopher Denham are all terrific as four of the Americans hiding out for their lives. And last but not least, it’s just flat out terrific fun. Argo is a two hour film that flies by. While its main intention is to entertain it also sets out to inform. I went to the film with my mom who obviously knew about the Iranian hostage crisis that last 444 days, but had no idea about this little subplot that was taking place at the same time.

The final 45 minutes of Argo is intense. Affleck easily slides from one tense sequence to another, sprinkling in dashes of humor here and there. This is pure Hollywood entertainment we’re talking about. At moments you’ll want to stand up and cheer. After the film finished my mom looked at me and had to catch her breath while telling me she was glad she didn’t have a heart condition. Affleck seems like one of the genuine good guys in Hollywood. Here he has made his best film so far. It also happens to be one of the best mainstream offerings of the year.

The world premiere of Fisher Stevens’ Stand Up Guys will open the 2012 Chicago International Film Festival on Thursday, October 11th. Stand Up Guys is an action comedy about aging con men reuniting for one last night of mayhem. However, one of the friends is being pressured by a mob boss to carry out a request he does not wish to do. The film is loaded with Academy Award winners including; Al Pacino, Christopher Walken and Alan Arkin.

Guests who are scheduled to attend this world premiere;
Al Pacino, Christopher Walken, Alan Arkin, Julianna Margulies, Vanessa Ferlito, Addison Timlin, Fisher Stevens and Tom Rosenberg.

Thursday, October 11th at The Harris Theater, Chicago, IL