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 found footage subgenre of horror films, now appearing to be completely exhausted, has some new life injected into it thanks to Barry Levinson. The Bay is Levinson’s first real leap into horror (if you don’t consider Sphere to be a horror film) which makes his presence as an outsider work in the film’s favour. The Bay indulges in a few set-ups and cheap scares, but the movie generates most of its fear by showing a horrifying and seemingly plausible scenario.

The story behind The Bay’s footage is that the US government covered up an outbreak that wiped out the town of Claridge, MD in 2009. All cameras and footage related to what happened were confiscated by the government, but now someone has compiled everything together in order to reveal the truth about what happened in Claridge. Narrated by a local news reporter who survived the outbreak we come to learn how the town’s dumping of fertilizer into the local bay helped create a deadly parasite.

As the different sources of video (security footage, home movies, Skype chats, news broadcasts, etc.) are shown throughout, it becomes clear that Levinson is doing a leaner and meaner version of a disaster film. In a conventional disaster film more focus would be put on the characters, but here they’re only used as puzzle pieces that help explain the mystery behind what happened to Claridge.

Levinson, who also shares a story credit here, bases most of the background information in The Bay on real-life scenarios. The mutant isopods that terrorize the town are real (and thankfully not a threat for humans), while the issues of pollution and government incompetence have a basis in reality. While the storyline here is just playing on people’s worst fears, the presentation and background’s familiarity fill The Bay with a dread-inducing “this could happen” feeling. Other found footage films like Paranormal Activity are using the genre to put the extraordinary in a realistic context, but The Bay more effectively takes advantage of the format to heighten the terror behind a plausible-looking scenario.

Viewers expecting shocks and big scares in The Bay will come away disappointed, but its carnivorous parasites will leave some feeling seriously unsettled. Like Jaws did back in the 70s, The Bay will definitely have people feeling a little hesitant to go into the water any time soon.

Sound of My Voice an intelligent slow burning indie drama that somehow fell off many people’s radar despite a relatively warm reception at Sundance. The logical answer would be that it may have been slightly overshadowed by lead Brit Marling’s other indie drama during the same year, Another Earth. It is one of the most captivating opening ten minutes that I have seen in years and it does not lose your attention once during the film.

The beginning of Sound of My Voice starts with an appropriately named title card of “One”. Two characters pull up into a garage with their car with further instructions pending their arrival. A man comes into the garage and pats the man and woman down to make sure they are not carrying any weapons. They are handed a change of clothes and instructed to “be thorough with the soap” as they shower before changing into their white scrubs. The two are then blindfolded before they are loaded into a van with several others heading to a discreet location.

Everyone is gathered in a circle all wearing the same white scrubs in some unknown basement. An older man with long gray haired man and oval glasses introduces the two main characters Peter Aitken (Christopher Denham) and his girlfriend Lorna Michaelson (Nicole Vicius) to the rest of the group. The man explains that Peter and Lorna are in for an unforgettable experience as newcomers but are not permitted to ask questions or make any sudden movements. The man then calls Maggie (Brit Marling) to the room. She slowly strolls in with an oxygen tank in hand.

Maggie goes on to explain her story of how she woke up in a bath tub in a motel one day but is still to this day not sure how she ended up there to begin with. She left the motel only remembering her name and her birthday but nothing else. She had no money or memories so she ended up on the streets until one day the man with the long gray hair, who we first saw in the basement, picked her up off the streets. She also explains that the tattoo of an anchor on her ankle means that she is a traveler and the number 54 next to it represents the year 2054 because that is where she comes from.

In chapter “Two” Peter and Lorna are leaving the cult location and reveal the true purpose of them being there. He explains that he wants to expose her because she is a con-artist who claims to be traveling back in time to save the people she loves. This bleeds into the third chapter that begins with Peter swallowing a transmitter which will record video of Maggie. The footage will be part of the documentary that the two plan to make on cults.

Just as he was about to expose Maggie as the fraud that he thought she was something crazy happened. She seeks him out and begins to describe his past well enough that he angers him before eventually he breaks down into tears. So maybe she is not con-artist he thought she was? Even though he denies later to Lorna that the emotions he showed were faked, it is hard to believe him. The ensuing chapters make it even harder to tell if Peter is continuing with the investigative journalism or if he has actually started to believe in Maggie.

2011 was a breakout year for Brit Marling. This is because not only did she star, co-produce, and co-write Sound of My Voice but also did the same for Another Earth. Both which were considered Sundance hits the same year. In both of these roles, she plays a compelling otherworldly character that is absolutely convincing and powerful.

However, perhaps even more impressive than the fantastic acting, is that the film was done by a first time filmmaker. Zal Batmanglij bypasses many of the pitfalls of similar films with thought-provoking scenes in a seemingly effortless manner. That is because the film does not clutter up the plot; it is simple yet highly effective. These are feats that are often not overcome by first time directors.

Sound of My Voice has the cult concept from Martha Marcy May Marlene and the lo-fi drama feel of Brit Marling’s previous film, Another Earth. As much as I enjoyed both of those films, I found myself mesmerized the whole time during Sound of My Voice and could not wait to see what happened next. If you thought the ending of Another Earth was intriguing, wait to you see this. There is no doubt some will fault the ending and some of the minor hiccups it had along the way but for me the positives vastly exceeded the negatives.

Fox Home Entertainment just gave a street date of October 2nd for Zal Batmanglij’s Sound of My Voice on Blu-ray and DVD. Along with the release date they gave some details on what the special features will contain as well as full specs on the film.

Synopsis:

Brit Marling is “intoxicating” (The Huffington Post) and “stirring” (PEOPLE) in the year’s most talked-about psychological thriller. A filmmaker (Christopher Denham) and his girlfriend (Nicole Vicius) set out to expose the beautiful leader of a cult (Marling), who claims to be from the future. But the more they explore, the more danger they face in this “intricate and taut thriller” (Claudia Puig, USA Today) from writer-actress Marling and writer-director Zal Batmanglij.

Special Features:
DVD:

• The Making of The Sound of My Voice
• Maggie Featurettes
• Theatrical Trailer

BD – all of the above plus:

• The Making of The Sound of My Voice
• Fox Movie Channel Presents: Direct Effect Zal Batmanglij
• Fox Movie Channel Presents: Writer s Draft Brit Marling

Specs:
Sound of My Voice Blu-ray & DVD
Street Date: October 2, 2012
Screen Format: 16:9 (2.35:1)
Audio: English 5.1 DTS-HD-MA
French 5.1 DD
Spanish 5.1 DD
Subtitles: English, French and Spanish
U.S. Rating: R
Total Run Time: 01:53:57 / 01:44:18 (DVD)
Closed Captioned: Yes

After watching the excellent trailer for Sound of My Voice two things came to mind, the first was how much I am looking forward to watching this film. The second was how closely it resembled Martha Marcy May Marlene. The latter is interesting as Fox Searchlight picked up both of these films for distribution.

The film made the Official Selection at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival and stars Brit Marling. Brit Marling was considered a “Sundance standout” in 2011 as she not only starred, co-wrote and co-produced Sound of My Voice but in the same year had the same credentials for Another Earth (which was fantastic). The film also stars Christopher Denham (Shutter Island and Nicole Vicius ((500) Days of Summer).

Sound of My Voice theater release date is: April 27th. You can, however, watch the first 12 minutes of Sound of My Voice on their official website, www.soundofmyvoicemovie.com.

Official trailer for Sound of My Voice: