The Best Films of 2012: #3

Ben Affleck's "Argo," about the government's top-secret efforts to exfiltrate six American embassy employees from Tehran in 1979, is the rare crowd-pleaser that seems to please every single person in the crowd. (It received an average CinemaScore grade of A+.) Like Affleck's second film, "The Town" (which made my top-ten list in 2010) , it's a consummate entertainment, deeply knowledgeable of its subject matter, smart and focused. Affleck's juggling act - including half a dozen interwoven plot threads and a reported 120+ speaking parts - is worthy of any directing luminary.

Argo

Ben Affleck's "Argo" gets 4 stars the same way Barack Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize a few years ago: for future promise as much as for current accomplishment. To be sure, "Argo" is a terrific movie, a crowd-pleaser that seems to please every single person in the crowd. (It received an average CinemaScore grade of A+). It might well win the Oscar for, inter alia, Best Picture. But it's not perfect.