Argo

There are some folks who try to attend big blockbuster films at TIFF so that they might be able to see celebrities. There are others who stay far away because they know that they will be able to see them in theatres soon thereafter. I just pick films that sound good. If I can't narrow down my picks to the top 10 or whatever magic number of films that I end up seeing that year, I might get rid of the ones that will get wide-release, but it's worked out that I haven't had to in the past couple of years.
I really don't stay up to date on films getting wide release. I might watch ~10 movies within the span of 10 days, twice a year (TIFF and Hot Docs), but I probably average 1 or 2 a year otherwise. I did see a movie in the theatres this summer and saw the trailer for Argo (official website here, trailer here) at that time. I thought it looked intriguing, and obviously one of the most intriguing to me in this year's festival.
Based on a true story, here is part of the description from the TIFF website:
"On November 4, 1979, a group of Islamist militants took control of the U.S. embassy in Tehran and held fifty-two embassy personnel hostage. Six members of the embassy staff managed to escape and secretly took refuge in the Canadian embassy, where they remain in constant danger from the militants’ door-to-door searches. Enter CIA "exfiltration" specialist Tony Mendez, who cooks up a scheme to get the imperilled Americans out of the country. Mendez proposes to enter Iran posing as the producer of a fake Canadian science-fiction film entitled Argo, on the pretense that Iran’s arid rural landscape would make convincing (and cut-rate) extraterrestrial terrain; following the "location scouting," the six Americans will accompany him out of Iran posing as members of the film crew. To put his plan into action, Mendez will need expert advice, which leads him to befriend and recruit veteran Hollywood producer Lester Siegel to the cause. A script is cranked out and the plan is put into action — and once he lands in Iran, Mendez is going to have to play the role of a lifetime."
I thought the film was great. I don't know how true to the real story it was, but that wasn't a priority for me. This could have been a completely fictional story, and I would have been fine with it. I just through the idea of it was really cool and anything to do with hostages or spies is neat-o for me. I liked the characters in the film, I like the action, and I liked the suspense. In fact, I was on the edge of my seat at the climax of the film even though I knew the overall outcome of this story (I'd actually never knew about this incident before seeing the trailer, but thanks to media sources, darn it, I found out more about it.) There were some fantastic one-liners in the film that provided some good comedy relief. As I said the characters were great, and John Goodman and Alan Arkin's characters were especially entertaining.
Ben Affleck, who was the director and played Mendez, was on hand to introduce the film. Shame he didn't stay to do a Q&A. There was another celebrity at the screening. Dustin Hoffman snuck in as Affleck was making his introductions and sat just in front of me. For the first little while, I was a little distracted by this as I was interested in watching Mr. Hoffman's reactions to the film and wondering if he laughed at the same one-liners that I did. I had to control my urge to people-watch because I started missing what was actually happening on the big screen.
Anyway, I thought it was a great film. Very Hollywood, and entertaining. You should watch it. I also thought that it was sweet that in the closing credits, Affleck dedicated the film to his wife and kids.

- picture courtesy of www.tiff.net