Your average, conventional thriller probably wouldn't build its big climactic set-piece around a bunch of people waiting in line at the airport trying to catch a plane, but then Argo most certainly isn't your average, conventional thriller. Instead, Ben Affleck's third feature film as a director is a loving throwback to the political procedurals of the '70s -- think films like All the President's Men and Three Days of the Condor -- where the "action," such as it is, chiefly involves government (or government-adjacent) guys in suits talking, scheming and plotting instead of running around firing off their guns. In fact, the film's central hero, CIA agent Tony Mendez (Affleck, handing himself the starring role as he did in The Town two years ago) never wields a firearm once during the course of the movie, even when he's in the most desperate of circumstances. He's on a mission where stealth matters more than a show of action movie strength.

Laugh it up at this weekend with four indie comedies, including The Babymakers and Celeste and Jesse Forever.

What do you do when you've just directed the film that became the biggest hit of your career and scored you another Oscar? Well, if you're Woody Allen, you take your act on the road once more, trading the rain-soaked streets of Paris after midnight for sun-dappled Rome. The iconic writer/director's forty-second film (stop and take that in for a moment... that's 42 films in almost as many years; respect man, respect) is To Rome, With Love, a quartet of fancifully comic -- and, as the title suggests, romantic -- stories set against the backdrop of Italy's historic, absurdly picturesque capital city.

Male bonding, Gallic style

If superheroes aren't your bag, there's another star-powered ensemble movie opening this weekend that unites a group of screen legends and sends them off on a globe-trotting adventure. In The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Shakespeare in Love director John Madden assembles some of the most popular and beloved veterans of British cinema -- among them Judi Dench, Maggie Smith, Bill Nighy and Tom Wilkinson -- and puts them on a plane bound for Jaipur, India, where their new home, the titular retirement castle, awaits. And just like their costumed counterparts in The Avengers, this squad of heroes begins their mission with a lot of trepidation and mistrust before ultimately learning the value of friendship and the thrill of boldly venturing into unfamiliar territory.

You don't have to be in San Diego to get your geek on.

Wonder if Katniss knows Pencak Silat?

From the website that brought you Rebecca Black, the "Leave Britney alone!" guy and the sneezing baby panda comes an honest-to-blog feature film.

"Noble" is the best word to describe Chris Weitz's new drama A Better Life. It was noble of Weitz to follow up a paycheck gig helming the second chapter in The Twilight Saga by making a low-budget film about a hot-button, socially relevant issue like illegal immigration. Mexican actor Demian Bichir's performance as the film's central character Carlos, a day laborer trying to earn a living for himself and his teenage son on the mean streets of Los Angeles, is also suffused with nobility and stiff-upper-lip suffering. And it's noble of the film's distributor, Summit Entertainment, to release a film like this at the height of the summer movie season, when multiplexes are generally crammed with far less weighty fare that revolve around giant transforming robots or zoo animals that for some reason feel compelled to talk to Kevin James.

While there was a certain amount of beauty to be had in director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's previous outings 21 Grams and Babel, it's hard to find any in Biutiful. Not only is it another real downer of a film, it also takes place entirely in the crowded, dirty slums of Barcelona, Spain, which makes it visually, as well as emotionally, harsh. A few truly beautiful scenes peek through, but for the most part the movie is a series of devastating revelations and creeping dread. But there's plenty of drama to go around the cast of characters, which means it'll probably win the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. (Although Javier Bardem likely won't win Best Actor.) After all, Babel was nominated for Best Picture, and that was a pretty disturbing film. Biutiful isn't as sly with its interconnectedness as Babel, but it's got everything -- poverty, illness, mental illness, the plight of immigrants and death.