Argo: Just go see it, okay?
I saw Argo Friday night with Dan Wells. It comes in at #5 for me for the year. It was entertaining, frightening, educational, thrilling, and emotionally powerful. I loved it.
You may wish to sit towards the back, however, because there's some shaky-cam. Not much, but enough to be unsettling. Dan and I took seats in the very back row because I spotted the jitter during the trailers, and I've found that if you're in the back it's easier to process what's happening.
I also encourage you to read up on the Iran hostage crisis and the Canadian Caper. I've linked to Wikipedia here, but there are plenty of other sources available to you. The unrest in that region has a long history, and most of us don't know very much of it. The film focuses on the role of the CIA, and especially on the efforts of Tony Mendez, at the expense of properly crediting Canadian participation, but that's okay because for almost 20 years we thought it was Canadians all the way down. It averages out.
The point, then, is that it's wise to read some actual history after seeing a movie that makes history interesting. And I suppose that's why I think Argo is such an important film: it makes history interesting, and we need more of that.