30 Minutes or Less

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day.

 

"Zombieland 2"
or
"30 Brain-cells or Less"

30 Minutes or Less is the latest film from director Ruben Fleischer, who had previously been in charge of the movie Zombieland (which was fresh, funny and smart) and I think that in the current movie climate, as damp and soggy (and derivative) as it is, that we might want to re-think the auteur theory—the critical bon mot from the 1950's era Cahiers du Cinema crowd that the director is the true "author" of a film, despite it, by necessity, being a collaborative medium. You can make a case for it with some—Hitchcock, Kubrick, Welles, Hawks, Ford, Capra, Leone, Fellini, Scorsese, Kurosawa, Spielberg, Woo, Malick...Michael Bay, Lars von Trier (hmmm). 

Well, for good or ill you can make the case.

Mr. Mason, your witness. "Call to the stand, Ruben Fleischer..." (and the prosecution then puts its head in its hands).

"Move to dismiss..."

As I said, I liked Zombieland (which, although it had moments when it dragged, was a hilarious take on zombie-movie traditions). But, I despise to the core of my critical thinking 30 Minutes or Less. And it shakes my faith, because the guy who brought so much to the former brings nothing to the latter, not even the smarts to know when something's not working and, in so realizing, makes the attempt to change it. That's what direction is all about, isn't it? There are the occasional stylistic flourishes—liked the pan up from headlights of both the protagonists and antagonists linking the two, and a fire-flash of seriousness there towards the end—but, for goodness sake, scene after scene of this nightmare falls as flat as a two hours old pizza (thin crust), bereft of story sense or any humor, other than a chain-link of easy crudities and a nasty streak of hooting at the flailing of the morons on display.

The plot—such as it is—involves slacker Nick (Jesse Eisenberg, looking a bit lost but doing so at 90 mph), a pizza-delivery boy, who, despite driving like a maniac, seems incapable of delivering a pizza on time.  He crosses paths with two even slacker bone-heads (Danny McBride, Nick Swardson—evidently the next big star of terrible films), who claim to be entrepreneurs—although they seem to have trouble pronouncing the word—even though they have no business sense, no ideas on how to make money—other than cleaning the pool of the lottery-winner-father of the former (Fred Ward, you should be ashamed), and could be considered troglodytes if only they had a hint of hunter-gatherer skills.

They decide to raise $100 grand to hire a hit-man (Michael Peña) to kill off said father—their only means of support—by robbing a bank, or rather forcing someone else to rob a bank by attaching a time-bomb to them, the not-agreed-to heist to be completed before bomb and bearer go boom. At least, their characterizations are consistent—they don't want to take responsibility for anything or for doing anything. They should probably re-think starting a tanning business and going into politics.

This is where Nick comes in. He delivers a pizza to the slackers, they drug him and attach the bomb while he's "out." In a panic, he must (for once) be on time, or he's dead. He recruits his pal Chet (Aziz Ansari) to help in the robbery, but, even though they get away with the money, it's a botch-job (no doubt inspired by the making of this picture), then comes the inevitable complications over the money hand-off and a resolution of sorts...lots of explosions that we are to believe people survive, as if this were some kind of Road-Runner cartoon (except those are entertaining).

The whole thing has a slap-dash feel to it, with a lot of ad-libbing between McBride and Swarsdon that comes off as "'Off'-Night at the Improv." The thing is totally devoid of wit and is just a string of sketch comedy riffs held together by the robbery plot. It's a movie best seen drunk or stoned or sleeping. After bearing with the thing for 45 minutes, I chose the latter.

Here's the thing—a variation on this really happened: On August 28th, 2003, a bank in Erie Pennsylvania was robbed by Brian Douglas Wells, a pizza delivery man, who was abducted and a bomb placed around his neck. Wells pleaded with everyone during the bank heist that he was doing it against his will and begged to get the bomb off him. Unfortunately for Wells, the bomb squad showed up four minutes after the device exploded, killing him instantly. Now, just imagine the brainstoming session between the script-writers where someone relates this horrible crime (it was attempted a couple weeks ago in Australia, as well) and said "This would make a great comedy!" ("Laugh? I thought I'd die!")

According to Wikipedia's entry on the movie, the scriptwriters, Michael Diliberti—his first screenplay after being an assistant to producer Scott Rudin—and Matthew Sullivan claim that they were only "vaguely aware" of it. "Vaguely aware" are the perfect words, I think. It seems that was the state in which the whole movie was developed and made. It's a bad idea for a movie, badly made. And now, in a moment of justice, Fleischer, Diliberti and Sullivan have their own "bomb" tied around their necks.

And they're going to have to carry it around for a very long time.

Your Highness

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day. And I remember this one distinctly because it's one of those comedies that didn't make me laugh much, but, instead, only filled with me a great resentment for whatever hack studio executive green-lit this mess. I'm usually charitable to movies because they are the work and coordination of many people and only some can achieve some sort of magic greatness. But, I can't even be charitable about this one. This crap-fest was a waste of everyone's time...but evidently not their talent.

Written at the time of the film's regrettable release.

 

"Du-uh..."

 or   

"Natalie Portman's Post-Oscar Slump, Part 1"

I've needed a laugh lately. I've been second-and third-guessing myself, not sure which way to go on all sorts of matters. And after seeing two movies, good and bad, in which anyone can be tread upon by the Government (The Conspirator and this Saturday's "Take Out the Trash" entry*), I needed something light, something frothy, something not Hanna or The Lincoln Lawyer.

 

I needed a comedy, dammit! After playing pin-ball in my head for a week and a half, I wanted a new thought to tilt me out of my doldrums. It would be appropriate, too, as every scene we've looked at Sundays of this April Fools Month has been a comedy (this week will be no exception), so a comedy might be just the thing to kick my torpor in the ass, or at least make it slip on a banana peel. 

 

Wish I'd found one, because this isn't it.

Your Highness, in fact, makes me wish I was living in a different era—not the one depicted in the film, of course, but also not in a time when such a movie, with big stars (every Briton who isn't in the "Harry Potter" series, like Charles Dance and Damian Lewis), sumptuous locales and elaborate costuming can be so sloppily put-together that one gets the impression that at every stage the film-makers said "Eh...good enough" and moved on. 

I noticed myself laughing exactly twice, and longing for something—anything—to be half-way clever or even half-way executed.* I like my comedy to have a brain in its head, and something to say besides what could shock your grandmother. Despite the cast, this one has so little going for it, you start to worry that at least the cast were well compensated. Because it couldn't have been for love.

I'm a fan of James Franco, Natalie Portman and Zooey Deschanel, but why they should play second-fiddle to Danny McBride (who's usually lousy...Land of the Lost...and who barely registered as the reluctant groom in Up in the Air) is beyond me. Sure, Franco probably owes director David Gordon Green for his role in Pineapple Express (which I haven't seen, but have heard good things about), but he seems a bit lost in this, although gamely appearing cluelessly cheery throughout.

Borrowing heavily from every fantasy-adventure movie from the last 20 years (and liberally from Star Wars—their take on Yoda is particularly nasty, and they have a clockwork bird-familiar after the original Clash of the Titans), Highness tells the story of the sons of King Tallious (Dance) and his two sons—the heir to the throne, Fabious (Franco), and the ne'er-do-well younger Thadeous (McBride) who would appear to be "Your Lowness." Fabious' bride Belladonna (Deschanel) is kidnapped by the evil sorcerer Leezar (Justin Theroux, who co-wrote Tropic Thunder, another high-concept low-result comedy) for his own nefarious plans. Fabious recruits Thadeous to go on the search for Lezar, despite the fact that the younger Prince can't fight, doesn't travel well, and is in all things incompetent. Plus, he's the "troop griper/whiner." Good planning. Dick jokes ensue.

Between the puerile humor there are some action sequences, but Green has a hard time deciding whether he's playing them for laughs or for jolts. Not that it matters, as they succeed in neither, not even in the way that competent directors can achieve both or even one. And, although things are accomplished, nobody really learns anything so character arcs are as flat as a crushed pixie (the only clever idea I saw in the whole thing).

But, one thing Your Highness did accomplish: I had no second thoughts about it.

Maybe Hanna would have had more laughs.***

"I just won an an Oscar. You want me to what?"

* A complete execution...of me...was what I wanted after seeing this movie!  One thing that is mentioned in all the write-ups I've seen is that the crew went into production with  only a story and everything was ad-libbed on-set.  Really, they shouldn't be boasting about that. Oh...and the film I hinted at for the Saturday "Take Out the Trash" candidate that week was the latest version of Atlas Shrugged (Part 1).

 ** Okay, okay. I dump on Danny McBride—or Danny R. McBride, as he's calling himself these days—a lot. Because I don't see the talent. I don't find him funny, and mostly find him a little desperate. But...he was okay in Up in the Air. And he was superb in Alien: Covenant. When the man is firing on all thrusters—as he had to do in the "Alien" movie—he can be really good. (Here's what I wrote about him then—"I have to confess: while one shouldn't walk into movies with prior expectations, I was really looking forward to a scene where Danny McBride gets offed by one of the xenomorphs—I rarely have seen McBride in anything where I found him with an ounce of talent or charm, he's one of those few actors I actively don't like. But, here, he's terrific, taking an under-written part and bringing a lot of good choices and subtle nuances to the role. I'm now a fan.")

*** It didn't.

Tropic Thunder

Written at the time of the film's release...

And, traditionally, Saturday is "Take Out the Trash" Day...

"Nobody Goes Full-Retard" 

There's a good idea in Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder, a comic story about a trio of self-indulgent actors making a Viet-Nam era war film. By a Machiavellian director's conceit, they end up abandoned in a jungle pursued by drug traffickers, with nothing but their persona's to protect them.* The film tosses in more inside-Hollywood jokes than a Scary Movie installment, and some of them turn out to be actually funny. 

The trouble is the film itself is top-lined by self-indulgent actors all vying for screen-time to see how broadly they can play their parts. It's meant to be satire, and it's plenty satirical, as long as Stiller, Robert Downey, Jack Black and Tom Cruise are making fun of the Hollywood excesses of...other actors.** But one is reminded of a less-disciplined, unfunny version of It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World in the broadness of the playing, and heavy-handedness with which its presented. Imagine Dr. Strangelove if every performance had the wing-nut intensity of George C. Scott's.

Tropic Thunder brays and screeches constantly, it's soundtrack thudding with an annoying loudness for scenes even taking place in the quiet of night. There might have been some worry on the studio's part about letting the movie breathe, or fear that the pace might slacken. All well and semi-good. But it gives the film the light and airy feeling of a train barreling into a brick wall. And the frenetic style and the frequent unintelligibility of the actors makes it a frustrating movie-going experience. 

Still, there are moments: the movie starts with a commercial and previews for films featuring the characters in the film, and they are inspired little mini-movies that skewer trailer-style marketing, as well as Hollywood hype. None too subtle, but they're mercifully short and focused. Then there's the performance of Matthew McConaughey, as the distracted agent of Stiller's Tugg Speedman, a breezy graceful performance that's funny and relaxed, but just as nuanced as the other, more aggressive performances.

 

At the opposite end of the scale is Cruise's studio-headcase Les Grossman. Made up with a balding pate and fat-suit, it's played with a giddily vulgar intensity that's pure hyper-Cruise; one wonders if Tom can play a real human being anymore, or for that, even recognize one. Still, it's quite the artery-popping performance. 

But ultimately one is left with a bunch of absurdist little off-ramps that go no where, as in the dramatic send-up typical of the testosterone/weeper when Tugg implores Lazarus, "You tell the world what happened here!"

A puzzled look passes over Lazarus' face: "What happened here?" 

"I don't know" is the reply. 

I found myself laughing at the vacuousness of the exchange, but now, in retrospect, I regret it. Maybe I was desperate for a laugh at that point.

At one point Speedman and Lazarus are discussing acting techniques, and the former brings up a disastrous attempt at a feel-good Oscar-bait film playing a disabled person. "Everybody knows you don't go full-retard," says Lazarus. "Autistic, yes. Imbecilic, yes. Full-retard, no."

And yet they made this movie, anyway.

 

* What's really funny about the script is the cribbing of the making of Apocalypse Now. Back in the early stages of Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope film factory, the plan was for screenwriter John Milius and director George Lucas to make the film "guerrilla-style" by actually dropping the actors and a skeleton crew in Viet-Nam to make the movie. Today, Lucas admits the idea was crazy. Milius still imagines it as a lost opportunity for adventure.

** It's pretty obvious who is being made fun of here: Stiller makes a wicked stab at Cruise mannerisms, Downey is tweaking Russell Crowe and heavy-method actors--his Aussie Kirk Lazarus undergoes treatments to turn his skin black and never breaks character from a dialect straight out of Amos n' Andy, and Jack Black is one of the long line of overweight, drug-addicted comedians on a short fuse. And though Cruise has cause to lampoon Summer Redstone, his movie mogul is more in the Weinstein mode (and is supposedly based on Stiller's production partner Stuart Cornfeld). 

 

Wilhelm Alert: @ 2:25 into the film proper (if you can call it that)

Up in the Air

The Economy and how it grinds up people has been on my mind of late. Here are some movies I've written about in that subject matter. 

Written at the time of the film's release.

"Passing Over"

Down in the lower right hand corner of this review (and every review on BXC) there's a space for meta-data to help readers find similar personnel, year of release, director, major stars—basically general stuff.

But I also like to put the genre of where the film would fit, say, at the video store—nothing too specific. Jason Reitman's new film Up in the Air is the first one to have me stumped. I lean towards "drama," but it's too clever and funny to meet that description. It's not a "comedy" as it deals with pain and contemporary issues that most comedies (most modern comedies, at least) steer clear of—although it's tempting to say that it's a "Judd Apatow comedy" for adults, taking on his basic "growing up" arc, but with a more mature, melancholy overtone. Yet it made me laugh out loud fairly regularly. And it made me think of what a sorry mess we're in.

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a corporate hit-man for hire. His company (run by a tight-smiled cut-throat Jason Bateman) provides a termination service for struggling companies. Bingham flies to the home-offices and fires the people the weasley exec's are too cowardly to break the news to face-to-face. And business is booming.

"This is the biggest financial melt-down in our nation's history" crows Bateman's CEO. "This is our moment." And to make the most of it, he's hired a new 23 year old tyro named Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick, who gets perpetually lost in the lunch-room in the "Twilight" movies*), who hopes to streamline the down-sizing process by doing it over the internet, rather than in person.

This throws the well-managed world of Bingham into a tizzy. No more frequent flier miles which he collects like office-absconded paper-clips. No more stipends and luxury cars for hire, and platinum service lounges. He'll be flying coach rather than first-class. Worse than that, he'll be stuck in a cubicle going nowhere, considerably worse than coach.

Not only will he have to get his own drinks, he may have to get a life. Bingham is in a groove, as personal and as transitory as the swipe of a card-reader. He is constantly between Point A and Point B and prides himself on finding the most efficient route. His life is reduced to a minimum of baggage—carry-on's with wheels that don't squeak, a packing ritual as choreographed as a Fosse number down to the split-second, and little contact with family. He knows the airport routine cold. And as a sideline, he gives lectures on travelling efficiently in the air and in life. "Our attachments weigh us down," he intones to his conference rooms of drones. "The slower we move, the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. We are not monogamous swans. We are sharks."

Clooney's in full smug mode—a variation of his divorce attorney Miles Massey from Intolerable Cruelty played straight—he practically marches to the beat of "Come Fly With Me" and his smile is as practiced and measured as his patter...with everyone, business associates and family. His character has a part to play and when the show's over, it's "me" time, like the "James Bond" fantasy of living the high life while doing dirty jobs. Everything is first-class and preferred customer, his one goal being a targeted accumulation of miles over a life-time—his own personal best. He has an apartment, but he's never in it and it has the same empty utilitarian ambiance of a Ramada Suite. He's the personification of "fly-by-night" in slip-off shoes.

So are his relationships, such as they are. At the same time that he is forced to show Natalie "the ropes" of the "down-sizing" business, he's established a "ships that pass in the night" fling with fellow traveller Alex Goran (Vera Farmiga, finally getting a role that has more heft than "girlfriend"). Natalie, who probably has a Power-Point presentation for how her life is going to go ("I should be driving an Explorer by 23"), is horrified at the casualness of it all. She's just out of the starting blocks and doesn't know the pit-falls of the track ahead, with all the confidence and brashness of someone who doesn't know what she doesn't know, and how theory reacts when it collides with reality. It's a crash-course in transitioning, on the job and in real life, and the two veterans try to bring the kid down easy—at least to get her to remember to lock her wheels.

There'll I'll leave it, for to tell too much will ruin it. But I admire any movie that acknowledges the mature adult, that attempts to show that a life is segmented, complicated and compromised, where dreams could come true, but mostly don't, where decency is its own reward and the idea of "soul-mates" is a lot of hooey. A lot of hooey to sell soap.

And movies.

Jason Reitman grew up in movies—his father is Ivan Reitman—and with his first three films (the others being Thank You for Smoking and Juno) he has shown himself all too willing to throw sabo's into the gears of the Hollywood Dream Factory,** making contemporary movies of stylish form about tough choices and compromised principles in today's America, while still keeping them highly entertaining and unpretentious. One hopes he can sustain that promise and not flirt with issues of the elite, as so many of his peers have in the past, and buy into the fairy tale myth of mainstream Hollywood.

One hopes he can keep his feet on the ground.

* Kendrick is great, no doubt about it, but one hears a whine of feed-back in the false amplification of her performance. It is nuanced and studied, alright, and just a tinge robotic. The joy in the performance is watching the gears seize, the plugs mis-fire, and the LED's in her eyes dim. It's like watching a puppet turn into a real live girl. But she doesn't blow the other stars away, or "steal the movie." There's just a whiff of Dream Factory hype in this talk. As long as it stays in the publicity and stays off the screen, I'm all for it.

** If you do want an unequivocal happy ending and an example of dreams coming true, stay to the end of the movie. Reitman is a very generous man. And the song manages to perfectly distill the movie.

Alien: Covenant

The Horrifying Hybrid
or
I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir.
The what?
The duality of man. The Jungian thing, sir.
Whose side are you on, son?

Ridley Scott is a really frustrating director (for me, one should reiterate). He is a master of the image. Think of a movie of his and some image will pop into your mind that is so beyond the norm of what has gone before that it takes your breath away. Below are a bunch of screen-captures of various Scott movies.* None of them have movie-star's faces in them, they're scattered throughout Scott's filmography (and thus, were achieved either photo-chemically or by CGI and, amazingly, it doesn't make a difference), but if you've seen these films, you can identify which of Scott's films they are from, just from the indelibility of the image. 

Take a look:

Beautiful. Amazingly composed, with a painterly color pallette, and exquisite in its detail. Artistic.

It's just too bad some of them are really bad movies. Gorgeous, sure. But bad.

And you're never sure what you're going to get with a Ridley Scott movie; it might be beautiful to look at, but also completely lunk-headed, insufferable, or botched, whether by studio interference (Blade Runner and Legend) or by Scott's way of over- or under-thinking his movies, so that he forgets what they're actually about in the process. It's why Ridley Scott is a well-regarded director, but he's not in the pantheon of innovators or "great" directors. He may make great looking art, but is not considered an artist pushing the art-form forward, sort of a Thomas Kincade of directors.

So, here's Alien: Covenant, Scott's second sequel to his 1979 Alien, his sequel (of a sorts) to 2012's Prometheus, and a return to form of what the series is—not speculative fiction as Prometheus lurched towards, but back to horror, as in the original.**  

After a brief scene between the android David (Michael Fassbender again) and his manufacturer's CEO Peter Weyland (Guy Pearce again) where they discuss "the big question" (where do we come from?), we jump forward in time (past Prometheus, time-wise, by ten years, to 2104) to the good ship Covenant, a colony spaceship tasked with establishing an outpost on a distant planet that has been surveyed from Earth, Origae-6. The ship is tended by its onboard computer, "Mother" and a lone android, Walter (Michael Fassbender...again), who oversees the automated systems*** keeping the cryo-sleeping crew and colonists, as well as a couple thousand embryo's to, I don't know, "seed" the planet (first thing they need to build on this planet is an orphanage!).

The crew of The Covenant: don't get too attached to any of them...

The ship is damaged in an ion storm (caused, presumably, by the meteor shower that damaged the Avalon from Passengers, six months earlier)**** which wakes up the crew before their appointed time. The captain of the vessel, Branson (an unbilled and only briefly seen James Franco) is killed in the resuscitation, leaving the ill-prepared First Mate Oram (Billy Crudup) as captain, and Branson's widow, terraforming expert Daniels (Katherine Waterston) grieving and alone. After making repairs to the ship, the pilot Tennessee (Danny McBride*****) receives a weird ghostly transmission in his helmet communicator that interferes with him getting back to the ship. Analysis of the signal shows it coming from a relatively nearby planet with Earth-like conditions. In a weird moment of "the-only-reason-to-do-this-is-to-keep-the-movie-going," the usually careful captain decides to check it out, rather than continue on the prescribed mission to the original destination.

Once in orbit, a landing party descends to the surface and they find an idyllic, if dramatic landscape of flora, but no fauna. Daniels remarks that there is no sound—no birds, no animals, nothing. To any rational person that would make one think that maybe, because they're the only life detectable on the planet, they should maybe get those thrusters warmed up and get out of there, but, no.

Recently, I heard some wag say that it doesn't matter what the first thing you say is important, but it will get really interesting if the second thing you say is  "...and then people began to die." Well, after some exploration of the planet and tromping around as humans do so delicately, that's exactly what happens—people begin to die. And they die in spectacular fashion, hatching those critters that we've come to expect. And then, because it needs to, their lander blows up.

So, after everybody's trapped on the surface with a couple rampaging beasties skittering through the high grass and their communication cut off from the main ship, they're rescued by a familiar face—it's the android David, who's been living on the planet for ten years after the crashing of the ship from Prometheus carrying him and Dr. Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) in their quest to find the planet of the Engineers, whose little weapons experiment facility they found in the previous movie. David takes them to his hideout, while they figure out how to contact the Covenant and get out of there.

Really, that's all you need to know if you want a spoiler-free review, but, any viewing of the previous Alien films tells you exactly what will probably happen. It's familiar killing grounds in Alien: Covenant, it's just the way that they occur that makes them unique. Then, there's the added wrinkle that we have two androids in the series, David and Walter (Fassbenders, both) who are interacting with each other: David, with his Lawrence of Arabia fetish and genteel British accent and perverse curiosity, and Walter, whose accent is very American and is a bit of a neophyte...for an android, that is.

So, expect a lot of the expected in Alien: Covenant. That Scott abandoned the "Paradise Lost" project (albeit mentioning events briefly in flashback) and went back to "formula" is a bit of a disappointment. That he has made a hybrid film, borrowing liberally from the James Cameron episode and from his own Blade Runner (even to the admiration, even preference, that he showed for the synthetics rather than the humans involved) is also a bit of a downer, calling back elements from those films rather than offering something more challenging to the audience. One wishes there were some hope for the series going on (Scott is saying that he'll make two, no, three more sequels before we get to the original's time-line), but, really, there's no place for the series to go except to endlessly re-generate the same scenario in a nihilistic fashion.

That leaves me rather bugged.


* They are (in order): Alien (1979), The Counselor (2013), Legend (1985), Black Rain (1989), The Duellists (1977), Gladiator (2000), Blade Runner (1982), Thelma & Louise (1991), White Squall (1996), The Duellists, Prometheus (2012), 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), Gladiator, The Martian (2015), Blade Runner, The Duellists, Black Rain, Thelma & Louise, Legend, Gladiator.

** Scott originally wanted this to be a direct sequel to Prometheus, entitled "Alien: Paradise Lost", but when Prometheus proved divisive among the populace, he chucked that notion, handling the plot components in flash-backs (and internet-only sneak-peeks), and went with something a bit more like the original. Why Scott came back to Alien is a question in itself. The man's 80 years old now and perhaps he tired of working on things like The Counselor and Exodus: Gods and Kings that flop at the box-office and went the George Lucas route of going with "what works."

*** There would appear to be gravity and life-support on a ship where everybody human is in cryo-sleep, presumably to protect the very resources that are being squandered on one non-breathing android. Why?

**** And that wouldn't be as far-fetched a coincidence as some of the ones in the Alien series where the tag-line should be "In space, everybody runs into each other..."

***** I have to confess: while one shouldn't walk into movies with prior expectations, I was really looking forward to a scene where Danny McBride gets offed by one of the xenomorphs—I rarely have seen McBride in anything where I found him with an ounce of talent or charm, he's one of those few actors I actively don't like. But, here, he's terrific, taking an under-written part and bringing a lot of good choices and subtle nuances to the role. I'm now a fan.