Been seeing that White Lotus --- a show that I have never had much interest in --- scene and it is reminding that Sam Rockwell is a cold ass actor. I'm happy that he is floating on the timeline again because he is a very good actor. Here is a guy who can turn a character into something insanely memorable by pure charisma and weird charm. Now, he won the Oscar for Three Billboards Outside Ebbing Missouri and while that movie is sometimes frustrating, I do think it is a good portrayal of anger at social class that is manifesting itself --- or possibly just because of it --- towards hatred of identity groups. Rockwell is very good in it, getting the better of the showy McDormand performance. But, to me, I hated that he won the Oscar portraying such a dodo bird. He had played such cool and interesting characters -- he even becomes a weirdo as Hammer in Iron Man 2 --- and he understood how to be sly and dopey while still maintain a kind of honest mentality that made people want to root for him in every movie. He's better when he isn't pudgy, isn't striving; in a way, he is a comedic actor at best.
Watch Moon, where he plays a lonely astronaut in space. He is also great in Richard Jewell as a sympathetic lawyer. Character actors like Rockwell deserve publicity, especially when they're doing something unheralded.
