This week sees the North American premiere of
Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, co-directed by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, and starring Tina Fey as a journalist in Afghanistan. In
his review, Peter Martin says the film is "difficult to categorize yet enjoyable to experience and distinctive in its approach to wartime humor".
And it has Alfred Molina in it as an Afghan government official. One of the best supporting character actors out there, Alfred Molina has a selection of standard settings which have made him a reliable pick for any background character. Loathsome villain? Check. Goofy neighbour? Check. Lovable uncle? Check. Exasperated scientist? Check.
But here's the thing: while he is generally great as those (often stealing a scene or two), whenever he gets the true spotlight fully on him in a lead role he proves to be even better than that.
So once again I'm going to use a gallery of pictures of one of my favourite thespians to make a quiz. And because he's been in just about everything in the past 35 years, we'll make it a big quiz with 18 pictures! Click through the images, and guess which movies or shows they're from. No competition, no prizes, just for fun, try to see how far you get without using IMDb!
And I'll post the answers next Thursday, or earlier if someone gets all of them right...
And here he is as the jovial Ali Massoud Sadiq, either teaching Tina Fey's Kim Baker to shoot or trying to survive her.
This one doesn't count yet for the quiz, but all others do, so please browse through the gallery: click on the edge of the picture to get the next one, and see how many of them all you can identify!
And we begin, with quiz picture number one:
Quiz picture number three:
Quiz picture number four:
Quiz picture number five:
Quiz picture number seven:
Quiz picture number eight:
Quiz picture number nine:
Quiz picture number eleven:
Quiz picture number twelve:
Quiz picture number thirteen:
Quiz picture number fourteen:
Quiz picture number fifteen:
Quiz picture number sixteen:
Quiz picture number seventeen:
And finally: quiz picture number eighteen!