exception to The Roth Rule

I have a rule about movies, and since I'm here, I'll be happy to share it with you, kind reader. It's called the Roth Rule. It all started when I noticed that there are some actors that just never seem to disappoint - no matter what the movie is about, and even if it's not in your preferred genre, if that actor has a significant role in the flick, it's usually pretty good. I'm talkin' Tim Roth, Edward Norton, Naomi Watts, Anthony Hopkins, etc... Either they're so skillful that they can buoy a movie up by their sheer genius, or that they somehow manage to choose to work only on films that are really good and turn out well.

Perhaps you see where this is going... I caught a stinker today. Tim Roth in Invincible. Sure, I'll accept that Zishe Breitbart was a hero to Polish Jews ever since his career as a strongman in pre-war Germany and Poland... but for cryin' out loud, the movie sucked. Terribly, terribly. Not a single person other than Roth could act worth a damn. You know how one bad actor can screw a scene up so badly that it pooches the whole movie? Imagine a cast of dozens, screwing it up constantly. Maybe it just shouldn't have been an english-language script. Maybe it just should have been in Polish or German. Then they wouldn't be as crappy on-screen. Nevertheless, you can safely ignore this movie, and I'll start re-constructing the Roth Rule to accomodate outliers. Thanks, and have a nice day.