But, from the start, it is clear that Don will not be an amiable drinking buddy, and that, for him, the great American bar is a haunted and perilous place.
And there'as the question of Michel's family: we see his buddies, amiable, good-hearted boozers, the lot of them, but how about former lovers, or former wives?
And it is Mr. Jobs's buddy, Stephen Wozniak, amiable but sometimes enigmatic, who gets credit as the hacker-genius founder.
Citing Chekhov at this early time in Swanberg's career may be unfair, but an amiable movie like "Drinking Buddies" cries out for the revelations that a great dramatist — or even a talented screenwriter and director working together — can give us.
Citing Chekhov at this early time in Swanberg's career may be unfair, but an amiable movie like "Drinking Buddies" cries out for the revelations that a great dramatist or even a talented screenwriter and director working together can give us.
Most of the former classmates I called last week, some of them Mr. Lazio's old buddies, recalled him as amiable, good at remembering names and not much more.
In a slightly more droll flavour, this also runs through Joe Swanberg's amiable friends-or-lovers romcom Drinking Buddies (Sony, 15), which gives the increasingly promising Olivia Wilde more to do than usual as a feckless brewery owner impinging on her colleague's marriage.
Green Book's (based on truth) story of a worldly, street-wise Italian American chauffeuring a talented black musician on a tour in the Deep South in the sixties only for the two to become best buddies is delivered in an amiable, even comfortable style that it's easy to imagine the older members of the Academy lapping up.
Ettinger can only miss the action now that she is too infirm to make her rounds of amiable, outlawed haunts and buck the odds with buddies.
Mr. Stockman asserts, with considerable evidence, that the economic policy of the country has been determined by an amiable but woefully ill-informed President influenced by a few close California buddies who were more loyal to him than acquainted with the facts.
If you know Mr. Helms only from his sitcom role as Andy Bernard, the amiable, out-of-his-depth manager on "The Office," or as Stu, the henpecked buddy from the hit "Hangover" comedies, you know enough to recognize an intrinsic Ed-Helms-ness in that story.
