Today we celebrate Warwick Davis’ 45th birthday! Anyone who considers themselves a proper fan of Fantasy and Sci-Fi knows that we owe many of our most beloved characters to the endearing talent of this charming man.

Davis has played titular roles in some of the most famous movie and television series of our time. He has left an indelible mark in pop culture and cinematic history. With a career spanning 32 years, let’s give this man his due today as he celebrates being 45! In case we’re ever in doubt about just how little we’ve accomplished in our lives, we have only to look to him to confirm it.

And with that, here are some fun facts about Warwick Davis to shed some light on just how incredible a life can be in the short span of 45 years:

#1. He started playing the Ewok, Wicket, (beginning with Star Wars: Return of the Jedi) when he was just 11 years old. Originally cast as an extra, he moved up in the world when the actor previously planned to play Wicket fell ill.

#2. He must have made quite an impression on George Lucas who wrote this next movie with Davis in mind for the leading role. Perhaps a bit overshadowed by Val Kilmer’s flamboyantly delightful Madmartigan, Warwick Davis played the title character of that unforgettable and courageous Nelwyn in Willow.

#3. Harry Potter spotlighted the talents of almost every well known contemporary British actor and Davis was no exception. He played both Professor Filius Flitwick as well as Griphook.

#4. One of Jennifer Aniston’s first leading men, Warwick (pronounced Warrick) haunted us as that horrifying fantastical menace, Leprechaun. Six times.

#5. He played Nikabrik in Disney’s The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. (He had played Reepicheep in the BBC version in 1989).

#6. Perhaps the character everyone most looked forward to in Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, Marvin the Paranoid Android, was brought to life in 2005 by Davis, at least physically (the voice was provided by Alan Rickman).

#7. He was a part of the Goblin Corps in Jim Henson’s Labyrinth.

#8. In 2013, he starred in an episode of Doctor Who opposite the Eleventh Doctor, Matt Smith.

#9. Remember that fantasy TV mini-series, The Tenth Kingdom, that tugged at our adolescent heartstrings in the year 2000? He played Acorn, the Dwarf!

#10. Has both a daughter and a son with his wife, Samantha. His son’s name? Harrison.

#11. In 2011, he published his Autobiography, “Size Matters Not: The Extraordinary Life and Career of Warwick Davis”. It’s available to order on Amazon. In pretty much every format you could want.

We are in awe of your life, Mr. Davis! Have a wonderful Birthday!

When a movie about chronic pain so embodies its subject matter that it becomes a pain in the ass to watch itself, it’s got to offer something more to prove its artistic worth; otherwise, it’s just a misery simulator. The only “something more” Cake offers is a tedious mystery thread. We follow Claire (Jennifer Aniston), a divorced lawyer with a scarred-up body and face who we watch drink, pop pills (as she drinks), take naps (after she drinks), treat people like shit, moan a lot, and saunter around her expensive L.A. home like a zombie. By gathering clues we discover how she got her scars, why she suffers from such debilitating pain, why she’s such a bitch, and how in the hell her friends can tolerate her self-involved bullshit. Piecing together the tragic history behind Claire’s scars is a chore; Memento this is not.

The most likely reason you’ve heard about Cake is because Aniston’s performance garnered her a Golden Globes nomination and some peppered critical praise. There’s been a fascination with watching our prettiest actors looking as unflattering as possible (i.e. like real people–gasp!) that’s been growing steadily for the past couple of decades, and the inclination may be to lump Aniston in with the likes of other “go ugly” alumni like Charlize Theron (Monster), Halle Berry (Monster’s Ball), and Nicole Kidman (The Hours). But I have no interest in penalizing her for this correlation, nor do I find the juxtaposition of real-life starlets stripped of their glamour illuminative or poignant. Bottom line: Aniston’s performance is really, really good. It’s lived-in, believable, unadorned, and at times moving. The effort is there, but what ultimately stifles her is the sleepy, flat-lined script that perpetually spins its wheels.

At first Claire seems like a relatable protag, even a funny one. In the middle of a chronic pain support group (she looks in agony just sitting there) she incisively undresses the group’s be-one-with-your-emotions phoniness when asked about Nina (Anna Kendrick), one of the group’s members who killed herself by jumping off a freeway overpass. She talks to Nina’s ghost sometimes, which through eye-rolling contrivance leads her to Roy (Sam Worthington), her dead Nina’s husband. Unlike her studly gardener who she bangs on occasion, Claire finds a sentimental commonality with Roy.

But the true life raft keeping the emotionally shipwrecked Claire from drowning (she literally tries to drown herself) is her housekeeper, Silvana (Adriana Barraza, very strong), who’s treated and paid less than fairly for all she does (though Claire’s loaded enough to petulantly throw money at her whenever she owes an apology). There are other people orbiting Claire’s black hole of depression, including her ex-husband (Chris Messina), her physical therapy coach (Mamie Gummer), and her support group leader (Felicity Huffman, who shares with Aniston the film’s funniest scene, involving a jumbo-sized bottle of Costco vodka), but none of them do much more than suffer as they listen to her imperious bullshit.

Aniston and the makeup team do their best to wipe away any memories you have of her as the desirable girl-with-the-hair Rachel on Friends, covering her with those scars and making her hair look as bland and stringy as a Triscuit. Her resting face looks like she puked two minutes ago. You can tell she approached the role with no ego. The most striking facet of her performance is her body movement; watching her wince and groan as she shuffles from one room to the next looks convincingly painful, and even evokes a bit of sympathy for the otherwise icy Claire.

Director Daniel Barnz finds myriad ways to show Claire horizontal: she sleeps a lot, beds the gardener, sleeps with Roy (just sleeps), lays flat in the passenger seat whenever she’s driven, floats belly-up in the pool, passes out in front of the toilet after overdosing on pills…and the list goes on. This is Barnz’ main visual motif, and he’s so obsessed with it that it feels kind of insulting to our intelligence. (Hell, even the opening title has the “A” in CAKE laid sideways.) This is all meant to bolster the impact of the film’s final shot, in which (spoiler alert) Claire sits up straight (WHOA). The strategy backfires, as the moment is so telegraphed you can’t help but cringe at how obtuse it is.

There’s barely a trace of plot to keep things moving, and it seems Barnz is banking on the “mystery of the scars” to propel the film. Screenwriter Patrick Tobin carefully places his little nuggets of information about Claire’s past intermittently and gives us just enough to figure it out on our own. The reason the process isn’t compelling is because it’s a bridge to nowhere; Cake is monotonous, rudderless, and doesn’t make any real statements about depression, suicide, or the act of grieving. It’s a film starving for something more, and while Aniston makes good use of it as a platform to show she’s got chops, it’s not the career-defining film she and many others hoped it would be.

A particularly muted Elmore Leonard adaptation, Daniel Schechter‘s Life of Crime has real value in its cast and their skillful performances, but the remaining elements of the film, while not disastrous, lack focus and flair, eliciting half-hearted shrugs and soft laughs. It’s like a Diet Coke version of a classic Leonard romp: While Out of Sight and Jackie Brown crackled and popped, Life of Crime (based on “The Switch”) lightly fizzles and lacks the same big flavor. It’s tasty enough, but it’ll make you long for the real stuff.

We meet two small-time crooks in 1978 Detroit named Louis and Ordell (played by John Hawkes and Yasiin Bey, respectively). In their first kidnapping job, they target Mickey Dawson (Jennifer Aniston), the wife of country club blowhard Frank Taylor (Tim Robbins). Frank’s been doing illegal funny business on the side for a while (involving an off-shore bank account and other big-wig nonsense), knowledge of which Louis and Ordell use as leverage to up the pressure. One million dollars is the ransom, but as it turns out, Mickey isn’t worth a million dollars to Frank at all, since she and her drunk, boorish husband positively despise each other. In fact, Frank’s been secretly shacking up with another woman in the Bahamas named Melanie (Isla Fisher), who he plans on marrying. (The divorce papers were in the mail pre-kidnapping.)

Melanie forcefully takes the reigns on Frank’s side of the hostage negotiations, cunningly bending the situation to her whim. Few revelations or genuine surprises arise as the caper unfolds, but there are a few amusing tangles in the plot. Mark Boone Junior plays a burly Nazi nut whose grungy home the crooks use to stash Mickey, but when he’s left alone with her, things get pretty dicey. Will Forte plays a family friend who’s the only witness to Mickey’s kidnapping (he’s got the hots for her, too), but there’s little for him to do in the grand scheme of things.

Mickey develops a sort of friendship with Louis, who she senses is a generally nice guy, despite him being her captor and all. Aniston’s evolution throughout the film–from hapless housewife to thick-skinned tigress–is gratifying to watch. Hawkes and Bey complement each other surprisingly well (though Robert DeNiro and Samuel L. Jackson’s interpretations of the same characters in Jackie Brown are pretty untouchable), and Hawkes enjoys even better chemistry with Aniston. Robbins and Aniston have fun slinging venom, but there’s little drama at the bottom of it all.

Characters swap positions, deceive one another, and the sprawling plot spirals into a controlled chaos (as many Leonard capers do). The way the film wraps up, however, is so meek and uneventful that it’s hard not to feel disappointed. The labyrinthine events that lead us there aren’t anything to get excited about either. Most moments of tension feel way less tense than they’re supposed to, and most chats shared between the quippy characters are thin and soulless. The film just feels so…flimsy.

As far as set design, the period elements are so inconsistent I often forgot the film takes place in the ’70s. Schechter exhibits skill for sure, but whether or not he was pushing himself to be his best, I couldn’t tell. I don’t think so. He surely had a hand in his actors’ good performances, but there’s a pervading sense that he didn’t impose his style onto the project enough, as if he let the Hollywood stars do their own thing because they know what they’re doing. Check out Supporting Characters if you want to see what he’s really capable of.

Life of Crime trailer