Welcome to 5 Favorites. Each week, I will put together a list of my 5 favorites (films, performances, whatever strikes my fancy) along with commentary on a given topic each week, usually in relation to a specific film releasing that week.

An actor who never seems to age, Paul Rudd has been making movies for almost three decades, having started his big screen career in 1992 in a film no one seems to have heard about, A Question of Ethics where he appeared under the name Kenny Chin. That was at the age of 23. At 26, after a couple of small TV roles, Rudd had his second big screen effort, Clueless. From there, his successes started to mount with prominent roles on TV’s Sisters and Friends helping to spread his name well beyond that. Now, he’s best known to audiences as a whole as Ant-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe where he employs his considerable comedic chops to great effect.

This weekend, he has a major role in the fourth film in the Ghostbusters universe, the first to be a direct sequel to the 1984 smash hit since the abysmal flop Ghostbusters II in 1989. The 2016 feature attempted to take the series in a different direction with a new array of ghostbusters, all women. While that film was great fun, many of the original fans were so incensed by its existence and the film struggled at the box office that a full fledged, fan-service sequel was bound to happen. And this is the result. Ghostbusters: Afterlife takes place in the Midwest with Rudd at the center of the action. Whether this film will live up to fan expectations or not remains to be seen, but the trailers have done a lot of heavy lifting in the regard, so it’s bound to be successful.

In the meantime, I’d like to take a look at five films featuring Rudd that I think are worthy of inclusion in a 5 Favorites post. Although he doesn’t have a major role in three of the five features, they were all blessed by his presence, even if in a minor capacity.

Romeo + Juliet (1996)

With a handful of deviations from the source material, director Baz Luhrmann redefined the Shakespearean adaptation with this modernized take on Romeo & Juliet, one of the immortal bard’s most broadly familiar works. With Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes taking the lead, Luhrmann didn’t have to work very hard to achieve what could be one of the key cinematic moments of the 1990s. Paul Rudd has a supporting role as Dave Paris, the governor’s son and proposed betrothed to Juliet. It’s not easy to remember him in the film, though, as the likes of DiCaprio, Danes, Brian Dennehy, Harold Perrineau, Pete Postlethwaite, Vondie Curtis-Hall, Paul Sorivno, John Leguizamo, and Miriam Margolyes are also playing in support and they are far more magnetic in the film.

Luhrmann’s refreshing take on Shakespeare used much of the original dialogue, giving younger audiences a more accessible way into classic theater history by transporting the action into the present with guns instead of swords and daggers, and the warring factions being rival mafia families. It’s all done with a rapid-fire editing style that punctuates the action and makes everything feel more urgent and compelling. Luhrmann was onto something with this choice and it wouldn’t be the last time he would subvert expectations and redefine what cinema can do.

The Object of My Affection (1998)

In 1998, Jennifer Aniston was attempting to make a go of a big screen career due to her heightened popularity from the TV series Friends. As a love interest, Aniston got the kind of disposable roles that the likes of Julia Roberts would have turned down. Yet, taking on the romantic lead in The Object of My Affection, Aniston managed to land on a complex relationship comedy/drama that gave her lots of room to work and thereby allowing the film room to breathe in its modest subversion of genre tropes.

Rudd is the co-lead of the film playing a gay man in a relationship with a prominent doctor. The two become fast friends as Rudd and Aniston move in together. As would normally be expected in such a film, Aniston develops feelings for Rudd who doesn’t exactly reciprocate them. While this kind of narrative isn’t unusual for the genre, how it works out in the end certainly is. There’s no grand finale where love triumphs over indifference or other such drivel. The film ends with everyone finally understanding their own place in each others’ lives. Rudd is wonderful in the film, as is Aniston. It’s a cute little trifle of the 1990s.

Knocked Up (2007)

For Judd Apatow’s best appreciated film to date, Katherine Heigl starred as an E! Entertainment reporter who has a regrettable one-night stand with Seth Rogen and ends up pregnant. Her sister is played by Leslie Mann while Mann’s husband is Paul Rudd. Rudd’s role is essentially fourth ranked in the cast, not in terms of quality, but in terms of importance with Heigl and Rogen playing distinctly different personalities forced together by pregnancy after a one-night stand gone wrong.

Apatow’s approach to comedy is decidedly different from most of what we’ve seen on the big screen in the last two decades. While that style is sometimes grating, frequently egotistical, and too often a shade misogynistic, Knocked Up is one of his better films. Heigl doesn’t seem as out of her depth as she does in other films and Rogen is at his most affable. Mann is a delightful firecracker and Rudd is amusing in his few scenes. This is a film that represents a decidedly different direction for the comedy genre in the 2000s and while there were many imitators, few did it better.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)

Logan Lerman was always a dependable young actor, earning plenty of attention throughout his career from his big screen debut at 8 years old in The Patriot to his leading role in Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. Yet, it was this film in 2012 that really showed audiences what he was capable of. Based on his own novel, director-screenwriter Stephen Chbosky tells the story of a young freshman in high school who suffers from clinical depression. Emma Watson and Ezra Miller play step-siblings who bring Lerman into their friendship circle where they learn more about one another, including their relationship statuses and goals. Rudd has a small role in the film as Lerman’s English teacher, who is a calming voice in Lerman’s life. It’s not much of a role, but it’s probably the best film he’s ever been in.

The film is a fascinating look at life in High School in a modern era where anxiety and depression are commonplace. It reminds the viewer that in spite of decades of change and progress, some things will always be the same. Lerman is absolutely wonderful in the film, giving us a complex portrait of a young man wrestling with inner demons, some recognizable, others buried deep within his psyche. Watson gives her best performance ever and Miller gives a 180-degree different performance from his frightening breakthrough in We Need to Talk About Kevin. Having graduated high school some 18 years before, I still managed to feel a deep connection to this narrative and to the characters in it.

Ant-Man (2015)

Rudd’s comedic style ended up being the perfect fit for this Marvel Cinematic Universe film about an ex-con who unwittingly steals a piece of advanced technology from scientist Hank Pym (Michael Douglas) who wants to enlist Rudd’s Scott Lang (Rudd) in helping to stop Pym Technologies CEO Darren Cross (Corey Stoll) from creating another version of Pym’s suit, which allows the wearer to shrink to microscopic size or grow to gargantuan proportions. The film co-stars Bobby Cannavale, Michael Pena, Judy Greer, and others.

Rudd’s command of the screen is never in question as he makes an everyman hero of Scott Lang who only wants to do right by his young daughter. The only actor in the cast to approach Rudd’s charm and performative capabilities is not Douglas, who seems a little out of his depth here, but Pena who plays Rudd’s friend and roommate Luis who tells rapid-fire stories that are more hilarious than anything else in the franchise by a mile. While the film does follow the Disney formula for filmmaking, it marks one of the first straight comedy films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe and while it’s not half as funny as Deadpool, it’s no less an entertaining adventure-cum-heist film.