Alan Arkin appreciation: Keep calm and carry on toward the edge of certain disaster

CHICAGO — Every actor’s career follows its own serpentine route to a final bow. But only Alan Arkin’s career boasted an actual scene, from the 1979 comedy “The In-Laws,” of a dentist instructed by the newest and least reliable member of his extended family (Peter Falk) to “Serpentine, Shel! Serpentine!” while getting shot at by would-be assassins. Somehow the zigzagging does the trick, because it’s a comedy. And because it’s Arkin. Among the world’s great comic minimalists, or mini-maximalists, let’s say, no one could beat him for capturing so much recognizable reality inside so much insanity,...