Channing Tatum

(He was born in 1980, which technically makes him a young Generation Xer, but his energy is more Millennial, so we'll let both generations claim him.) He's his ...

I still laugh thinking of the moment in “ 22 Jump Street” when he ends a fight with his onscreen detective partner, Jonah Hill, by staring at him, soul-sick and seemingly on the edge of tears, and saying, “ I think we should investigate other people.” A lot of his success in various genres comes back to what seems like a lack of self-regard. The first “Magic Mike,” basically “ Saturday Night Fever” with a stripper, proved that so decisively that it freed up the sequel to be a low-stakes lark about guys embracing their limitations and just having fun with life. And not only will you never catch him letting you know that he knows how good he is, he convinces you that he doesn’t know, either—like the movie hunk version of the cliche of the objectively gorgeous female ingenue who doesn’t know how attractive she is until somebody convinces her to let take her glasses off and let down her hair. Tatum is tall, beefy, and comic-book handsome (I’ll never forget the moment during a packed screening of “ Magic Mike XXL” when a woman sitting near me whispered, “Oh, my lord!” when the film cut to a shot of his neck and shoulders). But he doesn’t carry himself like a preening movie star stud who surreptitiously checks himself out in every reflective surface he passes. He can play the swaggering alpha who commands the respect of his bros and the worshipful attention of every woman within sighting distance. That’s the sweet spot that all stars hit, in their own way, and when Tatum is cast and directed just right, he hits it better than almost anyone except Brad Pitt—and it seems no surprise that the two of them ended up in the same movie, “The Lost City,” starring Sandra Bullock, another very versatile, very likable star, available on VOD today.