Duncan (Liam James) is not exactly looking forward to summer on the beach in Jim Rash and Nat Faxon’s thoughtful coming-of-age drama
THE WAY, WAY BACK (Nat Faxon & Jim Rash, 2013)
In theaters now
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Jim Rash and Nat Faxon’s The Way, Way Back is a gentle, deeply affecting, and tender coming-of-age drama about an awkward adolescent boy having difficulties dealing with his parents’ divorce and his mother’s new boyfriend. Liam James stars as fourteen-year-old Duncan, who is forced to spend the summer in a Massachusetts beach resort town with his mother, Pam (Toni Collette); Trent (Steve Carell), the man she is considering settling down with; and Trent’s stuck-up daughter, Steph (Zoe Levin), who resents having to watch over the brooding, nearly silent Duncan. Everyone has to deal with their neighbor, the wildly wacky Betty (a wildly wacky Allison Janney), who continually chastises her son, Peter (River Alexander), because of his odd right eye and whose daughter, Susanna (AnnaSophia Robb), is the only one who seems to recognize what Duncan is going through. To get away from it all, Duncan heads off to a local water park (the actual Water Wizz), where he is taken under the wing of one of the managers, Owen (Sam Rockwell), who hasn’t really grown up himself yet, a man-child who is always goofing around with his fellow employees, the customers, and his boss, Caitlyn (Maya Rudolph). As Duncan starts finding out some disturbing truths about his mother, Trent, and Trent’s friends Kip (Rob Corddry) and Joan (Amanda Peet), he also learns a lot about life in general and his situation specifically.
Duncan (Liam James) learns about life and love from Owen (Sam Rockwell) in THE WAY, WAY BACK
Evoking such films as Greg Mottola’s underrated Adventureland and Wes Anderson’s cult classic Rushmore, The Way, Way Back is an honest, poignant examination of one boy’s summer to remember. James (Psych, The Killing) gives a riveting performance as Duncan, a kid who is turning away from a world that keeps letting him down. But just as he’s giving up on trusting adults, be becomes friends with a man who doesn’t seem to take anything seriously, until he does, played with hysterically reckless abandon by Rockwell, channeling Stripes-era Bill Murray. Although the film is set in the modern day, Rash and Faxon, who teamed up with director Alexander Payne to win the Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for The Descendants, give The Way, Way Back an engaging retro feel, from the references to 1980s music (Bonnie Tyler’s “Holding Out for a Hero,” REO Speedwagon’s “I Can’t Fight This Feeling Anymore”) to Trent’s mint Buick woody station wagon. Rash (Craig Pelton on Community) and Faxon (Ben in Ben and Kate) — who also appear in the film as Water Wizz employees, Rash playing the very strange Lewis and Faxon as the hunky Roddy — also manage to save several scenes that threaten to become uncomfortable and take away from the otherwise believable plot twists. Carell and Collette, who were brother and sister in Little Miss Sunshine, here make a good couple, a pair of adults who still have some growing up of their own to do. The opening scene, with Duncan sitting in the way, way back of the station wagon, facing where they’ve been, not where they’re going, sets a marvelous tone for this small gem.
Denzel Washington and Mark Wahlberg are fun to watch in the action comedy flick 2 Guns, but unfortunately the ever-twisting plot is so overloaded with gaping holes that the film ends up shooting nothing but blanks. Washington stars as Bobby Trench, a DEA agent working deep undercover to capture a big-time Mexican drug warlord. Little does he know that the “partner” he recruited, Marcus Stigman, is actually a Navy SEAL who is undercover as well, thinking that he is the one playing Bobby and not the other way around. When the two men rob the cleverly named Tres Cruces (Three Crosses) bank, they suddenly find themselves with a whole lot more money than expected and realize they were both set up by their superiors and colleagues, not knowing anymore who they can trust among a cast of characters that includes DEA agent Jessup (Robert John Burke), Navy lt. commander Quince (James Marsden), and drug kingpin Papi Greco (Edward James Olmos). And entering the fray is the nasty, mysterious Earl (Bill Paxton), who is ready to do whatever’s necessary to get back what he claims is his stash, taking delight in his own brand of Russian roulette as a torture method. But things get more and more ridiculous as double crosses turn into triple crosses and quadruple crosses and the conspiracy keeps reaching higher and higher, with writer Blake Masters (Brotherhood) and director Baltasar Kormákur (
Ingmar Bergman’s darkly comic 1958 film The Magician is one of the Swedish auteur’s lesser-known, underrated masterpieces, an intense yet funny, and fun, work about art, science, faith, death, and the power of the movies themselves. When Vogler’s Magnetic Health Theater comes to town, the local triumvirate of Dr. Vergérus (Gunnar Björnstrand), police commissioner Starbeck (Toivo Pawlo), and Consul Egerman (Erland Josephson) brings the traveling troupe in for questioning, forcing them to spend the night as guests in Egerman’s home. The three men seek to prove that mesmerist Albert Emanuel Vogler (Max von Sydow), his assistant, Mr. Aman (Ingrid Thulin), a witchy grandmother (Naima Wifstrand), and their promoter, Tubal (Åke Fridell), are a bunch of frauds. The interrogations delve into such Bergmanesque topics as science vs. reason, good vs. evil, life and death, and the existence of God. As various potions are dispensed to and tricks played on a staff that includes maid Sara (Bibi Andersson), cook Sofia Garp (Sif Ruud), and stableman Antonsson (Oscar Ljung) in addition to Starbeck’s wife (Ulla Sjöblom) and Egerman’s spouse (Gertrud Fridh), a series of romantic rendezvous take place, along with some genuine horror, leading to a thrillingly ambiguous ending.
In the new documentary When Comedy Went to School, Mickey Freeman describes what it’s like to “die” onstage, that terrible feeling of experiencing flop sweat while bombing in front of a live audience. Unfortunately, this film is dead on arrival, dripping wet. Made by Mevlut Akkaya (director and producer), Ron Frank (director, producer, and editor), and Lawrence Richards (writer and producer), the thankfully short film, which clocks in at a mere seventy-seven minutes, purports to tell the history of the Catskill comedians at such resorts as Kutsher’s, Grossinger’s, and the Concord. The filmmakers speak with such comic giants as Jerry Lewis, Sid Caesar, Mort Sahl, Dick Gregory, Jackie Mason, and Jerry Stiller, who describe what it was like in the Borscht Belt’s heyday of the 1950s and 1960s. There are also plenty of archival clips of those men as well as Rodney Dangerfield, Woody Allen, Henny Youngman, Milton Berle, Bob Hope, and Lenny Bruce (however, very few from actual Catskills performances), with additional commentary from Joe Franklin, Larry King, and Hugh Hefner. But timing is everything in comedy, something When Comedy Went to School is sorely lacking; the film drags and sputters as Akkaya, Frank, and Richards — onscreen host and narrator Robert Klein is the poor soul relegated to reading the increasingly dull script — try to delve into the social and historical aspects of the Catskills, from the comedians themselves to the people who owned the resorts and the families that went there year after year, but it’s slow moving, repetitive, and, worst of all, boring. Although some of the comedians have interesting anecdotes — Lewis steals the show with his insights on the relationship between performer and audience — most of it falls flat, reminiscent of the old vaudeville convention of bringing out the weakest act to clear the house after the stars are done. When Comedy Went to School runs July 31 to August 6 at the JCC in Manhattan and the IFC Center, with Akkaya, Frank, and Richards on hand to talk about the film at the 7:05 show on opening night at IFC; the trio will be back at IFC for the 7:05 screening on August 1, joined by Klein and Cory Kahaney.