Month: July 2013

Valedictorian Brandy (Aubrey Plaza) has one new-fangled, obsessive goal: to tackle her brash laundry list of explicit sexual escapades as if it were just another academic achievement. Shaking off her nerdiness is another matter entirely.

The delightful Plaza (Parks and Recreation, 2012’s excellent Safety Not Guaranteed) plays off her intelligent, straight-laced yet sardonic character in spades. Let’s face it. Without her knowing performance (and that of several supporting players here) The To-Do List would likely be exposed as a rather mundane, often out-of-tune screenplay. With this exciting actress, however, we find ourselves with a refreshing comedy–big in raunch and only minimal in throwing down the requisite-for-the-genre sentimental bathos.

Being a virgin, even in 1993, carries a peer-pressure stigma alright. Brandy aims to solve the dilemma by composing a soup-to-nuts checklist of sexual endeavors, then filling out the name of her partners-in-crime as she crosses off each “step” to the ultimate goal of losing her virginity. You may be reaching for your phone to look up the slang for some sexual practices that are mentioned here but graciously left out of the film. Brandy doesn’t turn into a toad for mentioning teabagging and assorted other activities but director Maggie Carey dropped such items like hot potatoes. We’re left with relatively commonplace hijinks that gain an extra edge since it’s the gal who’s the aggressor here and the guys are often awkward bystanders.

Sure, we’re on usually male turf here so part of the considerable fun is getting all this smut from the female perspective. Carey nearly blows it by occasionally creeping over into farcical excess but Plaza repeatedly comes to the rescue by having Brandy handle it all like a perfectly balanced adult. Plaza may be 29 in real life but this is far from easy going given the screenplay’s habit of sliding in and out of inanity. Happily, genuine laughs are abundant–no less when Saturday Night Live’s Bill Hader is onscreen as Brandy’s slacker boss at her summer job at a public swimming pool. Fellow SNL regular Andy Samberg appears and impresses in an at first unrecognizable role. Rachel Bilson is also quite good as Brandy’s more experienced and way more cynical older sister. Clark Gregg, fresh off Much Ado About Nothing, mugs it up as Brandy’s squeamish Dad, who reads Rush Limbaugh and bristles at the mere thought of his daughter having sex.

All-in-all The To-Do-List holds down its concepts well enough. Just when it teeters off the edge, the adorable Plaza brings it back. It the telltale sign of a talented actress is being able to lift up ordinary material Plaza is well on her way to further success on a to-do list of a whole different sort.

3* Loads of Sexually Explict Chatter Buoyed By A Sheer Absence Of Any Nudity (out of 5*)

The Conjuring raises the sort of havoc horror fans will be quite familiar with yet director James Wan, sticking mostly to old-school terror devices, has fashioned a crafty, often exciting hair-raiser. The stellar Vera Farmiga and reliable Patrick Wilson portray real-life 1970’s paranormal investigators Lorraine And Ed Warren–famous ghostbusters in the Amityville Horror case. Lifting from flicks like Poltergeist and The Exorcist Wan is quick to tone down both the blood-and-guts and CGI aspects of the current-day horror film. Instead his tone is straight out of traditions of even earlier films that knew the wisdom of the power of suggestion in keeping up the suspense levels.

Wan, who used Lorraine Warren herself as a consultant for the film, doesn’t let what horror cliches may be present here to cheapen or get in the way. Yeah, the family dog won’t go inside when Carolyn (Lili Taylor) and lug husband Roger (Ron Livingston) and their five daughters move into a new (old) house in Rhode Island. Birds are soon crashing into their house, clocks all stop at the same time every night, Carolyn finds herself waking up with mysterious bruises on her body, and there’s a basement where cryptic machinations seem to spring totally randomly. For good measure the youngest daughter begins chatting with–well, you’ll just have to see the movie. Luckily, not much of it is unintentionally farcical.
Wan throws in nice touches like 8mm film projections of the Warrens schooling their students on past cases.

Farmiga (Up In The Air) never stoops down to shtick, but throws down a highly nuanced, resonating performance. As a medium her desire to help these innocent victims is complicated by her own psyche having been damaged by a horrible vision from a previous case. She is a main reason this film steps it up a notch from Wan’s previous effort, Insidious. In that film, also an effective throwback to the old-school horror genre, the climax partially went for the playful. Here Wan is able to stay consistent with the Conjuring’s prevalent thread. A music box with a pop-up clown that grins like a Cheshire cat once we get a hold of what appears in its mirror, is on the spot. It reminds the next time you see a present-day horror flick you’ll probably think back on The Conjuring as that rare specimen of what scary films used to be like.

4.0 Old-School Terrors (out of 5)

Devoid of the wrongheaded sentimentality of the typical coming-of-age movie, The Way, Way Back claws back to the little moments of adolescence with a surehanded robustness. From its dynamite opening scene to its gleaming, touching last shot, it infuses the viewer with his or her own recollective pangs of identification with its 14-year-old protagonist’s rocky road to self-discovery.

The misfit, inert Duncan (Liam James) sits in the very back section of the station wagon of his mom’s boyfriend, Trent (Steve Carell). Trent nervingly asks the kid to “rate yourself from one to ten.” When the stunned Duncan at first doesn’t answer and then lets out a soft sheepish “Six'” Trent is quick to respond “I think you’re a three,” a response that will be repeated back to Trent in a far more disapproving context later in the film. Duncan and Trent are on the way to a summer shore house likely somewhere in Massachusetts, along with Duncan’s timid mom, Pam (Toni Collette) and Trent’s teenage daughter, who treats Duncan as if he were an obnoxious vermin.

We’re introduced to a wacky neighbor (an excellent Allison Janney) who’s a boozy motormouth who’s about half as witty as she thinks she is, and a couple (Amanda Pete and Rob Corduroy) who serve as enablers for Trent and Pam to channel their own inner adolescence in terms of acting silly and shallow. This sets up the need for Duncan to get away from them as soon as possible. It’s a need exacerbated by his near-catatonic attempt to socialize with his peers at the beach.

Enter Sam Rockwell as Owen, who comes to be Duncan’s mentor once he runs off to a water park, The Water Whizz, where Owen works. Rockwell puts a sizzling and brazen sheen on every scene he’s in. His rough-and-tumble empathy is the polar opposite of Trent’s smarmy pomposity. Carell, refreshingly playing against type, is just right, as is the always savvy Collette, as a mom, who, like her son, also must overcome an inability to assert herself. Side plots involving Duncan and Janney’s daughter, and Owen and co-worker Maya Rudolph wisely aren’t overdone.

Co-directors Nat Faxon and Jim Rash (recent Oscar winners as screenwriters for The Descendants) appear as comical Water Whizz employees but it’s Rockwell who’s gut-busting hilarious. The Way, Way Back is refreshingly light when it needs to be while making its deeper point seamlessly. The fine afterglow of its symbolic double-entendre ending lingers with a singular resonance.

4.5 Sam Rockwells (out of 5)