Nat Faxon and Jim Rash‘s The Way, Way Back (Fox Searchlight, 7.5) is as good as nearly everyone has been saying so far. Not so much a coming-of-age drama as a Tale of Two Dads, it boasts on-target performances (particularly from the great Sam Rockwell and Allison Janney), a relaxed and confident freshness (even though the dysfuctional-family-on-vacation setup is familiar as hell) and a first-rate script — smart, adult, layered, zingy. There’s just one problem — one significant thing that doesn’t happen. And it’s a killer.

Liam James (an interesting if overly recessive actor) is 14 year-old Duncan, whose life is frequently made miserable by Trent (Steve Carell), the bullying asshole boyfriend of his mother (Toni Collette). The irony is that Trent is on Duncan’s case for being a hider and an avoider, which is precisely the kid’s problem. Trent earns his dick badge because he thinks he can harass the poor kid into waking up. (He’s a diluted and more personable version of Robert De Niro‘s asshole in A Boy’s Life.). On top of which he’s a bit of a philanderer. Was Trent a warm-up exercise for Carell before he played a much darker role in Bennett Miller‘s Foxcatcher? Or was it a followup?

I’m starting on a list of “troubled” women characters (lead or supporting) with a certain mesmerizing duality — beautiful and classy in public and yet susceptible to black-dog mood pockets at the drop of a hat, and yet blazing and snap-crackling and radiating a vibe that drives straight men and lesbians to madness. And they know it. The trick is trying to think of one who hasn’t been featured in a Woody Allen film. Charlotte Rampling in Stardust Memories, Diane Keaton in Manhattan, Juliette Lewis in Husbands and Wives. Let me think…uhhm, Bette Davis in All About Eve. And…give me a minute.

You want boring? I’ll give you boring. “This older couple might have had a longer, richer, happier life together if the man…hell, if both of them hadn’t succumbed so relentlessly to drink.” Co-starring in a play that had been critically roasted didn’t do much for the relationship either. Not to mention a brain hemmorhage waiting to happen for the poor guy. At least this BBC America telefilm will be better than Liz and Dick, the Lindsay Lohan-Grant Bowler Lifetime flick. It has to be.

If you began your Independence Day activities on the evening of Wednesday, 7.3 (as most people did), you enjoyed a 2 1/2 day or 60-hour holiday. Because it more or less ended around noon today. The profoundly relaxing portion of your getaway, I mean. Sunday is always about coping with the shadow of Monday and grimming up for that — a wash. And once Saturday morning is over and the afternoon (or the evening, God forbid) begins it’s awfully hard to avoid thinking about Sunday. The only entirely clear days are Thursday and Friday. I know — I never take any time off so what am I talking about? I’m talking about how I used to feel when I punched a clock and took vacations. During the first 48 hours I used to feel free, blissful, tingly– like a 16 year-old after two 16 oz. cans of beer.

Last Friday (6.28) I posted some counter-points from a senior Pacific Rim player about how the reports about underwhelming tracking up to that point were misleading. Now Variety‘s Marc Graser is listening to a similar rap, reviewing the awareness-and-interest situation and going “hmmm, yeah, okay….maybe.”

Yesterday I sent New Orleans-based movie maven David Dubos a PDF of Kelly Marcel‘s Savings Mr. Banks screenplay. A few hours later he replied: “Read it today, quite good. Surefire Oscar nom for Best Original screenplay, and likely acting noms for Tom Hanks, Emma Thompson.

“On a side note (and this might be just a coincidence), but in the trailer for Ridley Scott‘s The Counselor (20th Century Fox, 10.25), the wire stretched across the highway to behead some poor sap…I remember reading that eons ago as a means of disposal in Truman Capote‘s Handcarved Coffins, in which the serial killer did the same thing. I wonder if Cormac McCarthy read that? Probably, I’m guessing.” — from an email friend, received yesterday.

Michael Winterbottom‘s The Look of Love (IFC Films, 7.5), which I saw at last January’s Sundance Film Festival, is an almost entirely flat thing to sit through, enlivened only by Steve Coogan‘s droll (if one-note) performance as British adult magazine and sex-biz entrepeneur Paul Raymond. An impressive recreation of ’60s and ’70s scenes, styles and mores, it’s a film that basically says that (a) erotic indulgence has its downside, (b) cocaine tends to fuck your life up and (c) it’s not a good idea to treat your daughter like a fellow bacchanalian. Fascinating! It’s reasonably well done but there’s simply not enough good material here for a real film, and what little Matt Greenhaigh‘s screenplay contains is presented by Winterbottom in a rote, almost ho-hum fashion.

I kicked things around this morning with Boxoffice.com’s Phil Contrino, a longtime Oscar Poker contributor until Sasha Stone suddenly dropped me last October after I wrote about our raging Silver Linings Playbook argument in the parking garage of the Aidikoff screening room (but without identifying her or even her gender), and in so doing threw Contrino out with the bathwater. Phil and I talked about (a) why and how The Lone Ranger has tanked, (b) Cate Blanchett‘s possible award-calibre performance in Woody Allen‘s Blue Jasmine, (c) the possibility that Armie Hammer might be the new Taylor Kitsch, (d) the Weinstein strategy behind their decision to open the Oscar-bound Fruitvale Station in July, (e) Pacific Rim and (f) Only God Forgives. Again, the mp3.

The above title is, of course, presented in air quotes. An allusion, if you will, to the colorful phrasings of Jack Nicholson‘s J.J. Gittes and that scene in Chinatown when he asked Lt. Lou Escobar, “Tell me…you still puttin’ Chinamen in jail for spittin’ in the laundry?” To which Escobar replied, “You’re a little behind the times, Jake. They use steam irons now.” It also alludes to screenwriter William Monahan having gotten it wrong in The Departed when he had Nicholson’s Frank Costello says, “No tickee, no laundry.” Cop-out! I’ve been hearing “no tickee, no washee” since I was a kid.

Nicholas Winding Refn‘s Only God Forgives (Radius-TWC, 7.19) is world-class in its repulsiveness, and it goes way beyond being a time-waster. The fumes from this oppressively violent Asian macho bullshit sword-slicing fantasy will sink into your system and your soul and leave you off-kilter — tainted in ways that may be hard to pinpoint at first but are no less real — for weeks after seeing it. Or months. Or eternally.

I’m feeling a little odd in that I’m finding myself in…well, perhaps not 100% agreement but certainly not strident disgreement with an op-ed about the recent Egyptian military coup by N.Y. Times op-ed columnist David Brooks. His basic point is that it’s at least a half-good thing that Mohammed Morsi is out on his ass. Core statement: “This week’s military coup may merely bring Egypt back to where it was: a bloated and dysfunctional superstate controlled by a self-serving military elite. But at least radical Islam, the main threat to global peace, has been partially discredited and removed from office.