The Upside of Anger

Starring:Joan Allen, Suzanne Bertish, Dane Christensen, Erika Christensen, Kevin Costner, David Firth, Stephen Greif, Tom Harper (II), Magdalena Manville, Richard Mylan, Owen Oakeshott, Arthur Penhallow, Robert Perkins, Keri Russell, William Tapley, Danny Webb (IV), Alicia Witt, Evan Rachel Wood, Rod Woodruff
Studio: New Line Home Video
Product Type: DVD

Editorial Review:
Amazon.com
The sight of two lost souls finding something unavoidably necessary in each other carries The Upside of Anger through it pleasant episodic drift. When Terry Wolfmeyer (Joan Allen) realizes that her husband won't be coming home again, she hits the skids and the bottle, leaving her four thunderstruck daughters (Alicia Witt, Keri Russell, Erika Christensen, and Evan Rachel Wood) to fend for themselves while she fends off the attentions of concerned neighbor Denny Davies (Kevin Costner). Writer/director Mike Binder (who has a good bit as Costner's sleazy producer) juggles too many subplots in this comedy/drama--his charming young actresses are all but wasted--then tosses in a wrongheaded climactic twist and terrible explanatory narration from young Wood. But the two leads do career-best turns: If you've given up hope on Costner, you'll be surprised by his shaggy dog appeal as a perpetually soused radio show host/faded ex-baseball star, while Allen's boozy, brittle performance is so remarkable that even her comic drunkenness is nuanced. --Steve Wiecking
Description
A touching yet humorous film about a woman who finds her and her daughters' lives changed by a former baseball star who steps into her life as her drinking buddy.

DVD Features:
Audio Commentary:Commentary #1 with Director Mike Binder, Joan Allen and moderated by filmaker Rod Lurie
Deleted Scenes:Deleted scenes with commentary by Director Mike Binder (approx. 10 minutes)
Documentary:approx. 30 minutes
Theatrical Trailer

Average customer rating:

poignant and lovely
Family hour!
Please enter a title for your review
A very good film
* * 1/2 Desperate Housewife

The Upside of Anger
Starring: Joan Allen , Suzanne Bertish , Dane Christensen , Erika Christensen , and Kevin Costner
Manufacturer: New Line Home Video
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

General | Comedy | Genres | DVD | Video

General | Drama | Genres | DVD | Video

( U ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video
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ASIN: B00005JNP4
Release Date: 2005-07-26

Amazon.com

The sight of two lost souls finding something unavoidably necessary in each other carries The Upside of Anger through it pleasant episodic drift. When Terry Wolfmeyer (Joan Allen) realizes that her husband won't be coming home again, she hits the skids and the bottle, leaving her four thunderstruck daughters (Alicia Witt, Keri Russell, Erika Christensen, and Evan Rachel Wood) to fend for themselves while she fends off the attentions of concerned neighbor Denny Davies (Kevin Costner). Writer/director Mike Binder (who has a good bit as Costner's sleazy producer) juggles too many subplots in this comedy/drama--his charming young actresses are all but wasted--then tosses in a wrongheaded climactic twist and terrible explanatory narration from young Wood. But the two leads do career-best turns: If you've given up hope on Costner, you'll be surprised by his shaggy dog appeal as a perpetually soused radio show host/faded ex-baseball star, while Allen's boozy, brittle performance is so remarkable that even her comic drunkenness is nuanced. --Steve Wiecking

Description

A touching yet humorous film about a woman who finds her and her daughters' lives changed by a former baseball star who steps into her life as her drinking buddy.

Customer Reviews:

poignant and lovely.......2007-04-09

The movie has a star-studded cast, but no one competes for the space on screen. The script is smartly handled. The movie also handles the change of seasons, to show the passing time, very well. It brings a good point about anger and about knowing all sides of the story. I agree that the truth is only every partially correct. This movie made me miss quite a few people I haven't spoken with in a while and wonder about lost ties and misunderstandings.

Family hour!.......2007-03-31

When I watch this with my wife, it's called "The Upside of Anger." When I watch it by myself, it's called "Brian Moore in Taboo VII."

Please enter a title for your review.......2007-03-03

It's really unclear how well the mom and Kevin Costner know each other. It's like it keeps jumping back and forth between seeming like they just met and seeming like they've known each other for ages. If the mom character is supposed to be someone who watches a lot of daytime soaps and fancies herself as being a character in one of them than the actress did a good job at conveying that.
You could learn a lot from this movie though. Like apparently in the 14 year old dating world the line "i'm from a broken home" goes over well with bunjee jumping enthusiasts.
After the first half hour I stopped waiting for it to make sense.

A very good film.......2007-02-16

This film is the bittersweet tale of a family coming to terms with life and each other. Written and directed by Mike Binder, it starts out at a funeral and then flashes back three years into the past. It's primarily a love story between the estranged wife Terry Wolfenmeyer played by Joan Allen, and the semi-retired ex baseball jock neighbor, Denny Davies played by Kevin Costner. Terry's husband has apparently run off to Sweden with his receptionist leaving her and her four adolescent daughters to fend for themselves. Terry is torn up by the betrayal and turns to alcohol as a crutch, which works out well for Denny, who starts out as her drinking buddy.

Denny can tell how hurt Terry really his, and provides quiet support when she needs it. Each of the four daughters and her relationship with their mother is also a sub-plot, and this helps the film be more true to life than many films. The dialogue is witty and well-written. Joan Allen, though, really shines in this movie. Her portrayal of the bitter, almost alcoholic, betrayed wife is just phenomenal. Her sniping with her daughters and her facial expressions are just spot on. A truly great and memorable performance. Costner, although, not quite as good as Allen, does a solid job of playing Denny. Overall, I thought this was one of Costner's better performances.

There are moments of this film that are laugh at loud funny, and moments that are touchingly sad. Again that makes this film more realistic, and is a credit to Mike Binder who wrote and directed the film. He also plays a good bit role as Denny's sleazy radio producer.

The cinematography is well done, with the passing seasons used to show the passage of time. Too many romantic comedies happen in a kind of frozen landscape, where the story is the only thing important, and nothing outside of the story changes. This film is different, the landscape changes, and, more importantly, the characters change over time, again much more realistic than most films.

My only real gripe about this film was the younger daughter's cheesy documentary being used as kind of the "message' of the film; "it's easier to react with anger than love". Yeah, yeah we get it, the old films of slapstick comedy and the cartoon characters banging each other over the head are superfluous. We especially get the message when Terry looks at her four daughters sitting together at the end of the film and imagines them as they were 15 years, 10 years and 5 years ago.

A great story, with great dialogue, solid cinematography, solid acting with a "one for the ages" performance by Joan Allen, combine to make this a very enjoyable film. Strongly recommended.

* * 1/2 Desperate Housewife.......2007-01-03

A romantic comedy with the likes of Joan Allen and Kevin Costner should catch fire, shouldn't it? So why is this "witty" and "poignant" character-driven film from writer/director/actor Mike Binder flat as a pancake? Maybe because it's not witty nor poignant, but it seems to think it is. The Upside of Anger trots out tired cliches--the bored and boozy suburban housewife, the middle-aged has-been trying to find himself (Costner stretching himself in another washed-up baseball player role), the daughters coming of age, dealing with sex and boyfriends and having runs-ins with mom every other day. There doesn't seem to be a big point to it all--does Binder think he's telling us anything new?!? There are also way too many cribs, or attempted cribs, from Terms of Endearment, including a sudden serious hospital illness, to make this seem like anything more than a tired conceit of a movie wallowing in pretention. (Plus it just reminds you how fresh Terms of Endearment was in 1982. But 2005 is not 1982.) Allen, always natural and effortless, gets to strut her stuff as the middle-aged mom with a fondness for Grey Goose vodka; Costner is well-cast--he never displays much range but in the right role he fits like a comfortable old pair of shoes. Binder gives himself a major role as a radio producer in a subplot that goes littlewhere and seems more like a vanity trip than an exploration of anything germaine to the movie. The love interest of one daughter, Dane Christensen, has a pointless role, that climaxes puzzlingly when he smashes through a glass window while bungee-jumping from a tree (and if that makes little sense to you, it makes even less sense in the context of the film). The four daughters themselves (Alicia Witt, Keri Russell, Erika Christensen, Evan Rachel Wood) are bland and interchangeable--maybe one daughter less and one subplot less would have given the movie more focus. But even better would have been more unique situations and setups for the conflicts, which are as forseeable as an Iraq quadmire. Too often in this movie mom just pops off on the typical things TV and movie moms pop off on all the time: mouthy children, the claustrophobia of suburbia, neighbors who want to get them between the sheets. Although the film tries the patented James L. Brooks formula of lurching from hilarity to pathos in an eyeblink, here the quips aren't funny, the drama not fresh, the psychological underpinnings pedestrian. We've seen it all before--on Desperate Housewives, for example, to which stylistically this movie bears more than a passing resemblance, especially when it comes to the undistinguished music score (amazingly, composed by Alexandre Desplat, who turned out far more unique and extraordinary work for the Nicole Kidman film Birth; this one he seems to have phoned in).

Well, we've *almost* seen it all before. At the very end there is a twist so unusual that I have to admit I was totally taken by surprise for once. The official Amazon review calls it "wrongheaded," but I disagree: this oddball direction is just what the rest of the movie needed. But is it worth waiting two hours for? For me, the answer is definitely no. Joan Allen, I love you, but better luck next time.

The DVD looks great, with a near-perfect transfer. There are commentaries and the obligatory "making of" documentary, but this film left me so bored that I cared about neither. More tellingly, there's a trailer that has the life and snap and energy that the film itself desperately needed.

Charlie Rose with Fouad Ajami & Roger Cohen; Mahmood Mamdani; Mike Binder (March 8, 2005)

Average customer rating:

Charlie Rose with Fouad Ajami & Roger Cohen; Mahmood Mamdani; Mike Binder (March 8, 2005)

Manufacturer: "Charlie Rose, Inc."
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

( C ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Description

A discussion about Bush's speech earlier today and the changes in the Middle East with Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins University and US News and World Report and Roger Cohen, columnist for the International Herald Tribune. Also, Mahmood Mamdani of Columbia University talks about his book Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror. Plus, filmmaker Mike Binder talks about The Upside of Anger.

Charlie Rose with Valery Giscard D'Estaing; Joan Allen (March 7, 2005)

Average customer rating:

Charlie Rose with Valery Giscard D'Estaing; Joan Allen (March 7, 2005)

Manufacturer: "Charlie Rose, Inc."
ProductGroup: DVD
Binding: DVD

( C ) | Titles | Features | DVD | Video

Description

A discussion about the transatlantic relationship and the future of Europe with Valery Giscard D'Estaing, Former President of France. Also, Charlie Rose talks to actress Joan Allen about her new film, The Upside of Anger.

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