Overlooked DVD of the month - THE UPSIDE OF ANGER

THE UPSIDE OF ANGER is an interesting and original adult drama. (I refrain from calling it a rom-com). It's original because writer-director Mike Binder dares to feature a romance between two mentally and physically out-of-shape middle-aged people. This means that a great "character" actress like Joan Allen can get a starring role as a woman whose husband has apparently left her for his younger PA. She hits the bottle pretty hard and starts an affair with a has-been baseball player called Denny (Kevin Costner). She also has four teenage daughters who have various issues. It's not one of those laugh-out loud movies, although it does contain some wry laughs. And it doesn't have the typical formulaic plot arc where the happy couple meet, argue, get back together. It moves at a patient pace and creates interesting characters. I just think it's lovely to see a mature film for a change, and in some ways, the less epic plot creates a more cohesive and successful film that Binder's later work, REIGN OVER ME.

THE UPSIDE OF ANGER played Sundance in 2005 and opened in the US that year. It didn't open in the UK until May 2007 and is available on DVD.

REIGN OVER ME - deeply affecting drama

I was surprisingly deeply affected by this post-9/11 drama, in which Adam Sandler of all actor plays a man suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Having lost his wife and three daughters in 9/11, he refuses to discuss his family, feigns memory-loss and retreats into a child-like world of take-out, video games and, bizarrely, kitchen remodelling. It is a desperately moving performance and triumphs over the fact that the character, Charlie Fineman, looks distractingly like a young Bob Dylan.

The triumph of the film is that writer-director Mike Binder approaches Charlie Fineman from a tangent. For much of the first hour of the film we are more concerned with Don Cheadle's character, Alan Johnson. Johnson is a fundamentally decent guy who loves his wife but hates his job and feels stifled by domestic bliss. It's a situation that many will sympathise with and gives us an "in" to the stranger Charlie-world. It's another stand-out performance from Cheadle. He strikes up a friendship with Fineman - an old college friend. Fineman helps Johnson have some fun; Johnson helps Fineman get therapy.

The movie proceeds at a measured pace, allowing the audience to enjoy the genuine chemistry between these two friends. Sensibly, the director shies away from a simplistic resolution - we leave Fineman pretty much as disturbed as when we meet him, although with more hope of recovery. But this is not a perfect film for two reasons. First, poor Saffron Burrows pilots a ridiculous sub-plot involving a traumatised women who deals with her suffering by making outlandish sexual overtures to Johnson. Second, there is a rather melodramatic denouement (saved only from a wickedly funny cameo from Donald Sutherland.)

Still, this remains a beautifully filmed, well-written and astoundingly well-acted movie.

REIGN OVER ME is already on release in Australia, the US, Argentina, Sweden, Italy and the UK. It opens in Malaysia and Serbia on May 17th, in Spain on June 29th, in Brazil, Belgium, France and Singapore in July, in Germany, Norway and Finland in August.