Joan Allen

2005 – The Upside of Anger

  • Title: The Upside of Anger
  • IMDb: link

The Upside of AngerReleased ten years ago, writer/director Mike Binder‘s The Upside of Anger is an underrated film built around a terrific performance by Joan Allen as the pissed-off matriarch of a family struggling to keep it together after her husband has disappeared (presumably to live with his secretary in Sweden). The woman’s life is further complicated by varying states of disrepair of her relationships with her three daughters (Erika Christensen, Keri Russell, Alicia Witt, and Evan Rachel Wood) and a burgeoning romantic relationship to a former Major League pitcher turned radio host (Kevin Costner) who, despite the woman’s rough edges, quickly falls for Terry and her family.

Along with Allen’s performance (arguably the best of her career as the unlikable but somehow still lovable Terry) the film gives each of the daughters strong roles dealing in their own ways with their mother’s constantly boiling disposition. Russell, Christensen, and Witt each bring something different to their roles as Evan Rachel Wood shines as the youngest sibling who is forced to grow up too quickly due to her father’s abscence and mother’s consequent behavior.

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The Bourne Legacy

  • Title: The Bourne Legacy
  • IMDB: link

the-bourne-legacy-poster"It’s interesting to note that the further we go into the Jason Bourne movie series the further and further we get from writer Robert Ludlum‘s original creation. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as the movies have been entertaining, but although there’s certainly a lot to like about the latest entry into the franchise that swaps Jeremy Renner for Matt Damon, it’s no doubt the weakest movie delivered so far.

The Bourne Legacy spends an awfully long time (most of the film’s first half-hour) trying to make the film’s events fit into the storylines of the second and third Bourne films. That means we start out when a surprising amount of exposition and a barrage of quick cuts (seriously, at times this movie feels like it was edited by George Lucas on speed). The result is far from as seamless as I’d like. This also means we have to wait quite a long time to see Renner in action (unless you count the clips where he’s channeling Liam Neeson‘s character from The Grey).

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A Convict’s Wet Dream

  • Death Race
  • IMDb: link

“So do what you do best.  Drive.”

Hitting the theaters in the ass-end of summer (not good for an action flick) comes Death Race.  I’m not sure what Joan Allen is doing here, or even Jason Statham, but there’s little that justifies the remake of the Harvey Corman film or yet another tale about convicts killing each other for the camera.  But at least it’s better than The Condemned (read that review).

The economy of the United States has collapsed.  In this near future (roughly four years from today) prisons are run by cooperations, for a profit.  Though what type of cooperation would go for this is never explained (gee, I wonder why Budweiser wouldn’t want to be marketed in the film?).

Unemployment is out an all-time high and the most watched program on the air is a pay-per-view Internet program which involves prisoners fighting for their lives.  Hmm… haven’t we seen something like this before, once, twice, three times, or more?

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Bourne Again

  • Title: The Bourne Ultimatum
  • IMDB: link

“I remember…I remember everything.”

bourne-ultimatum-posterWhen I heard the words above in the trailer chills went up my spine.  I enjoyed The Bourne Identity (read December’s review) but I was blown away by the second installment The Bourne Supremacy.  So here was the sequel I was waiting for all summer.  The result was a good, though slightly disappointing, film that is still better than most of the sequels this year.

We begin, seconds after Jason Bourne’s (Matt Damon) survival in the tunnel, with his escape from Russian police.  The final scene from The Bourne Supremacy, the phone conversation between Bourne and Pamela Landy (Joan Allen) is later expertly woven into the main plot of this film.  From there we move to the shadowy government forces still attempting to track Bourne down and hide the dirty secrets which are locked in his brain.  Both Allen and Julia Stiles return, and although Stiles is given a larger (and somewhat continuity-questionable) role, Allen is demoted into the lone good guy in a room full of snakes who will do whatever it takes to keep their dirty little secrets hidden.

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Top 10 Films of 2005 (That You Probably Missed)

As I made up my list of my top ten films of the year I noticed something – not one was a box office hit in terms of Hollywood executive standards.  None of my ten grossed $100 million at the box office, in fact only one grossed more than $50 million.  Though most pulled in an excess of what it took to make, or at least enough to break even, very few people saw the films that I would consider to be the class of 2005.

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