Joan Allen has been nominated for, but has never won, three Oscars: Best Actress for "The Contender," and Best Supporting Actress for "Nixon" and "The Crucible." She was not nominated for "Pleasantville," but surely she was worthy. And this year, we've already seen her show her range as a nudist hippie in "Off the Map." She is, as they say the Real Deal. But it is clips of "The Upside of Anger" that I hope will be shown at next year's Academy Awards ceremony, and while it's too early in 2005 to be calling for a deserving winner, there's no question Allen ought to be nominated. For if five actresses deliver performances in the next nine months that are MORE fine-tuned, more engaging, more emotionally effective than Allen's in "The Upside of Anger," then I will be astonished. Allen plays Terry Wolfmeyer, an upper-class housewife in suburban Detroit for whom the term "housewife" seems inadequate. It's true she doesn't work outside the home, but she has the demeanor of a high-powered executive or a corporate lawyer. With her patrician face, withering stare, and ever-present glass of liquor, she is the very picture of bourgeois anger. She could kill a person with just her eyes -- and in one brief, hysterical fantasy scene, she does just that.
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