MikeBinder Tagged Articles at Cinematical

For a guy who's usually at his best when he writes about male relationships, The Friday Night Knitting Club was probably the last project I expected Mike Binder to be involved in. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Reign Over Me director has been hired to adapt Kate Jacobs' popular novel for the big screen, with Julia Roberts attached to produce and star. Knitting Club is similar in nature to Binder's The Upside of Anger -- both feature single moms who find themselves in a situation where they are forced to juggle several responsibilities at once; in this case, it's running a knitting store while raising a teenage daughter.

Currently, no director is attached, though I imagine Binder would be up for the part if he turns in a dynamite script. One of the reasons why I think Binder was hired for the job, and might also snag the helming gig, is because the film (and book) is set in New York City -- where, lately, these little knitting shops are all the rage. There aren't many writer-directors who truly know how to capture a city; to use its tenacious beauty as a character within the film. Woody Allen and Martin Scorsese are the NYC masters (though both men have recently expanded their repertoires by setting their films in other cities across the globe). While Binder isn't quite at that level, Reign Over Me showed he's more than capable of providing an enjoyable NYC-based film. I've always been a Binder fan (that first season of Mind of a Married Man was freaking hilarious), and would totally support his directing Knitting Club. Here's hoping he knows how to knit -- most of the guys I know are clueless when it comes to that stuff.

Something unusual happens watching Reign Over Me, the new post-9/11 drama from writer-director Mike Binder (The Upside of Anger); the longer you have to actually think about it, the more diminished it becomes in your view. There's no denying that Reign Over Me is well-intentioned and well-acted, thanks to lead performances from Adam Sandler and Don Cheadle; at the same time, Reign Over Me feels a little off, with more than a few holes in it that become apparent viewed from a distance.

New York Dentist Alan Johnson (Cheadle) has it all -- great wife, great family, successful career. Having it all is, in fact, driving him a little nuts; where's the room for him to be him? One night, by chance, he sees his old college roommate Charlie Fineman (Sandler) on the street; Alan and Charlie fell out of touch a bit after school, and Charlie's been off the map completely since his wife and three children were killed on one of the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center on 9/11. Charlie is a mess -- tic-ridden, hunched into his headphones, blotchy and haggard -- but after a few more chance meetings, he and Alan do connect, over video games, all-night jam sessions, Mel Brooks movie marathons. Alan's retreating to juvenilia because adult life is crushing him; Charlie is mired in it because it's all he has left.

Much as P.T. Anderson did in Punch-Drunk Love, Binder takes Sandler's two most prominent comedic assets -- mumble-mouthed child-like meanderings and unglued, irrational rage -- and turns them into dramatic ones. Cheadle is, as ever, rock-solid; Alan's not irresponsible, and he's not a bad husband, but he thinks he could use a break, and Cheadle gets to not only deliver a few sterling laugh lines but also do some subtler, more affecting acting.