August: Osage County (2013)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on December 30, 2013 @ tonymacklin.net.

August: Osage County is the most unpleasant film of the year. It's two hours of bilious caterwauling.

It may have worked on the stage, but on film it's a sour mess.

It's for people who enjoy witless pettiness, withering spite, and unrelenting mean-spiritedness.

August: Osage County has a notable cast, but they are undone by the direction of John Wells and the screenplay by Tracy Letts, who adapted his stage play. Letts quotes T.S. Eliot, but he writes like BS Letts.

Meryl Streep snorts and yells.

Margo Martindale snorts and yells.

Julia Roberts frowns and yells.

British actor Benedict Cumberbatch - who has played Sherlock Holmes and Julian Assange and voiced the dragon Smaug - does his impression of Dagwood Bumstead.

Sam Shepard is out of there early.

Chris Cooper stays to suffer.

The audience has to decide whether to leave with Shepard or stay and suffer with Cooper.

August: Osage County is the stumbling story of a family under extreme, self-inflicted duress in the boondocks of Oklahoma. It even stoops to inbreeding.

As one of the characters says, "The air in here just doesn't move."

August: Osage County is vulgar and airless.