August: Osage County

Grade: B+

August: Osage County is a touching, saddening, and unexpectedly disturbing family drama about…family drama. Based on a play, it is part of what I hope will be a continued tradition of the play-turned-movie. I got the vibe that very little was changed from the stage version. A:OC is masterfully and beautifully filmed with the best ensemble acting I’ve seen in a movie this past year. Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, Dermot Mulroney, Benedict Cumberbatch, Juliette Lewis, Ewan McGregor, Sam Shepard, and everybody else are top-notch. I recommend everybody see it, especially if you’re not normally a theater-goer. It’s good exercise for the typical movie-goer’s attention span. In the end, things unravel and remain that way, to the point where it feels unfinished. They say you should leave your audience wanting more rather than less, and boy did it ever. There’s a fine line between that and being left unsatisfied.

Grade: B+