August: Osage County is about morally flawed, sometimes cruel, and often unlikable women. And that's what makes August: Osage County good.

| Jan 20, 2021

Nothing makes you feel better about your dysfunctional family at the holidays than watching a messed-up clan unravel on screen, only armed with better zingers and prettier faces. That describes this adaptation of Tracy Letts's star-studded drama.

| Original Score: 3.4 | Sep 12, 2014

The film's director, John Wells... is never able to escape from the theatrical origins of this over-heated drama, though lovers of the Edward Albee style of marital confrontation will doubtless revel in the melodrama

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Feb 6, 2014

Streep goes for it like Elizabeth Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, but ratcheted up at least 467 times.

| Feb 5, 2014

It is often hard to know if one is laughing at intentional jokes or bad writing, but the sheer couch-chewing craziness of the enterprise certainly sets it apart.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 26, 2014

This is a movie about crummy mummies in which everyone looks their age. That will strike many as a downer but I was left wanting more.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 24, 2014

The movie version of Tracy Letts's award-winning Broadway stage play looks classy, but doesn't add up to anything very nourishing.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 23, 2014

Two hours of talking-head-shots logorrhoea.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 23, 2014

This star-studded shout-off generates none of the heat and intensity of Tracy Letts' stage play.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jan 23, 2014

This star-studded loopy melodrama is brash, foul-mouthed, self-consciously offensive, intermittently insightful and has a gaping hole where its heart should be.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 21, 2014

It takes a while to get going and never outstrips its theatrical origins but gets by on great actors working through meaty scenes. See it for Streep vs Redford alone.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 20, 2014

Designed as one big, sloppy thesp-a-thon, the film adaptation of August: Osage County interprets one of the past decade's most overly hyped dramas with the conviction usually lavished on top-drawer Eugene O'Neill.

| Jan 14, 2014

With so many scenes that end in harsh emotional purging, there's little opportunity for the cast to put the fun in dysfunctional.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 11, 2014

The film's acting ensemble really kicks out the jams.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jan 10, 2014

Although a couple of performances here may earn Oscar nominations, by the time you've sat through the wreckage, you're left with the sense that this really must have worked better onstage.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 10, 2014

Letts loves manic people, twisted situations and barbed lines that cut with glee and he's disturbingly good at delivering all three.

| Original Score: B+ | Jan 10, 2014

It is Roberts who makes August: Osage County watchable, and more: As Barbara, the actress' wariness and weariness, her caustic humor - deployed to hide a deep sadness - all ring true.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 10, 2014

Watching it, you may feel like slipping out of the room, closing the door quietly behind you.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jan 9, 2014

Not a great movie but a fine guilty pleasure of acting excess.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 9, 2014

The problem was that director John Wells did not understand the play, or at the very least, he did not make his actors understand the play, even at its most basic level.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 9, 2014