AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY (2013)

Rated : R

STARS: Meryl Streep  , Julia Roberts,  Margo Martindale,  Juliette Lewis,  Julianne Nicholson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Abigail Breslin,  Ewan McGregor, Sam Shepard, Dermot Mulroney
DIRECTOR: John Wells
GENRE: Dark Comedy  

It's been said that all families are dysfunctional. Some are just better at keeping their dirty laundry from being sniffed by the neighbors. In August: Osage County,  Violet Weston (Meryl Streep) is the foul mouthed,  drug addicted matriarch of a dysfunctional family with a capital "D" that will get you to thinking that crazy old aunt Hattie wasn't so bad after all. It's all relative (pardon the pun).

Violet's hubby, Beverly, (Sam Shepard) has disappeared, and later turns up as a suicide.  Her  daughters Barbara, (Julia Roberts) Karen, (Juliettte Lewis) and Ivy (Julianne Nicholson) are summoned, with assorted "baggage"  in tow (a husband, a fiancee, a teenage daughter) to the old family home in  rural Oklahoma.  There is a funeral to attend. And later lots of bitching, bickering, recriminations,  put downs, name calling, obscenities flying like plates being smashed against the wall,  wrestling around on the floor, and so on.  All the things that families do during such solemn occasions.

   
Adapted from the Broadway play by Tracy Letts, August: Osage County keeps ratcheting up the tension until--if you are like me--you are sitting there completely fascinated, absorbed, and  dumbfounded by the bravura performances of Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts. Both deserve Oscars.  The rest of the cast ain't too shabby  neither,  including Juliette Lewis--one of my favorites ever since I saw her in the bizarre From Dusk Till Dawn. She always plays some type of bimbo, but she does it so well!

Fifty years from now, August: Osage County will be spoken of in the same breath as Streetcar Named Desire and other classic films that we look back upon today. 

That's how freaking good this movie is. 

Grade:  A

JILL'S TAKE

Compared to this family drama, Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Nightseems like "Little House On The Prairie." Funny as some of the dialog is, calling AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY a comedy is like calling chitlins haute cuisine. I particularly liked the portrait author Tracy Letts painted of Meryl Streep's character. Zonked out as she was on pills, nothing got past this woman. And I mean nothing. Despite her eldest daughter's happy facade, she knew her marriage was in shambles. She also knew that another daughter's latest beau (played to sleazy perfection by Dermot Mulroney) was up to no good. Every family secret was hers for the telling—and tell them she did. Over and over again. I haven't always been a Meryl Streep fan. My ex and I used to call her "Meryl Weep." But this time she outdid herself. Considering this is her 18^th Oscar nod she must be doing something right.

Not to sound like a theater snob but when I saw that this movie was originally a stage play, I breathed a sigh of relief—knowing the characters would be multi-dimensional and the lines they spoke would crackle with originality. An ensemble piece, AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY gives each actor a chance to shine. Chris Cooper plays an overly tolerant good ole boy brilliantly. His wife Mattie Fae, portrayed with faux joviality by Margo Martindale, is wonderful to watch. The only thing I might criticize (if forced to at gunpoint) was the ending. But I'll let you decide for yourself.

Grade:  A

  

MOTHER AND CHILD--2009

Rated: R

Stars: Annette Bening, Naomi Watts, Kerry Washington, Samuel L. Jackson

Director: Rodrigo Garcia

Genre: Drama

Rife with poignant moments and superb performances, Mother and Child follows the interconnected lives of three women: The middle-aged Karen, (Annette Bening) who bore a child at the age of 14 and gave it up for adoption; Her child as an adult, Elizabeth, (Naomi Watts); and Lucy, (Kerry Washington) a young woman anxious to adopt a child.

Annette Bening--who remains one of our most talented actresses--shines as a moody, difficult woman, haunted by her decision lo these many years. Naomi Watts has always been an "anything goes" film presence, (see Mullholland Drive) and she's still willing to bare a lot more than her soul. Her portrayal of a promiscuous, emotionally numb young woman is spot on.

What can sometimes be the emotionally devastating effects of the adoption game may be a bit overplayed here, but Mother and Child is a film with its heart in the right place.

Grade: B +

A LIFE LESS ORDINARY--Retro: 1997 (R)

Stars: Cameron Diaz, Ewan McGregor, Holly Hunter, Delroy Lindo

Director: Danny Boyle

Genre: Dark Comedy

Holly Hunter steals the show as a gun-toting, tobacco juice spitting emissary from heaven who, along with her sidekick, (Delroy Lindo) is on a mission to unite two unlikely bedfellows (Cameron Diaz and Ewan McGregor) in true romance.

Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) demonstrated his directorial prowess early on in this quirky, high energy romp that seeks to answer the question: IS LOVE MERELY AN EMOTIONAL ADAPTATION TO A PHYSICAL NECESSITY?

Retro Grade: B

AMELIA (PG)

Amelia Earhart loved freedom so much that she was willing to engage in the riskiest kind of behavior to obtain it: An unprecedented attempt to fly around the world in a smaller aircraft--inclement weather be damned--and on the last leg of her ill-fated journey, without adequate fuel. And because no official trace of her and navigator Fred Noonan was every found, (though in recent years some intriguing finds have rekindled speculation about her ultimate fate) her story has fascinated us for more than seventy years.

Everyone knows of the legend, and any film about Amelia Earhart that would have a chance to hold our interest at this point would necessarily need to focus as much on her personal life as her public persona. And that's what Amelia attempts to do. Oscar winner Hillary Swank, whose features are tailor made for playing masculine looking women--as in Boys Don't Cry, where she convincingly portrays a young girl posing as a young boy, until her duds come off to reveal that WHOA...she's ALL woman---has Amelia's look and accent nailed.

Richard Gere is publisher George Putnam, initially Earhart's P.R. guy, and later her husband, who seems content to be the "wind beneath her wings" and take a back seat to her celebrity. (Gere is  too flashy of a presence to be right for this subdued kind of personality, so he was likely selected for the role just to give the film more star power.) The dramatic tension of Earhart's personal life centers around her affair with eventual TWA founder Gene Vidal, (Ewan McGregor) and whether she will ultimately choose him or stand by her husband.  

Amelia has been knocked for not going into more detail about  Earhart's back story--it stays mainly with her role as a pioneering aviatrix and the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic--but it was the thirties, and every intimate detail of a celebrity's life wasn't hashed about in the media as it is today. There was an unwritten journalistic code about staying mum on embarrassing details of our "heroes" lives, which extended through John F. Kennedy's presidency. And so, life being more about the surface image than what's lies beneath it,  Earhart's rumored bisexuality is only hinted at in one line of dialogue, but this seems appropriate given the era in which she lived.

If Amelia Earhart's all consuming free-spiritedness  was the main thing director Mira Nair was trying to capture, she succeeded marvelously. Buoyed by a haunting and memorable score from Gabriel Yared,  the aerial shots--reminiscent of Out of Africa--are stunning.

If  there are tears to be shed viewing Amelia, (and there are) they're more about the awe-inspiring scope of Ms. Earhart's life, rather than her untimely demise.

GRADE:  B +