August: Osage County

"Katharine Hepburn once said that while watching Meryl Streep you could see the wheels turning in her head. That's a rare distraction, but it invades Streep's otherwise impressive turn as a pill-addled matriarch in Tracy Letts' adaptation of his Pulitzer-Prize-winning play. Streep so inhabits the complex Violet in August: Osage County that it's virtually impossible to envision anyone else in the role, let alone focus on the other stars in the film. But as she rides the highs and lows of the meds, her performance teeters between the brilliant and the OTT."

"This two-ton prestige pic won't win the hearts of highbrow critics or those averse to door-slamming, plate-smashing, top-of-the-lungs histrionics, but as a faithful filmed record of Letts' play, one could have scarcely hoped for better."

"The movie may be all ephemerally simple pleasures when compared to the play's durable grand statements-but they're pleasures nonetheless."

"It is possible that Mr. Wells has simply mishandled the material, riding roughshod over subtleties and muffling bravura moments."

"[Writer] Letts is one of the most formidable talents around today, but in handling his screenplay with such kid gloves, Wells puts a passenger in the driver's seat."

"Roberts is startlingly effective in her grim, hard-driving role... At its best, the story does subtly communicate the sensation that all these characters are the stars of their own bigger worlds. But it’s all more grotesque than immersive."

"An entertaining adaptation, delivering flavorful rewards in some sharp supporting turns that flank the central mother-daughter adversaries."