August: Osage County Review

RYAN: Based on the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning Best Play on Broadway, August: Osage County has been adapted to the big screen by the same writer, Tracy Letts.  It boasts one of the fanciest casts of the year – Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Ewan McGregor, Juliette Lewis, Dermot Mulroney, Abigail Breslin and more!  I missed this on Broadway and really regret it now because it’s so amazing. I love it.  I’ve seen it three times already.  It’s riveting.

CHUCK: The Gods of cinema have smiled down on this cast, getting the right people in the right parts.  All just fantastic.  I want to see it again too; to truly get everything that was happening.  It’s so powerful.

RYAN: More sinks in with repeated viewings.  It’s not hard to follow, but it’s so dramatically intense that you marvel at the energy of it more than getting the details the first time around.

CHUCK: Some of the dialogue is so shocking that you lose your focus a bit sometimes in the sheer drama.

RYAN: I like these performances so much that at times I would almost zone out from the story and just enjoy the feats of the actors.  I was cheering them on the way you would a live sporting event, like, “Yeah Meryl!! You’re nailing this moment!”  I thought that in my head, anyway.  And how fun it must have been to be Julia Roberts, reading the script, knowing you’re gonna get to say these lines to Meryl Streep, no less!  This movie is craymazing.  It gave me the chills.

CHUCK: That is a great way of saying it.  I did, too, during scenes that were these verbally-violent outbursts.  It’s so real and so dysfunctional.

RYAN: You hit the nail on the head.  The script is so real and it’s all about family dysfunction and certainly to the point that no matter how messed up your own family is, this one is so much worse.  Most movies have confrontational scenes but the dialogue in this movie and the family scenes here are more realistically spoken.  You may or may not see elements of yourself or your own family in these characters but it’s deep.

CHUCK: Absolutely. It’s organic.  You can feel the history these characters share because of how good the acting is, so strong.  There’s a lot of subtext going on between the characters.

RYAN: It all comes back to the script.  It’s such a notch above all other adapted screenplays.  I can’t even imagine voting for anything else.  I even wanted to vote this for Best Picture at the Critics’ Choice Awards but it didn’t get the nomination.  As far as performances go, it’s cliche to say Meryl is as good as she is or that she’s the best out there and yet, once again, she’s created something not only truly original but seemingly better than anything else she’s done before. It’s crazy.  She’s crazy, crazy-amazing!  This role stands out even among her best work.

CHUCK: I would dare to say this is her best performance because it’s so raw and ballsy and ugly.  There’s little redeeming quality for her character and yet there’s a sliver of empathy she makes you feel for her.

RYAN: She has layers and she’s so capable of conveying that. I loved Julia Roberts for her as a scene partner.

CHUCK: They totally went head to head.

RYAN: It’s Julia’s best work since Erin Brockovich. All the women were phenomenal in this movie.

CHUCK: There was not a weak link in the casting.

RYAN: I love how stretched Juliette Lewis is.  She really played against type here.  She’s a Barbie doll in denial on the edge!

CHUCK: I’ve always loved her and she’s just brilliant here. And Julianne Nicholson – so great!

RYAN: I’ve loved her since she was on season 5 of TV’s Ally McBeal. It’s so wonderful to see her in the big leagues in this film!

CHUCK: And holding her own.

RYAN: She does a lot of reacting in this movie and it’s unbelievable.

CHUCK: In general, I’m just blown away by the movie.  My only problem was that the performances were a bit above the capacity of the director.

RYAN: John Wells, he has done mostly TV.  It’s produced by George Clooney, with whom he worked on ER.  He’s not the most experienced movie director, but the cinematography is nice.  I liked the set design.  That home is so lived in.

CHUCK: It was great.  And Misty Upham as the cook was like the Greek Chorus, a lot was seen from her perspective.

RYAN:  She’s the one outsider.

CHUCK: I loved her.

RYAN: It’s such a deep movie that will move you in one way or another, disturb you maybe.   It’s expertly acted and brilliantly written.  I’m just in awe of this film.  Such a treat seeing some of the best actors today working with such juice.  I wanted to applaud at the end, like the play.

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