August: Osage County

Pill-popping queen bitch Meryl Streep abstractedly deals with her poet husband's suicide in Tracy Letts's adaptation of his own Pulitzer Prize-winning stage smash. Meanwhile, Streep's long-suffering family exposes festering wounds, rehash bitter feuds and reveal long-buried secrets in attempts to restore stability at the Oklahoma wake. But this latest episode in the playwright's torn dysfunctional family manual (after Killer Joe and Bug) finds its dark satire on American society blunted into a southern-fried screaming match. It's histrionic rather than involving, evoking more trailer trash Dallas than Tennessee Williams. But the members of the stellar cast are each given their moment to shine in the sweltering spotlight, with Chris Cooper's moving plea over his wife's shabby treatment of their son, Benedict Cumberbatch, trouncing the expected diva fireworks from Oscar nominees Streep and Julia Roberts. Director John Wells makes it eminently watchable, but with every crippling emotional issue from abuse and incest to infidelity covered by rote, it all comes across as risk-averse, over-baked and hollow.