August: Osage County

from "New Yorker" January 13, 2014 issue:
The director John Wells’s adaptation of Tracy Letts’s play sits awkwardly on the screen. Set in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, in 2007, the main body of the movie takes place after Beverly Weston (Sam Shepard), a onetime poet and full-time alcoholic, has committed suicide. His widow, Violet Weston (Meryl Streep), a malevolent and witty pill-head, zonked half the time but devastating when she’s in focus, remains in the house, triumphant that she has survived her husband. Violet is joined by her three daughters—an unhappy cynic (Julia Roberts), a bland saint (Julianne Nicholson), and a ditz with dreadful taste in men (Juliette Lewis)—and a variety of husbands and children. The structural lines of the play remain clear. Boy, are they clear—virtually every scene cries, “This is a play!” The characters are boxed in by the fixed setting, by closeups and reaction shots, and by the inexorable pace of the editing; Streep, hardening her voice, shouting, and speaking some lines with whacking emphasis, gives a rare bad performance. Roberts is first-rate as the unhappy daughter who is horrified to find herself turning into her mother.—David Denby (1/6/14) (In limited release.)

Peter Travers of Rolling Stone likes it better: http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/reviews/august-osage-county-20131224