August: Osage County (2013)

There’s no escape from the close meanness in the film adaptation of Tracy Letts’ 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, August: Osage County. Even by Letts’ standards — he’s the mastermind behind Bug, the accomplished 2006 one-room paranoid freak-out directed by William Friedkin and starring Ashley Judd and Michael Shannon — this is an oppressive and histrionic affair. Read the rest of the review here.