I still have to see "Her" and "All is Lost". I'm interested in Joaquin Phoenix's acting and that of Robert Redford as well. Both have amazing screen presence and usually pick interesting scripts. Because a friend of mine wanted to see it, I watched "August: Osage County". It was embarrassing. Meryl Streep did every dramatic mannerism imaginable. I know her character was meant to be over the top, but I cringed. She's received a lot of flack, but it seems to me the play is not interesting. It piles on cliched meladramatic twist after twist, all predictable, and the language is supposed to shock us, but it's boring instead. Since the playwright wrote the screenplay, I feel the problems are with the material. Perhaps Streep was trying to save or elevate the script, or, she lost her mind. It's all like a bad soap opera, and such a downer, that is, if I cared about the characters. I don't really, though the cast is superfine. Julia Roberts shines as a believable person, but nobody is given enough back story or screen time to be more than a shadow except Roberts and Streep. It might as well have gone all the way and become a horror movie. Just an inch or two further. "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane" comes to mind. Then I wouldn't have bothered to go see it, and I wouldn't want my money back.
Robert Redford may be right when he stated that "All is Lost" had terrible distribution. Certainly, "August" has been hyped to the gills and in our faces for months. It seems the strategy was to have so much hyperbole that we were snowed, and couldn't tell a skunk from a cat. The promoters must think we are really, really stupid.
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