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August: Osage County | 2013 | R | - 3.4.7

Family members come together in their Oklahoma childhood home after the disappearance of their father. The toxic environment, now presided over by their mother (Meryl Streep), brings out their complicated secrets. Also with Julia Roberts, Chris Cooper, Ewan McGregor, Margo Martindale, Sam Shepard, Dermot Mulroney, Julianne Nicholson, Juliette Lewis, Abigail Breslin, Benedict Cumberbatch and Misty Upham. Directed by John Wells. [2:01]

SEX/NUDITY 3 - A man and a 14-year-old girl smoke marijuana together and he stands very close to her and blows smoke into her mouth; we then see him with his robe open (his bare chest and abdomen are visible) and he places his hands under her shirt in the back (please see the Violence/Gore category for more details).
 A man and a woman kiss and he caresses her clothed buttocks. A husband touches his wife's clothed knee and she says, "Don't."
 We hear that a man has had an affair with a younger woman and that he and his wife are now separated. A woman talks about her mother having had many suitors and that one of them tried to beat her as a child with a claw hammer. A woman talks about her boyfriend cheating on her. A woman talks about when she first fell in love with her husband. A woman talks about a high school relationship and that she and a teen boy stayed up all night "talkin' and kissin'." A woman talks about when she was younger and she would pretend that a pillow was her husband and that they were going to get married.
 A woman talks about her mother smuggling pills into a psychiatric hospital by hiding them in her vagina and uses several descriptive and crude anatomical terms. A woman greets a teen girl and says, "Look at your boobs."
 A woman wears short and low-cut dresses that reveal bare legs to the thigh and cleavage in several scenes. A woman wears a low-cut dress that reveals cleavage, bare back and shoulders.

VIOLENCE/GORE 4 - There are many scenes of emotional violence, tense arguing, cruel insults and lots of shouting.
 A man places his hands under a ten girl's shirt in the back (please see the Sex/Nudity category for more details) and a woman sees them and with a shovel strikes him several times and he falls to the ground yelling in pain (we see no blood but one character says, "You're bleeding").
 A woman yells at her adult daughter who threatens to take away her pills and she says, "I'll eat you alive"; the daughter then tackles the woman to the floor and wrestles her pill vial from her hand (other family members get entangled but no one appears injured).
 A woman yells at her mother and gets very close to her face. A wife yells at her husband in front of another woman. A teen girl yells at her mother who is sleeping after the phone rings and the woman makes a derogatory comment about the girl's father. A husband and his wife (they're separated) argue bitterly about an affair he had with a younger woman. A woman yells at her granddaughter and says, "If I had called my mother a liar she would have knocked my [expletive deleted] head off my shoulders." A man spills a dish of food on the floor and his mother yells at him and insults him. A woman insults and mocks her adult son in several scenes. A woman throws several pill bottles at a doctor and threatens him by saying she'll report him to the medical board.
 A woman berates her adult daughter for not wearing makeup and straightening her hair; she says, "You look like a lesbian." A woman says of a young man, "You have to be smart to be complicated." A woman threatens to burn a man's books as punishment for leaving. A woman yells at her adult daughters and tells them that "parents have favorites." A woman tells her adult daughter that the daughter's father was disappointed in her because he thought she "settled." A woman blames her adult daughter for her father committing suicide. A woman yells at her mother in several scenes for her drug use, abuse and addiction. A woman tells her teen daughter to "Die after me. Just survive." A woman teases a man about having been married before. A woman's adult daughter tells her that she and her siblings will just wait until she dies and they'll get all her belongings for free. A husband threatens to leave his wife if she doesn't stop belittling their adult son. A woman talks about having been attacked by a man with a claw hammer and that another woman jumped in the way and has dents in her skull to show for it. A woman tells a story about her mother being extremely cruel when giving her a Christmas gift. A woman talks about her deceased husband having lived out of a car for the first 6 years of his life. Family members tease a teen girl about being a vegetarian. A woman asks a Native American woman "Are you an Injun?" A woman says, "I have an Indian in my house." A man talks about having worked in slaughterhouse sanitation. A woman tells a story about her mother having three parakeets who died because the woman keeps her house hot. A woman tells a story about a teen boy's father getting drunk and stealing the boy's car. We hear that a woman has been diagnosed with mouth cancer. We hear that a man has gone missing. A woman tells a story about her husband being drunk at a conference and that he "fouled himself." A man talks about soiling his under garments and that it ."..gets in the way of his drinking." A woman says that as women age they get old, fat and wrinkly.
 We see a sheriff talking to a man and a woman; the woman collapses and the man catches and holds her (we understand that they have been told that her father was found dead).
 A woman appears disoriented and runs away from her daughters; she then collapses in a field and cries. A woman with mouth cancer complains that her tongue is on fire. A woman under the influence of prescription drugs stumbles and nearly falls.
 We see a dead body being undressed and prepared for a funeral; the man's bare foot and hand are seen. People gather at a man's funeral.
 A woman gags in a car and asks the driver to pull over; the passenger gets out of the car and vomits on the side of the road (we hear gagging and coughing).

LANGUAGE 7 - About 27 F-words and its derivatives, 1 stuttered and not fully enunciated F-word, 2 sexual references, 20 scatological terms, 12 anatomical terms, 14 mild obscenities, 2 derogatory terms for Native Americans, name-calling (flat hot nothing, jokers, dope-smoker, brain sick, ugly, adversarial, selfish, self-righteous, smug little ingrate, loser, lesbian, damaged, cock-sure, mean nasty old lady, Pippy Longstocking), exclamations (shut-up), 25 religious profanities (GD), 8 religious exclamations (e.g. Oh My God, Thank God, Holy [scatological term deleted], Christ, Why In God's Name?, Jesus Christ, Jesus).

SUBSTANCE USE - A woman is shown to be under the influence of prescription drugs in several scenes, a woman takes several pills at the same time in several scenes, a man tells a woman whom he is interviewing for a job that his wife "takes pills, sometimes very many" and that he drinks (we see a glass of alcohol on his desk), a man lists the many prescription drugs that his wife is taking including Valium and Oxycotin, a man and a teen girl smoke marijuana together and he blows some smoke into her mouth, a woman talks about a man smoking a lot of grass in a couple of scenes, and a man leans over to sniff a teen girl and he accuses her of having smoked marijuana which she denies and he then offers to give her some marijuana. A woman drinks a glass of whiskey and a man drinks beers from the bottle, a wife says of her missing husband that she thought he had gone out on a bender, a woman tells a story about a teen boy's father getting drunk and taking the boy's car, people drink wine at a family dinner, three women drink wine while talking around a table, a man buys wine from a liquor store and a woman talks about buying a 6-pack in high school. A woman (with mouth cancer) smokes cigarettes in her home in many scenes, a man lights a cigarette for a woman and she smokes it, a 14-year-old girl tells her parents that "I'm gonna grab a smoke" and we see her light a cigarette, a woman smokes cigarettes at a dinner table, a man smokes a cigarette outside, and a woman smokes a cigarette in a car.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Estranged families, suicide, drug abuse and addiction, alcohol abuse and addiction, divorce, infidelity, depression, Oklahoma, genocide, mystery, first love, parent/child relationships, abusive relationships, doctors writing prescriptions for elderly patients, emotional abuse, self-absorption, planning the future, cynicism, first cousins in relationships, incest, mild cognitive impairment, disappointment, strength, emotional violence, abandonment, parenting, instilling character, cruelty, cervical cancer, cancer.

MESSAGE - People can be immensely cruel and unhappy.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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