Wells' "August: Osage County" / connection: Mike Nichols' "Who Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" plus Elia Kazan's "A Streetcar Named Desire"

There was only one way for John Wells to direct Tracy Letts’ iconic, imposing 2007 play “August: Osage County” – it won both the Pulitzer Prize and the Tony – and that was head-on, much in the same way that Elia Kazan and Mike Nichols handled their respective films of Tennessee Williams’ “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1951) and Edward Albee’s “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (1966). These are all seminal works in which stylized, outsized acting is not just the norm, it's a requirement.

In some ways, it's a show-biz tradition that Wells and company honor and continue.

Theatergoers have traditionally understood and appreciated the "affront" of over-the-top, passionate performances - as did moviegoers in the 1950s and '60s. Elizabeth Taylor won an Oscar for chewing the scenery in "Virginia Woolfe," deliciously so, and Marlon Brandon's performance in "Streetcar" (perhaps now seen as a caricature) set the standard for method (read: unnaturalistic) acting.  Even while those performances and those films are still considered "classic," matters are different today, given that moviegoers and critics alike are more cynical and less adventurous - and less likely to recognize a modern-day equivalent. They may fancy themselves educated and sophisticated when they really aren't.

"August: Osage County" is a willfully old-fashioned, flamboyant drama of rampant familial dysfunction that rather effortlessly melds the expected "power" of such a piece with some uncharacteristic subtlety and modesty.  It is not an accident that it's most powerful moments are not those of domestic terrors spoken with a roar but those murmured in hushed tones. It was planned that way by Letts who did his own exacting adaptation.

Letts, who also moonlights as an actor, apparently has an affinity for such incendiary material:  Going full circe, he played George in the recent lauded Broadway revival of Albee's "Virginia Woolf," directed by Pam MacKinnon and for which Letts won the Tony for Best Actor (2012).

The plot for "August: Osage County" is undisguised, naked in fact.  An unexpected death, a suicide, is the motivation for an unwelcomed family reunion among the Weston clan of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, also euphemistically known as The Plains - the cancer-ridden, drug-addled Violet Weston (Meryl Streep) and her three damaged daughters, Barbara (Julia Roberts), Ivy (Julianne Nicholson) and Karen (Juliette Lewis).

There are  husbands and boyfriends, but they don't really count.  This is a hellish matriarchy that thrives on equal parts of denial and confrontation.  Spiking this homemade stew with some whiskey is Violet's sister Mattie Fae (Margo Martindale), whose husband Charlie (Chris Cooper), a decent man woefully aware of the disrepair at hand, is the lone voice of reason.

The film's bravura centerpiece, as on stage, is a contentious family dinner that ends with Barbara literally lunging at Violet, physically attacking her and making it clear exactly who's in charge now.  The moment, a showstopper, shocks even Barbara who, wrestling with the prospect of losing her unfaithful husband (Ewan McGregor), now realizes that she is quickly turning into her mother - hardened, bitter and unforgiving.

Barbara is startled and appalled by what's happened to her.

There's a lot of grand acting in "August: Osage County," but the film belongs to Roberts who, in arguably her best performance ever, manages to evoke both pity and terror.  Taking a risk that few actresses her age would even consider, Roberts makes her angry misery visible.  There's no dazzling smile here.  She plays a woman who thought she escaped Pawkuska, failed in that escape (namely, her marriage) and now, forced to return, finds that it's not a matter of her being sucked back into the craziness but that she never really left. This is a major performance.

The nominal star of the film's impressive ensemble is, of course, Streep and like Taylor in "Virginia Woolf" and every other actress who has played Violet on stage, she's there to tear into Letts' choice script as if it's raw meat and she's been starving.  She plays, as they say, to the last row in the balcony, as befitting the material, but pro that she is, Streep knows when to pull back and act with just her eyes, which define her Violet.  She may have a wicked mouth, but there's constant fear in her eyes.

Also memorable are Nicholson in a quiet, affecting turn as Ivy, and the ever-reliable Martindale who, in another movieland scenario, would have played Violet.  But she makes a potent Mattie Fae, who can go from being warm and fuzzy to being a bully, scarily so, and makes the transition in a way that you cannot catch her "acting."  Her chemistry with Streep is effortless; they are sisters - in all their weaknesses and failures.

Note in Passing:  "August: Osage County" has opened to largely positive reviews, although there are those few who don't "get" the film's histrionics.  (Hey, that's the point, guys.)  More curious are those who have made the point of noting (perhaps bragging) that they never bothered to see the play.  Why?  What's the purpose? Perhaps an unconscious attempt to diminish the play's not inconsiderable reputation?

This proclivity brings to mind those hunters who relish the accomplishment of bringing down elephants.  It gives them a sense of prowess. Here, it's a way to minimize the play's laurels, not to mention the film's intimidating cast, while also elevating oneself. Having been one longer than it's reasonably healthy to be, I recognize that critics prefer films that need their support. "August: Osage County" clearly doesn't fall into that camp.

Credit: Claire Folger / The Weinstein Company

Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street"

Credit: Mary Cybulski / Paramount Pictures 

The intoxication of greed and excess that Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street" shares with its viewer is woozily addictive.  While the out-of-control lead character on screen - that would be a brilliant Leonardo DiCaprio in a wildly solipsistic, mesmerizing performance - and his cohorts routinely snort cocaine off the breasts, derrieres and privates of willing young women, the audience gets high on the complicity of it all.

Clocking in at a challenging, self-indulgent three hours (which, oddly, hardly seems enough), this modern operatic debauch is an attempt by Scorsese and his scenarist Terence Winter to showcase The Decline of the American Empire in all its naked, hollowed, self-hating glory, and to say that Scorsese nails it is a naive and rather foolish understatement.

Money here is worse than the root of all evil - it's rot. And at the center of this rot - and responsible for most of it - is DiCaprio's character, Jordan Belfort, a real-life stock trader so sociopathically crooked and so oblivious to his daily crimes that he almost seems like an innocent.  Belfort, by all accounts, couldn't care less whether his clients made money, so long as his cut was intact.  And his specialty wasn't fleecing the wealthy, but the struggling working man who he finessed into investing in crummy penny stocks. Even his supportive first wife, the sweet Teresa (Cristin Milioti), is empathetic enough to wonder why Jordan is targeting people who can't afford to lose money.  Her decency gets in his way and she's out.

Enabling him are people who should know better (his father, played by Rob Reiner); those who invariably wise up (his Barbie-doll second wife, played by a terrific Margot Robbie, above); those who share his lack of scruples and dubious values (his friend and business partner Donnie Azoff, played to perfection by Jonah Hill), and those who impressed him in the wrong way (Matthew McConaughey, below with DiCaprio,  in an extended cameo).  But Jordan is way beyond control, and the movie depicting his rise, fall and kinda redemption is as outsized and excessive as he is.

"The Wolf of Wall Street" is like a big, brassy musical, but in lieu of production numbers, there's one outrageous orgy after another, with Scorsese serving as choreographer, caterer and maître d'.

But unlike your typical impresario, Scorsese eschews a big finish in favor of a series of telling scenes, one of which is of the F.B.I. agent (Kyle Chandler) who busted Belfort sitting in a subway car on his way home after a day's work - a sort of prison that Belfort smirkily refers to earlier in the film. A big finish, no. But it's appropriately quiet - and haunting.

Russell's "American Hustle"

Credit: Francois Duhamel / Columbia Pictures 

David O. Russell's compulsively watchable "American Hustle" could be taken for the unhealthy spawn of Martin Scorsese's "GoodFellas" and John Badham's "Saturday Night Fever."  It's a crime film but it dances.

Directed by a man both delighted with and driven by the wild theatricality of his juicy material, "American Hustle" is ostensibly about the Abscam scandal of the 1970s, which as Russell sees it, was an extravaganza of pitched acting, with F.B.I. agents, scam artists and politicians as members of a game ensemble.  It was a scandal, yes, but also something of a Shakespearean comedy with colorful characters pairing off, double- and triple-crossing and entrapping each other and often taking time off to party. And David O. Russell, serving as a master dramatist of his story's many little and big skirmishes, directs it all with a pop rapture.

Abetting him every step of the way is a hugely companionabe cast of actors who shine individually and in tandem. Christian Bale, by sheer willfulness and talent, turns his con man Irving Rosenfeld, a potential vulgarian, into an unexpected (and unexpectedly poignant) romantic hero; Bradley Cooper brings a pent-up physicality to his F.B.I. agent, a man as quirky as he is ambitious; Jeremy Renner finds a certain innocence in his cluelessly corrupt politician, and Jennifer Lawrence plays a Jersey provocatrice with a cartoon verve Frank Tashlin would have appreciated.

Best of all, however, is Amy Adams, an exquisite actress with apparently no vanity.  Her Sydney Prosse, working in cahoots with Irving, is both startled and appalled by what she lets herself do.  She does not exactly find the sleaze of her situation unpleasant or unappealing. She is the mistress of her own debauch and, as Adams plays it, we're with her every step of the way, cheering for her success.  Adams tears into this role as if it were a raw slab of meat and she triumphantly devours it.

With these people as our guides, we are only to happy to be their accomplices to their invigorating American hustle.

Note in Passing:  And just love that old '70s Columbia logo.

Hancock's "Saving Mr. Banks"

Credit: Francois Duhamel/Walt Disney Pictures

Pamela Lyndon Travers (1899-1996), below, was an Australian-born, British-based actress, journalist and novelist - she created the beloved "Mary Poppins" - and a handful.  Her famous book was something of a fabulist's autobiography in which Travers traced over memories of her sad childhood to create something more magical and, for her, more tolerable.

She was so driven by her affection for her beloved father, Travers Goff - and so willful in her need to overlook his flaws - that she changed her name in his memory,  Born Helen Lyndon Goff, she redefined herself as P. L. Travers and, in that incarnation, she continually challenged her loyalty to her father. Her greatest test came when, plagued by financial troubles (her books had stopped selling), she entertained the suggestion by Walt Disney to turn her most precious possession - her book (and, by extension, her father) - into a big, slick, family-friendly Hollywood film. She went into this kicking and screaming.


In bringing the story of  "the making of 'Mary Poppins" to life on screen, the director John Lee Hancock filmed two separate movies, alternating between 1901 Australia and the story of the fierce devotion shared by little Helen (the preternatually gifted Annie Rose Buckley) and her father (an excellent Colin Farrell, below with Buckley), and 1961 Hollywood, where Travers (a towering Emma Thompson) would knock heads with Disney (good, gray Tom Hanks) and his creative "Poppins" team.

Travers' incorrigible, obstructionist behavior had everything to do with daddy issues and, in Disney, she grudgingly found a willing father figure.

Each movie here has its own ambiance, thanks to the distinctive looks and sounds contributed by cinematographer John Schwartzman and composer Thomas Newman, respectively, and it's fascinating to observe how little, throwaway details in the "Poppins" film both complemented and contrasted with Travers real-life, death-tinged story. Travers' father was a failed banker but she blamed his failure on the assorted banks that employed him and she went further, demonizing the idea of money.  And for her, Disney represented money.  Not a good thing.  Guilt by association.

And the father in "Poppins" could not be a negative one.  "Why must he be cruel?," Travers asks of Mr. Banks.  "Why?"

One of the more witty touches in the film is whether or not David Tomlinson, who played Mr. Banks, Travers Hoff's alter ego, in "Poppins," should be clean-shaven like Travers' father or have a mustache which Walt preferred - you know, sort of like his own.   One can only guess about the veracity of "Saving Mr. Banks" - Travers is pretty much vilified, while Disney is spared any criticism - but on its own terms, it works.

With Thompson's scrappy, starchy yet quite vulnerable Travers in command, "Saving Mr. Banks" emerges as an unexpectedly powerful film biography, one old-fashioned, menalcholic in design and yet artfully, fastidiously done. I'm confident that P.L. Travers would approve.

It's a surprising discovery.

Note in Passing: The film's terrific ensemble includes the fetching Ruth Wilson as P.L./Helen's mother in the alternate movie and Rachel Griffiths as a take-charge aunt who was probably the inspiration for Mary Poppins; Bradley Whitford as "Poppins" scenarist Don DaGradi; Jason Schwartzman (half-brother of the aforementioned John) and B.J. Novak as the song-writing Sherman Brothers; Paul Giamatti as P.L.'s chauffeur in Hollywood, and Kathy Baker & Melanie Paxson as two Disney secretaries.

façade: Chris Lilley/Ja'mie

Credit: Ben Timony - © Wokashama

Whereas America has dared only to lightly flirt with narcissistic teenage girls as exploitable material - see Amy Heckerling's "Clueless" and Mark Waters' "Mean Girls" - it's an Australian auteur who not only has had the comic/socio-political vision to confront the subject with a masterful gaze, but the inventiveness to also play the meanest of mean girls himself.

Meet Ja'mie King, a private school girl who makes life hell for those less gilded, as well as everyone else who gets in her way.  (That's Ja'mie, mean girl extraordinaire, above in a typical pose.)

Ja'mie - née Jamie (and called that by all the adults in her life) but pronounced ja-may by the princess herself  (and her private school minions) - is the creation of Chris Lilley, who is some kind of wunderkind Down Under who has created a series of linked television shows (one leads to the next), in which he plays multiple characters.  Ja'mie King is one of those characters and she is the star of one of Lilley's most recent efforts, "Ja'mie - Private School Girl," currently airing (gleefully) on HBO.

Ja'mie was introduced in Lilley's earlier shows, "We Can Be Heroes" (2005) and "Summer Heights High" (2007) and he played the character in both previous incarnations, as well as on "Ja'mie - Private School Girl."

The show itself, which consists of only six episodes, is jaw-dropping hilarious, a mocumentary that follows Ja'mie and company around Hillford Girls Grammar, a tony private school in Sydney, Australia. But the titanic supporting structure of the show is Lilley himself whose performance as Ja'mie is uncanny in its frightening accuracy.  Here, we have a grown man in drag as a teenage girl and yet we never - never - see the grown man.

Lilley inhabits the role so completely and with such precision that it isn't the least bit camp.
 
The six episodes are all about Ja'mie's quest for the Hillford Medal, an honor she covets with so much naked lust that you'd think it was the Nobel Prize.  Beyond that ambition, Ja'mie (1) rules her harem of sycophants (who she "fucking loves") , (2) invents new code words ("quiche" for anything that's really hot) and (3) demonizes all her enemies as fat lesbians.

As for Lilley, he started his hyphenated career (writer, producer, director and star) in 2003 with "Big Bite," in which he played both an extreme sports enthusiast and a gay high-school drama teacher (who would also pop up in "Summer Heights High").  This was followed by "Hamish and Andy" in 2004 and the aforementioned "We Can Be Heroes: Finding the Australian of the Year," a six-part series in which Lilley played no fewer than six characters including a 47-year-old houswife named Pat Mullens and Daniel, a teenage boy who donates an eardrum to his deaf twin brother, Nathan. Both Daniel and Nathan would show up in Lilley's 2011 show, "Angry Boys" (that's them, er Lilley,  in the photo above), about "issues faced by young males in the 21st century - their influences, their pressures, their dreams and ambitions." It's a comedy, natch.

Ja'mie, as noted, was also in "We Can Be Heroes," followed by "Summer Heights High," which aired on HBO in 2008.

There's a prodigious amount of talent in Lilley's joyful art - and it all belongs to the man himself.  "Ja'mie - Private School Girl" is a spastic explosion of ideas and unsubtle humor about a girl who is defiantly self-centered and, in spite of herself, very, very funny.