'August: Osage County': Streep, Roberts at war

"AUGUST: OSAGE County" is in its own way a feel-good movie, in that it's bound to make you feel good about your own family, especially post-holiday.

Did you get through the season without knocking your mother to the floor and informing her that you are now in charge?

Well, then you have a healthier relationship than Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts in "AOC," a sort of MMA (mixed-martial acting) cage match between the two Oscar-winning Hollywood titans.

Some of this takes the form of an actual brawl, but it also expresses itself as an extreme awards-season performance pitch (Roberts and Streep will compete for a Golden Globe on Sunday evening).

Streep is Violet (not the shrinking kind), tyrannical head of a Great Plains family, skilled at leveraging the well-known emotional weaknesses of her grown children. Less vulnerable to her behavior is husband Beverly (Sam Shepard), who deals with her moods by drinking, and in the prologue by simply vanishing.

His disappearance summons all the children (dutiful Julianne Nicholson, ditzy Juliette Lewis) and relatives (Margo Martindale, Chris Cooper), but the real friction here is between reigning queen Violet and her potential usurper Barbara (Roberts), who may inherit her mother's throne because she's inherited her cruelty.

There is drama in seeing Roberts slowly awaken to this realization. And some nice performances in the fringes (Martindale and Cooper, Nicholson as the low-key daughter who's quietly had enough).

The writing is lacerating and funny, sometimes all at once, adapted by Tracy Letts from his stage play, but it's as showy on screen as some of the acting, and its script's soapy revelations contribute to the over-the-top vibe.

Also, Benedict Cumberbatch has to stop being in everything. Here, he's an extremely decent but mentally limited young man. I don't think you can be Sherlock Holmes and Julian Assange and Forrest Gump in the same year, no matter how good you are.