 good actress |
| Review Date: June 16, 2010 |
| Reviewer: B. Loosbrock, Woodbury, MN |
| This was not the best movie I've seen. Tilda is a great actess - that is why I bought this DVD. |
A brilliant performance by Tilda Swinton
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| Review Date: March 16, 2010 |
| Reviewer: L. Power, San Francisco |
I have never really gone to see a movie because Tilda Swinton was in it. She just happened to be in movies I went to see, and her performance were always excellent, and that is why when I saw this movie in the store I decided to get it on the strength of what she did previously.
I am glad I did because if there is any movie to see because Tilda Swinton is in it, Julia is it.
Even though this movie was never destined to be big, her performance is a wonder to behold.
The realistic portrayal of a lost alcoholic, who cannot tell the truth about anything starts out ordinary but turns into something compelling, as a woman she meets in AA convinces her to kidnap her son. As the story unfolds and takes its dramatic twists and turns, we follow along incredulous and unbelieving at her impulsive behavior, and how everything just gets worse and worse. To tell you more might spoil your enjoyment, but suffice to say you will wonder how it's going to end until the end. I think this was one of the best female perfomances I have seen in the last year.
I appreciated how much she immersed herself in this character, casting vanity to the four winds. There is a particular scene where she breaks the Hollywood leading actress convention of not fully exposing herself, as she lies in the bed in a house in Mexico and her 7 year old victim is looking at her with wonder and fascination, and we wonder what he is going to do next. What does happen next is another surprising plot twist.
So, this movie does seem a little long, and the early part drags, but once it gets going it is great.
I have enjoyed her performances in many movies, including The Chronicles of Narnia - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (Widescreen Edition), her performance in The The Beach with Leonardo Di Caprio, a great movie, and even her Oscar winning performance in Michael Clayton, but perhaps mostly in the first movie in which I saw her The Deep End.
In future I will make a point of watching movies that she is in. I think you will enjoy the movie, and I hope you found this review helpful.
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rent it for Tilda!
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| Review Date: February 19, 2010 |
| Reviewer: Christopher S. Smallwood, |
I rented this for Tilda Swinton...She's almost always really good,except that Narnia crap!, and in this, well WOW! I love when an actress can play a truly yucky character but you still care about her. Bette Davis was often able to do this. And because it is an independent film you have no idea where the story is going to go...EXCEPT, that it won't have a phony hollywood ending...In retrospect I almost feel Tilda Swinton's 'character' wrote the plot so it seemed very organic...
Rent it for Tilda! |
Gripping, Once Things Get Rolling
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| Review Date: January 8, 2010 |
| Reviewer: R. Schultz, Chicago |
You might not find this movie very engaging at first, because Tilda Swinton's character is so sloppily amoral. It's hard to care about her odyssey through different binges, frantic street-corner drug deals, and the violent desperation she visits upon the young mother who asks for her help.
However, after Swinton launches off alone onto her largely improvised kidnapping campaign, she reveals new layers to her character, and the film becomes much more interesting. Swinton pulls off an acting tour de force. She creates a unique character that is the very definition of "gutsy lady."
The plot is a little messy, like the mean streets of Tijuana themselves where Swinton feverishly veers as the movie careens towards a conclusion. This adds another kind of grim realism to the action. But you'll get a good feel of what it's like to tour some of the more dangerous districts of that notorious border town.
After having gotten the viewer rapt in sympathy with Swinton's character, the bonus features on this disc drop us back down to some sense of disillusionment. Several of the deleted scenes seem to come out of another movie altogether. These tend to show that the writers/director of "Julia" didn't start the project with any consistent artistic vision - that they changed plans and veered as chaotically as the main character herself does in reaction to each new contingency. But I suppose as long as the end product has the satisfying momentum that it does - what difference do its beginnings make? |
Filmmaker Erick Zonca makes another female-centric masterpiece.
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| Review Date: November 23, 2009 |
| Reviewer: Seen, |
Ten years ago, I saw a relatively unknown/obscure French film made in 1998 called "The Dreamlife of Angels." After seeing such masterful filmmaking, I eagerly awaited writer-director Erick Zonca's next film. Ten long years later, he has come back with "Julia," and I must say, it was worth the wait. (He did make a film in between, but to my knowledge the film was never released here in the U.S.)
Clearly, Zonca has grown as a filmmaker since then. He manages to keep the same raw, realistic, documentary style, but is now spreading his wings blending it with visual compositions that are highly expressionistic.
He still has the same strength in creating engaging female protagonists, and working with Tilda Swinton, who acts the heck out of the role, he creates a character that is at first, utterly unlikeable: she's an alcoholic on par with Nicolas Cage from "Leaving Las Vegas." If you think this is going to be another tale of desparation, you'd be half-right.
Pretty soon a plot as twisty as anything Mamet has written, and as dramatically gritty as the Dardenne brothers, emerges and what starts out as a drama is merely the set-up for a thriller-drama that is really something special.
As a viewer, it's easy to be horrified by Julia's behavior (Tilda Swinton) but like Aaron Eckhart's breakthrough performance in "In the Company of Men," she makes this horrific character so engaging I couldn't take my eyes off the screen, and at the end of the day, she emerges as sympathetic, changed, and most of all--human: flawed, but very human.
And if one stellar performance wasn't enough, Aiden Gould, a child actor, plays his character Tommy without an ounce of pretense or preciousness. It's the kind of brilliant child performance that deserves awards, much like Swinton's.
One warning: this film is not for the faint of heart. There are some very difficult scenes involving mistreating a child and it goes to some very (thematically and plot-wise) dark places.
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