If the script had been half as powerful as Swinton, this could have been special.
Comment
12/05/08
Julia (2008)
72
%
Tomatometer
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Reviews Counted:47
Fresh:34
Rotten:13
Average Rating:6.3/10
Consensus: Tilda Swinton delivers a powerful performance in Julia, a tense thriller and a dark character study.
Theatrical Release:May 8, 2009 Limited
Synopsis: Tilda Swinton stars in this intense drama as Julia, an aging alcoholic who spends her nights drinking in the company of strangers, and her days making excuses for herself. Beginning in a sleek Los... [More]
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Saul Rubinek, Kate Del Castillo, Aidan Gould
Director: Erick Zonca
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Reviews for Julia
Swinton's Julia is one of those performances that goes so far in repelling audience sympathy that it comes out the other side looking almost admirable.
12/05/08
Boasts an electrifying, brave performance by Tilda Swinton and has a thrilling initial half, but eventually becomes tedious and convoluted while lacking plausibility and insight into the titular character.
05/11/09
We never get a good look at her demons, just the havoc they wreak.
05/08/09
"Julia" is more than an homage to John Cassavetes' 1980 maternal crime thriller "Gloria;" it is a spectacularly flawed genre experiment that goes so wrong, and with such an intense fury, that you can't pull yourself away from it.
03/20/09
A startling misfire.
02/13/08
A bungled thriller that starts out badly and never recovers.
05/08/09
Picture Fargo played with no sense of comedy, and you'll get some idea of the absurdity of this drunken floozy, clicking and wobbling on high heels, often with bits of her anatomy hanging out, trying to pull off the perfect crime.
05/08/09
Top CriticUnfortunately the Cassevetes-style film needed Cassavetes to make it. Zonca, essaying a pell-mell verismo, produces something resembling Gloria mugged by A Woman Under the Influence.
12/05/08
Zonca has put together an ambitious and forthright story, but Swinton's contribution looks more like an actressy impersonation than a performance, and indeed Zonca's film itself looks like a European facsimile of Americana.
12/05/08
This is Zonca's second feature. His first, The Dreamlife of Angels, was extraordinary. Rent that one instead.
05/15/09
Swinton masterfully pours much more than her heart into her drunken damsel in distress performance in this gin drenched drama. But the audience is unfortunately left to languish without a clue, as to how she ended up that way and who she may be when sober
04/30/09
Tilda Swinton gives a committed and courageously unsympathetic performance as the self-serving Julia, but this is a character with whom you would rather spend as little time as possible – and certainly not the endurance-testing running time.
12/05/08
Swinton is mesmerising as a messed-up drunk.
07/02/09
It is no easier to warm to Zonca's film than to its central character - but it is impossible to take your eyes off either. Amoral, at times brutal, and full of surprises...
11/27/08
I recommend going to see it, but don't blame me when you feel like you've downed a fifth of vodka afterwards.
07/11/09
Julia, by and large, is a tale of desperate opportunists, fugitive souls who survive by living on their wits, taking risks and making it up as they go along. It sometimes feels that a similar person is behind the camera as well as in front of it.
12/05/08
a tonally-consistent, lively thriller that is very much of the filmmaker's own little corner of the world
06/16/09
Julia is a mix of fantasy and tragedy, with the violence amped up and the background noisy and lurid.
05/21/09
Watching the actor broadly wallow in human ugliness before turning into a red-maned mama lion single-handedly redeems this exercise in semigratuitous grit.
05/06/09
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