Julia

< Previous Trailer  |   Add to My Scrapbook  |   Next Trailer >
Julia

56% Liked It
liked it

Julia

Tilda Swinton, Aidan Gould, Bruno Bichir, Camille Natta, Jude Ciccolella

A swaggering floozy with a monumental drinking problem, 40-ish Julia Harris (Swinton) staggers from one booze-fueled hookup to the next. When she's fired from her job, her ex-boyfriend Mitch (Saul Rub...( read more  read more... )inek) pleads with her to slow down and attend AA meetings. When a ditzy fellow attendee, Elena (Kate del Castillo), begs Julia to help kidnap her son Tom (Aidan Gould), whom Elena is not allowed to see, it's a measure of Julia's sheer desperation that she goes along with the plan -- or what passes for a plan. Julia ends up with Elena's boy stuffed in her trunk, engineering inept ransom negotiations with the boy’s never-seen industrialist grandfather and eluding some Mexican lowlifes when she literally crashes her car across the border to Tijuana.

Id: 11013058

Do you want to see this movie?

My Friends Said...

Julia Recent Reviews

Register or sign-in to see your friends' reviews !

Recent Reviews

Julia Recent Reviews
  • McKittrick
    December 8, 2009
    McKittrick
    As shamelessly biased as I am towards the monumental abilities of our transcendent goddess of cinephilia that is La Tilda of Swinton, I was still a little in awe of her raw, not to mention brave, performance as Julia. She is utterly convincing as, let's be honest here, a quite a ...( read more)repulsive woman. Someone who, at the very least, is profoundly flawed - a self-centred alcoholic lush who cares about no-one and wears her propensity towards self-destruction on her sleeve. Who then goes one step further towards obliterating any last vestiges of sympathy she may have elicited from the people around her and us, the audience, by doing the unthinkable - kidnapping a child for ransom.
    If that isn't bad enough, the rough treatment she metes out on the boy verges on cruelty and spite and her carelessness with him is unflinching (locking him in the boot of her car till he shits himself, screaming obscenities at him while waving a gun in his face, gagging him and leaving him tied to the radiator of the motel room, abandoning him in the Mexican desert at night). It's deeply upsetting to watch and you wonder how you can engage with this mascara smeared devil. And yet, yes, we are still rooting for her?? Highsmith fans will be smacking their chops with relish.
    It's not until the last 40 minutes or so, when the mother instinct breaks through the seemingly hard-as-nails but still very brittle exterior, that her humanity and compassion spills out at last. (It's been an emotional slog getting there so our relief is palpable). As she awakes (from a night of filth with her Mexican trick) and her poor wretched captive tyke is lead in to her, bathed in the warm orange and yellow glows of a South American sunrise, the dispossessed lush and motherless son seem to bond. It's a profoundly moving scene (reminding me a little of the restorative feel that the later scenes in 'Irreversible' invoked) and just about stops you wanting to kick Julia into submission. Can Julia redeem herself? Unfortunately for them, it may be too late for redemption as events take a terrible turn and spiral even further out of Julia's control. Will anyone get out of this one alive?
    The ending is frustratingly abrupt but also kind of perfect - I'd love to know how things panned out. But whatever happens next is a whole different story of course and nothing is better than imagination for filling in the gaps.
  • ceWEBrity
    October 29, 2009
    ceWEBrity
    Tilda Swinton is a beast. Performance of the year thus far, and almost certainly unlikely to be topped. Put this alongside anything else she's ever done and you will be stunned by the radical differences; normally asked to be (or at the very least appear to be) stately and compos...( read more)ed, she is a degenerate, crumbling sexpot here, a mess of half-broken physicality and shallow swaggering. A viewer is given very little backstory, but Swinton offers us a wealth of imaginative detail that allow us to paint a vivid portrait of this woman. Assuredly, Julia has led a life that was once entitled and thrilling, but that has slowly hit the deep end as she ages. She barely seems capable of picking up the pieces, let alone orchestrating a complex kidnapping plot. But she has her strengths - she's a devious and masterful improviser, has no qualms about lying, and is infinitely more lucky than she claims to be - and through virtue of all this she manages to take us through two hours of her criminal antics. Her audacity is so bottomless that the movie, even as it gets more and more convoluted in its twilight hours, remains compelling. Eventually your head is completely under the surface right there with Julia, but the fun of it all is seeing whether or not she can pull you out.

    I'm not necessarily sure I'd call this character complex, but she is bizarre, and most importantly she is completely believable. Well, "believable"; it's horrifying to think that any human would sink to the depths that Julia does, and yet that's exactly what we watch her do, for two and a half hours. Swinton perfectly embodies this alcoholic floozy, and though I'd never really call her sympathetic, she's always interesting, which is never a bad thing in a movie. Julia is a film that's constantly changing its face, and Swinton is its anchor. You could call it a thriller, crime drama, or character portrait, and in its slight longwindedness it's all of these things, but as a whole it floats above conventional genre labels. It's really a highwire act, a personification of a woman living on the edge of her seat, and a challenging project for any viewer who's willing to learn about a generally unlikable but enthralling character.
  • middleeasternfilms
    September 4, 2009
    middleeasternfilms
    Tilda Swinton is excellent in this...kind of like a new-age Bad Lieutenant with Tilda going from one smoking and drinking binge to another until she agrees to kidnap a lady's son and deliver him to his multi-millionnaire grandfather from $2 million. The movie starts off interesti...( read more)ng enough, but loses steam - and believability - consistently throughout. They both get kidnapped, she loses and finds him several times and the film just seems to drag on even beyond it's almost 2 1/2 hours.
  • rebvodka042099
    August 29, 2009
    rebvodka042099
    Extremely long and exhausting, highly unlikely, complicated and over the top. Tilda Swinton is fantastic every minute of it. The movie had some strength into it -proving that human nature is alterable and the human heart open to accepting love, but after a point it became ridicul...( read more)ous. It went from making us pity an alcoholic problematic woman to a brutal abduction, to developing a mother-son twisted relationship, to cold-blooded murder, to blackmailing, to human trafficing to...every place possible. Not good and very tiring. I'm regretful to have watched it.
  • gor41
    August 2, 2009
    gor41
    Swinton bids for Oscar glory playing a walking car crash alcoholic pathological liar. Character building first half leads in to a less satisfactory kidnap thriller which is rather drawn out and overly contrived. The developing relationship between Swinton and her young kidnapee i...( read more)s interesting.
  • Jonox
    January 3, 2010
    Jonox
    Beitrag schreiben (optional) ...
  • mvieaddict
    December 25, 2009
    mvieaddict
    Julia was a drama thriller directed by for me unknown Erick Zonica. Tilda Swinton was amazing in her role as the ,sexy crazy alcoholic woman.In one of her meetings at the AA she met Elena who asked her to help her kidnapped her son Tom, from his rich grandfather.Julia who was so ...( read more)desperate for money, agreed and that triggered the rest of the movies journey through crime, suspense as Julia failed to play the game of criminal, cause she started to feel affection for the boy. Aiden Gould played the role of Tom very well. Although I liked the movie, I found it too long, and also some scenes in Tijuana Mexico was sometimes beyond belief. But overall it was very entertaining.
  • TobiasXimenez
    December 3, 2009
    TobiasXimenez
    This film ventures into some disturbing places. Took me a little by surprise. Tilda Swinton made me so uncomfortable as the damaged and despicable title character, she's so believable. She's one of the bravest actresses around for sure. Best 'manic woman under the influence' sinc...( read more)e Gena Rowlands circa 1974. The spirit of Cassavetes is alive and well in director Erick Zonca.
  • kitylz
    November 1, 2009
    kitylz
    One of the most smart and well written screenplays I've seen in a long time. Swinton deserves an oscar for her performance.
  • harret1972
    October 24, 2009
    harret1972
    Swinton's acting is amazing reaching the highs and lows of a car crash lifestlye. The plot lacks some credibility, as even a perpetual drunk with little or no moral fibre, wouldnt buy into some of the scenarios that were offered to her. A touch too long and dips into terminal dep...( read more)ression at times, but worth a punt for the glue that is Swinton.
View All Reviews

Opening This Week

Top Box Office

Upcoming Movies

New on DVD