TaryBiggBall It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

Tayyab Torres Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Scott-344 "Julia" holds a special place in my heart. It was one of the first times I read a screenplay before seeing the film and was completely enthralled -- in suspense and moved to tears. Notice how characterization drives the slowly building suspense culminating in a fantastic third act devoid of pyrotechnics or gimmicks. (Never mind that the story is almost 100% fiction; this is adaptation at its finest.)A well-deserved Oscar-winner for Alvin Sargent, the script belongs on any screen writing student's bookshelf alongside "Chinatown" and "Ordinary People" two other Oscar-winners from the era. Confession - by "era" I mean from my USC screen writing class, where I also read terrific scripts like "Marathon Man" (the Hoffman-Devane-Keller lunch scene a textbook example of "reversal" writing), "Breaking Away" and "Cutter's Way."

evanston_dad The fact that "Julia" received 11 Academy Award nominations back in 1977 should give you some indication of what kind of movie it is. Movies don't get nominated for that many Oscars unless they are fairly palatable, tasteful, and adhere to a certain sheen of prestige. "Julia" is all of these things, but don't hold that too much against it. It also happens to be a handsome and well-made drama about a female friendship during troubled times.Apparently the film, though about real-life characters like Lillian Hellman and Dashiell Hammett, has little of truth in it and according to many is an outright fabrication. I don't really care, because I don't watch movies for their veracity; I watch them for how well they craft narratives in the language of cinema, and "Julia" does this very well. A large middle section, depicting Hellman's journey by train into Berlin during the rise of the Nazi party in order to smuggle money into the country for use by the anti-fascist underground, is one long sustained nail biter, and showcases director Fred Zinneman's ability to understate to tremendous effect. The film takes a while to get going, and an irrelevant denouement makes the film longer than it needs to be and causes it to end rather abruptly, but overall it's a very good movie.I took a while to warm to Jane Fonda's performance as Hellman. She's mannered and inauthentic in her early scenes, but her performance grew on me as the film progressed, and I came to think she earned the Oscar nomination she received. Vanessa Redgrave, who won that year's Best Supporting Actress award, is astonishing in what amounts to really only one real scene, set in a cafe after her character, the Julia of the title, is reunited with Hellman after a long separation. Both women are fascinating to watch in this scene, but Redgrave especially is mesmerizing. With very little screen time, she is able to make the presence of her character pervade virtually every single frame; even when she's not on screen, which is most of the time, you find yourself thinking about her.In addition to the nominations already mentioned, the film was nominated for Best Picture, Director, Supporting Actor (Jason Robards, who won for the second consecutive year, the only person in Oscar history to win back-to-back supporting awards), Supporting Actor (Maximilian Schell, in a puzzler of a nomination given he's barely in the film and has not much to do when he is), Adapted Screenplay (which it won), Cinematography, Costume Design, Film Editing, and Original Score.Grade: A

SimonJack Author and playwright Lillian Hellman surely gave us some wonderful stories and plays for stage and film in the early to middle 20th century. But, this was not one of them. Indeed, its claim to be a story of her own experience from WWII has since been shown to be untrue. Shortly after the film's release, Hellman was proved to have pirated the story from another writer. Soon, a number of other people attested to her falsehoods about several claims she had made about herself. For more on this, see any of several bios of Hellman online, including the IMDb accounts, Wikipedia and some other more detailed accounts. It seems as though Hellman may have become too enamored with herself over time. Indeed, some more revealing historical accounts of her life have shown more intimidating times of her past. She opposed political asylum in the U.S. for some early Russian communist leaders while giving unashamed support for Joseph Stalin — even knowing of his execution of many Russians.So, what about the film, "Julia?" The fact that Hellman did not experience this so-called chapter in her life may be why it comes across as so poorly scripted. And why the actor playing her, seems so dubious in the role. This should be apparent to anyone who knew much about Hellman and her feisty, self-assured, at times belligerent character. If Jane Fonda was playing Hellman, then Hellman didn't even get her own character right. That, or the script was written without the passion that someone who really experienced it would have known. Either way, it really showed in the choppy and abrupt changes of scenes. The story could have been one of great intrigue, but for the distractions caused by the poor scripting and almost droll acting by Fonda. I can't imagine that a number of the silly moments of forgetfulness by Fonda would be in the script. What was Hellman thinking? To what purpose? Fonda's forgetting to leave the box of chocolates on the train, forgetting to put on the hat, and a few other such incidents of memory loss were quite glaring considering that these were covered with such explicit instructions for her. All that forgetfulness just made me focus on how little the main person (Hellman/Fonda) paid attention to her friend Julia; and how simple- minded she could be. She just didn't seem to grasp the reality of what was going on around her. Could that have been the intended portrayal of the Fonda role? Hellman writing Hellman to be such a dumb ox — I doubt it. All of the acting was not poor. Indeed, Vanessa Redgrave was excellent as Julia. But that the film received so many other Oscar nominations, including one for Fonda as best actress, only reflects the poor quality of films from Hollywood for the year. Only a handful of movies competed for most of the major awards, and none of them were great films. Compare 1977 to most years in the previous four decades when many, many films competed in different categories, including those years when one or two huge blockbusters ran away with the bulk of awards. (Look at 1962, for instance. Nearly two dozen films got Oscar nominations, and a dozen truly great films competed for top honors.)As I said at the start, Lillian Hellman gave us some great and enduring stories in her time. But in her later years she seemed to give way to a type of grandiosity that had her writing completely fabricated events from her life in her autobiography. Her last few years were not proud ones for this once great writer as the truth about her fabrications became widely known. It's interesting to me that in 1977, Hollywood would still put this film out with a claim to its authenticity as lived by Hellman, in the face of the public challenges that had been made. It would still have been okay as a piece of fiction or otherwise; but the poor scripting and poor acting by the main character just leaves this as a mediocre film.My six stars are for the lone top performance by Lynn Redgrave and for the intrigue that was still able to be felt in spite of the acting distractions and script shortcomings.

jc-osms Oscar-festooned as it was, I found my expectations of this film, greatly lowered by my viewing experience. For all its A-List credentials, Fred Zinneman as director, Fonda, Redgrave, Robards and Schell in the leads, I found it a turgid experience.I've actually for many years been an admirer of Hellman's writings (as well as that of her "beau", the hard-living crime-writer Dashiell Hammett), which should have added an extra piquancy to an on the surface anyway, interesting story, but really this was a film which thinks that lots of pauses and meaningless scenes, no matter how beautifully shot or professionally acted, add up to a convincing drama.In truth the film would have been better called "Lillian" as it's Fonda's character who's barely ever off the screen and whose struggle to write her first play hardly seems the stuff of a major plot device. And so we're presented with her adventure in war-threatened Europe ostensibly seeking out her conscience-stricken poor little rich girl childhood friend Julia, played by Vanessa Redgrave (perfect casting there!) and a drawn-out train journey to Berlin opposite two other females who may or may not be on her side. For me however, I found almost no tension in said journey nor did I get any sense of dramatic relief when she fulfils her mission and briefly meets up with a now battle-scarred Julia in a bar.The period recreation is fine, the performances competent enough, although hardly Oscar worthy, indeed Fonda's face seemingly displays only two expressions throughout - fraught and confused.Quite what the point of the film was I'm not sure, its focus blurred between a celebration of a heroic life in dangerous times, a remembrance of a devoted friendship or an examination of artistic creativity. For me it accomplished none of these and must be judged a failure accordingly.