UnowPriceless hyped garbage

Bereamic Awesome Movie

Neive Bellamy Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

Roy Hart If you're interested in the topic at hand, you should just watch it and judge yourself because the reviews have gone very biased by people that didn't even watch it and just hate (or love) the creator. I liked it, it was well written, narrated, and directed and it was about a topic that interests me.

Dalbert Pringle When it comes to the likes of "Chick Flicks" - I'd confidently say that 1977's "Julia" rates as one from that particular genre that even men can enjoy. This well-crafted movie certainly does deliver some fine moments of storytelling.This film's story faithfully traces the life-long relationship between real-life playwright Lillian Hellman (played by Jane Fonda) and her dear friend Julia, the spoiled daughter of a wealthy Jewish businessman who, in her twenties, turns her back on her privileged upbringing to staunchly follow her somewhat radical political ideals.Set in the mid-1930s - Julia and her loyal comrades battle the fierce exigencies of a Nazi regime in war-torn Germany. Wishing desperately to help her friend, Hellman arrives in Germany from the USA and soon finds herself inadvertently drawn into Julia's extreme resistance movement, which immediately poses grave danger to all involved."Julia" was adapted for the screen from excerpts of Lillian Hellman's memoirs titled Pentimento. Screenwriter, Alvin Sargent, and actors, Jason Robards and Venessa Redgrave each won an Oscar for their contribution to the success of Julia. This film would feature Meryl Streep in her screen debut.

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."

gavin6942 At the behest of an old and dear friend, playwright Lillian Hellman (Jane Fonda) undertakes a dangerous mission to smuggle funds into Nazi Germany.Somehow this ended up winning three awards at the Oscars: Best Supporting Actor for Jason Robards, Best Supporting Actress for Vanessa Redgrave, and Best Adapted Screenplay for Alvin Sargent's script. Must have been a slow year.Although this is not a bad film, it suffers from being a load of baloney. The original author made up this tale to make herself look daring and brave, but in reality she had no connection to the events and was a complete fraud. If we accept he story as a story, it is pretty good, but because the film uses all the "real" names, it sort of rewrites history for the worst.

richard-1787 There are movies - many of them? most of them? - that make no effort to connect with what might be called the art of cinema. That's fine. There's nothing wrong with making a movie just in the hopes of turning a profit.There are also movies - not as many, but still too many - that make every effort to connect with the art of cinema but not enough effort to engage the audience. That, in my opinion, is not so fine, but as long as I don't have to sit through them, I can't complain.And then there are movies - never enough - that connect with and advance the art of cinema not to impress critics but to enthrall audiences. Those are masterpieces, and they keep you riveted to your seat as they unfold.Julia is one such film. I first saw it in 1977 when it was released, and all these 35 years since I remembered enjoying it. This evening I watched it again, and had a chance to marvel at how well it was made. The language is often beautiful, which is appropriate in a movie about a great writer, Lillian Hellman. The images are also sometimes beautiful, which is something to be thankful for. The acting is uniformly fine. It presents Hellman's recollections of a childhood friend of hers, Julia, and her efforts to reconnect with her during the late 1930s, by which point Julia had become involved with anti-Fascist groups in Germany. We never get the details. They don't really matter, or at least didn't to me. There is no great apotheosis at the end; Hellman is not transformed by her experience. It is painful. We are made to feel that pain. The story ends.This is one of the best movie experiences I have had in quite some time. Good script writing, fine acting, and good direction can come together to make a very fine movie. Would that they did more often.