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Karina on SpoutBlog

JULIA Review

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If you can imagine Tilda Swinton in Beyond the Forrest-Bette Davis mode, playing the Bogart part (ie: an unapologetic drunk whose law evasion comes full circle to heroism) in a present-day border-crossing noir that slowly transforms into a fear-of-difference mother melodrama after an unintentional detour to Tijuana, then you’re some way towards being able to wrap your head around Erick Zonca’s Julia, opening this Friday a year-plus after its world premiere in 2008 at Berlin. Swinton plays the titular far-gone drunk, a tough broad past her prime but able to turn on what’s left of her charm when circumstances demand it. Within ten minutes of meeting Julia, we watch her lose her job at a real estate office thanks to “a drink … or two … at lunch”, and continue to booze her way into a number of compromising positions, each one leaving her further dependent on the kindness of the various strangers who are in the vicinity when she comes to. Most don’t exhibit any, which might be one reason why Julia has become convinced that she’s a victim of a cruel world and not her own bad habits.

Who or whatever is to blame, beyond the ability to control herself and too desperately wedged in the current moment to care about the next, Julia slides into LA’s underbelly of criminals and crazies (roughly the same milieu of Crank 2, but quieter and with less public sex). Julia gets by to the degree she does largely thanks to the not-tough-enough love of Mitch, a former drunk who tells a horror story about drunkenly losing his wife and child, and promises his apathetic wannabe inamorata that if she keeps on the way she’s going, one day, she’ll lose it all, too.

It doesn’t seem like much of a threat at the time, when all Julia has is Mitch, who she insists she doesn’t need, but she makes an appearance at an AA meeting to placate him nonetheless. There she meets Elena (Kate Del Castillo), an obviously too-intense woman who tries to rope Julia into a plot to kidnap her young son from his super-wealthy grandfather and take him back to her homeland of Mexico. Julia might be, as Mitch claims, so self-deluded that she can’t tell she’s suicidal, but next to Elena she looks half-rational and in control. Desperate for cash, Julia takes Elena’s hysterical babble at face value and decides to play the part offered in the plot, but to spin it into “the double cross of a lifetime.”

This is the way Julia talks, and it’s a cue to the way she acts: as if playing a role in a movie of her own making, that exists only to her. Swinton crafts a performance based on tiny ritual, down to the way Julia’s mouth seems to wake before her eyes, her tongue stretching out to draw fresh air into a mouth surely sticky with stale booze. Zonca is similarly meticulous with providing atmospheric detail to show Julia’s disconnection from the practical world: showing the burn marks left by forgotten cigarettes on the side of her bathtub, staging a halcyonic moment in a certain quality of light and then devoting the entire next scene to showing Swinton exploring the source of that light, thereby literally losing a plot development happening just outside the room. At about two hours twenty minutes, Julia is long by any metric, but its slow bread crumb disbursement pays off in one of the film’s last scenes, when Julia is told that she’s “dangerous”, and we realize that somehow, at a point unplaceable, we’ve begun to feel otherwise in spite of most visible evidence.
That Julia is a film that convinces the viewer to sympathize with and even cheer on a woman who behaves very badly puts it squarely within that Beyond the Forrest, noirodrama tradition. Though its surface is much rougher and less sentimental, Julia fundamentally corresponds to a certain strain of women’s picture, spinning on the moment where it looks like our heroine will get away with various transgressions — a theft, an affair, a big lie, often two out of three — and we root for her to do so, only to see her thrown into some kind of agonizing struggle, one that keeps her down in the name of maintaining the social order, but ultimately allows for a kind of more moral (and thus, far less fun) redemption. This is both the film’s most compelling driving force and ultimately its biggest weakness. Julia’s journey out of solipsism totally evades junkie movie cliches … until it doesn’t. It’s very odd that a film so willing to go so thrillingly far off the rails thematically ultimately sends its leading lady down the rather trite path of discovering a long-drowned maternal instinct. It continues to traffic in shock value until the bitter end, but somewhere down the line, Julia swaps its transgressive spark for a much more old-fashioned kind of satisfaction.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth

Posted Tuesday, May 05, 2009 7:03 PM by Karina | with 0 comments

Los Angeles Film Fest Announces Line-up

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Film Independent has released the core line-up for the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival. There are a LOT of world and US premieres in the Narrative and Documentary competitions, both of which offer the winner a $50,000 prize courtesy of Target. I’m particularly excited about the latter, which includes Donal Mosher and Michael Palmieri’s October Country and the final cut of Convention, which AJ Schnack previewed at True/False. Though the opening and closing night titles have yet to be announced, the Centerpiece selection of Michael Mann’s Public Enemies adds a bit of starpower to a lineup also including some familiar 2009 circuit titles, including Humpday, Harmony & Me, In the Loop and We Live in Public. Also: The Muppet Movie! The full list of titles is after the jump.

Narrative Competition (7): The Narrative Competition is comprised of films made by talented emerging filmmakers that compete for the Target Filmmaker Award, which carries a $50,000 unrestricted grant funded by Target. The winner is determined by a panel of jurors. Films in this section are also eligible for the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature.

· Dear Lemon Lima, Suzi Yoonessi – WORLD PREMIERE

· Harmony & Me, Bob Byington

· Hollywood, je t’aime, Jason Bushman – WORLD PREMIERE

· Passenger Side, Matt Bissonnette – Canada - WORLD PREMIERE

· Turistas, Alicia Scherson – Chile – U.S. PREMIERE

· Wa Do Dem (What They Do), Sam Fleischner, Ben Chace – WORLD PREMIERE

· Zero Bridge, Tariq Tapa – USA/India – U.S. PREMIERE

Documentary Competition (7): The Documentary Competition is comprised of films made by talented emerging filmmakers that compete for the Target Documentary Award, which carries a $50,000 unrestricted grant funded by Target. The winner is determined by a panel of jurors. Films in this section are also eligible for the Audience Award for Best Documentary Feature.

· After the Storm, Hilla Medalia – WORLD PREMIERE

· Bananas!*, Fredrik Gertten - Sweden – WORLD PREMIERE

· Branson, Brent Meeske – WORLD PREMIERE

· Convention, AJ Schnack

· The Last Beekeeper, Jeremy Simmons

· October Country, Michael Palmieri, Donal Mosher – WORLD PREMIERE

· Those Who Remain, Juan Carlos Rulfo, Carlos Hagerman – Mexico - U.S. PREMIERE

International Showcase (21): The International Showcase highlights innovative independent narrative and documentary features from outside of the United States. Films in this section are eligible for Audience Awards for Best International Feature, Best Narrative Feature, or Best Documentary Feature.

· Adhen, Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche – France/Algeria

· Autumn, Özcan Alper – Turkey

· Birdwatchers, Marco Bechis – Italy/Brazil (IFC Festival Direct)

· Bronson, Nicolas Winding Refn – England (Magnolia Pictures)

· Calimucho, Eugenie Jansen – Netherlands

· Call If You Need Me, James Lee – Malaysia – NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

· Carmen Meets Borat, Mercedes Stalenhoef – Netherlands

· City of Borders, Yun Suh – Israel

· Elementary Training for Actors, Martín Rejtman – Argentina – INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE

· Extraordinary Stories, Mariano Llinás – Argentina

· High-Rise, Gabriel Mascaro – Brazil – NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

· Los Bastardos, Amat Escalante – Mexico (Kino International)

· Mid-August Lunch, Gianni di Gregorio - Italy

· My Dear Enemy, Lee Yoon-ki – South Korea

· Our Beloved Month of August, Miguel Gomes – Portugal/France

· The Queen and I, Nahid Persson Sarvestani – Sweden (7^th Art Releasing)

· Sacred Places, Jean-Marie Téno – France/Cameroon

· Stella, Sylvie Verheyde – France

· Unmade Beds, Alexis Dos Santos – England (IFC Festival Direct)

· A Week Alone, Celina Murga – Argentina

· West of Pluto, Henry Bernadet, Myriam Verreault – Canada

International Spotlight - Documenting Mexico: Selections from the Ambulante Film Festival (3): Ambulante is a traveling documentary film festival produced by the non-profit organization Documental Ambulante A.C., in collaboration with Canana, Cinepolis, and the Morelia International Film Festival. It was created in 2005 by Gael Garcia Bernal, Diego Luna, and Pablo Cruz to promote documentary culture across Mexico. In this selection from the festival, we highlight outstanding works by filmmakers documenting Mexico’s past and present.

· Born Without, Eva Norvind - Mexico

· El General, Natalia Almada – Mexico/USA

· Rehje, Anaís Huerta, Raúl Cuesta – Mexico - INTERNATIONAL PREMIERE

Summer Showcase (11): The Summer Showcase section offers an advance look at this summer’s most talked about independent film releases from the festival circuit. Films in this section are eligible for Audience Awards for Best International Feature, Best Narrative Feature, or Best Documentary Feature.

· 35 Shots of Rum, Claire Denis – France (Cinema Guild)

· Big River Man, John Maringouin

· Cold Souls, Sophie Barthes (Samuel Goldwyn Films)

· Facing Ali, Pete McCormack (Lionsgate)

· Humpday, Lynn Shelton (Magnolia Pictures)

· In the Loop, Armando Iannucci – England (IFC Films)

· It Might Get Loud, Davis Guggenheim (Sony Pictures Classics)

· No Impact Man, Laura Gabbert & Justin Schein

· Paper Heart, Nicholas Jasenovec (Overture Films)

· Still Walking, Hirokazu Kore-eda – Japan (IFC Films)

· We Live in Public, Ondi Timoner

Dark Wave (2): Dark Wave offers frightening and edgy films from around the world. Films in this section are eligible for Audience Awards for Best International Feature or Best Narrative Feature.

· Embodiment of Evil, José Mojica Marins – Brazil

· I Sell the Dead, Glenn McQuaid

Guilty Pleasures (2): Films in this section are eligible for the Audience Award for Best Narrative Feature.

· Weather Girl, Blayne Weaver

· ZMD: Zombies of Mass Destruction, Kevin Hamedani

Outdoor Screenings at the Ford Amphitheatre (4): These official Los Angeles Film Festival selections are included as part of the 2009 Ford Amphitheatre Summer Season, a multi-disciplinary arts series produced by the Los Angeles County Arts Commission in cooperation with Los Angeles County-based arts organizations.

· 13 Most Beautiful… Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, with Live Accompaniment by

Dean & Britta

· All Tomorrow’s Parties, All Tomorrow’s People & Jonathan Caouette - England

· Black Dynamite, Scott Sanders (Sony Pictures)

· Soul Power, Jeffrey Levy-Hinte (Sony Pictures Classics)

Special Screenings (2):

· Crude Oil, Wang Bing – China – NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

· Panda Diary, Tadashi Mori – Japan – NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

Behind the Scenes – Films with Extended Conversations (2):

· Billy Jack, T.C. Frank (1971) – new digital restoration: followed by a conversation with Tom Laughlin.

· Midnight Cowboy, John Schlessinger (1969) – 40^th anniversary: preceded by a conversation with Jon Voight.

L.A. Film Critics: The Films That Got Away (3): Co-presented by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Música Nocturna, Rafael Filipelli - Argentina

Silence Before Bach, Pere Portabella - Spain

United Red Army, Koji Wakamatsu – Japan

Hell on Wheels: Hot Rods and Fast Times (3): Co-presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.

Hi-Riders, Greydon Clark (1978)

Hot Rod Girl, Leslie H. Martinson (1956)

Hot Rods to Hell, John Brahm (1967)

Film Foundation & American Express Preservation Screening Program: Presented by the Film Foundation & American Express.

Night Tide, Curtis Harrington (1961)

Free Screenings (8):

· Amreeka, Cherien Dabis (National Geographic Films) – Project:Involve Screening

· Crude Oil, Wang Bing – China – NORTH AMERICAN PREMIERE

· Election, Alexander Payne (1999) – 10^th Anniversary

· Ghostbusters, Ivan Reitman (1984) – 25^th Anniversary

· Hot Rod Girl, Leslie H. Martinson (1956)

· How I See It: Youth Filmmaking From Streets to Streams,

· The Muppet Movie, James Frawley (1979) – 30^th Anniversary

· Those Who Remain, Juan Carlos Rulfo, Carlos Hagerman – Mexico - U.S. PREMIERE

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth

Posted Tuesday, May 05, 2009 2:02 PM by Karina | with 0 comments

Momma’s Man on DVD today

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Azazel Jacobs‘ Momma’s Man, which premiered at Sundance in 2008 and was rescued from the ashes of ThinkFilm by Kino for a theatrical release last summer — is finally out on DVD today. The package features a pretty impressive slate of extras, including Momma’s Family, described as a 42 minute “featurette on the clash realities that takes place in Momma’s Azazel Jacobs returns to the set of the film and can’t leave”; Capitalism: Child Labor, a 2006 short by Azazel’s father (and Momma’s co-star) Ken Jacobs; plus deleted scenes and an audio conversation with the Jacobs family.

Kino’s site has buying information; you can also check out my review of Momma’s Man, our interview with Azazel from Sundance, and some further thoughts on his three features.

Originally posted on:SpoutBlog » Karina Longworth

Posted Tuesday, May 05, 2009 1:02 PM by Karina | with 0 comments

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