Julia (2008, France/USA/Mexico/Belgium)

I’ve seen Tilda Swinton in a good number of movies, but I’ve never seen her like she is in Julia. It’s a fantastic performance, even for Swinton, playing against type as a brash loose cannon of an alcoholic, a party girl who’s starting to unravel as she heads towards middle age. When an opportunity to do the wrong thing presents itself, Julia barely thinks twice before making a bad decision that, not unexpectedly, spirals out of control. Unfortunately, there are a few too many twists and turns, and Julia is at least a half an hour longer than it should be. It’s that much more time to spend with Swinton’s terrifying, fascinating character, but the film as a whole would have served her performance better were it just a little bit tighter.

(I’m not kidding about the terrifying, by the way. Julia is not for the squeamish. It’s a pretty relentlessly ugly film.)