Being Julia

Pros: Annette Bening steals this film!
Cons: Annette Bening steals this film. Jeremy Irons part is surprisingly, fairly minor.

Annette Bening ("American Beauty", "Regarding Henry") gives a truly radiant performance in this new film by Hungarian director Istvan Szabo (“Sunshine,” “Taking Sides”). This film is based on a short story called ...

Pros: Great cast, smart plot, comedy that relies on thought and mind and exquisite design.
Cons: Audiences that need action or suspense need not bother with this.

Taking a loving look at the late 1930's, director István Szabó gives a beautifully crafted life of an actress, both within and without as she copes with aging, boredom and the people around her. Based on the novel Theatre by W. Somerset Maugham, ...

Pros: Outstanding performance by Bening, Irons, Stevenson and the entire cast; direction, screenplay
Cons: Requires some attention to become invested in the story

The setting is London, in the flush years before the Second World War, and the scene is the London Stage. This presents possibilities of viewing life through the artifice of placing it on stage, which reflects another dimension as it is then placed on ...

Pros: Annette Bening; a witty, perceptive script; a recreation of 1938 London; Juliet Stevenson, Lucy Punch.
Cons: Despite entertaining qualities, a shallow, long-ago world, heedless like our own.

Once upon a time, there was a young American soldier who would entrain from Brandon, Suffolk, down to London (5 shillings, return -- 80 cents); stay in middle class comfort at the Strand Palace Hotel (30 shillings -- $4.80); have one of those "terrible ...

Pros: Annette Bening. A real affection for theatre.
Cons: A languid pace occasionally tries the patience.

BEING JULIA achieved what little publicity it did purely by virtue of the praise (and Oscar nomination) heaped on the performance of Annette Bening. She certainly earned the accolades. This is probably her best performance, in a career with several other ...

Pros: Annette Bening
Cons: Everything that is not Annette Bening, the movie is ordinary

"Being Julia" is really only notable as a film because it is the movie which garnered Annette Bening an Oscar nominee to once again pit her against Hilary Swank in the category of Best Actress in something of a rematch of the 1999 Academy Awards when ...

Pros: Fabulous period piece, great leads - Bening and Irons
Cons: A completely missing script.

I wanted to like this.. indie production, period piece (1938), British, good leads, Benning and Irons.

What they forgot, in their rush to the incredibly great onstage revenge ploy by Julia, was to write a compelling failed love story for her.

The things I didn't buy in this film were myriad. The young American simply didn't have enough charisma to convince. Julia didn't seem ditzy or self-sabotaging enough to dive into the sack with this guy, let alone claim to love him and get dissolved in tears over and over.

Then the coincidences started to pile up, always a bad sign. T-O-M, the young American, cheats on Julia with a young actress, and gets her an audition for Julia's next play. Seems the young actress also had a fling with Julia's husband. Oh my.

And thus the revenge scenario was 'set up'. I admit it was juicy, in that her husband had signed the young actress for a year's run, and had to know this train wreck was happening night after night. However, as I said, it was built upon the shifting sands of Julia's completely unconvincing failed love affair.