Julia (2008) NYT Critics' Pick

[lsanderson]

Tilda Swinton plays the title character in the film “Julia,” a tale of alcoholism and abduction directed by Erick Zonca.
May 8, 2009
Unbearable to Watch, Impossible to Evade
By MANOHLA DARGIS
Published: May 8, 2009

There are few film actresses working today who can embrace the extremes of beauty and ugliness as persuasively as Tilda Swinton, and fewer still, I suspect, who have the guts to try. She’s a magnificent, bold, sometimes viscerally uncomfortable screen presence, with an otherworldly alabaster glow and a piercing gaze that seems to nail you to your seat. (She’s one of the few performers who justifies that overworked critical superlative, riveting.) When she’s on screen, you don’t want to look anywhere, even if the story is so bleak, so utterly and overwhelmingly pitiless that you want to look anywhere but at the screen, at anyone but her. More