Every time I see Tilda Swinton I think she must be the greatest actress working today. She is chameleon-like and her performance in Julia is another in her list of magical transformations. This is quite a nail-biter of a film and, despite its length, it is able to keep the tension and is very much worth seeing.

Magnolia have given us a decent DVD effort - dual-layered, anamorphic and progressive. The film maintain a certain level of hand-held, gritty realism that keeps the image quality from getting too intimate, detailed or glossy. This mimics the lead's loose-cannon persona. Close-ups exhibit reasonable sharpness and colors seem true if, probably, slightly washed. Visuals can, frequently, show the softness of the format but the desert scenery can be quite impressive. I'm beginning to sound repetitious but I think Julia is certainly worthy of Blu-ray treatment. It would bring out the grain that lies just beneath the digital surface of the SD-DVD and tighten up the colors a notch. Because the film is so heavily rooted in Swinton's performance, I'll wager that the improved resolution would bond her character of Julia to us even more so and heighten the film's reality and suspense. 

Audio, in both 2.0 and 5.1 channel flavors is fairly unremarkable although there is some aggressive personal interaction that gets a bit spread through the surrounds. This region 1, NTSC edition offers only optional Spanish subtitles.

A commentary is warranted but the film's length probably kept consideration for this on the back-burner. Instead we get almost a 1/2's worth of deleted scenes (letterbox widescreen) - most are fairly inconsequential and the decision to leave them out seems appropriate. Beyond that just a trailer for the film and, too many, Magnolia previews to start the feature presentation.

This DVD has an adept transfer and the film is strongly recommended. More supplements would have been a nice bonus but Julia itself will be satisfying enough for many. We recommend!   

Gary W. Tooze