I bought this movie from the ex-rental shelves for the grand total of £2.99. That's roughly US$5, currency fans. This was a HBO mini-series, staring Duvall from the first Godfather movie. You know who I mean. He plays the Stalin dude of the title in not-very-convincing makeup. It's 166 minutes in length, which comes in the "bloody long" category. This need not put you off as I will explain in a moment.
Anyway, our Julia gets second billing. I thought this was promising. She turns up in a train station about three minutes into it. This is even more promising. And she's in nearly every scene in the first half of the thing. We are talking a Julia feast here! Out gal is everywhere and is pretty damn good. This is easily one of her best performances, although I'm sure that she would say "Huh? You liked that old thing from years ago? Are you saying that I didn't get any better!?!?"
No. I'm saying
that Julia has always been bloody brilliant when she has good material.
Stalin is good material. Smilla is good material.
Legends of the Fall is not
good material. Macon is a smelly
dog turd
of a movie. (And I make no apologies for saying that. It is
my web page after all!)
If you can then please
try to see this.
And look out for none other than Jeroen Krabbe a one of Stalin's buddies.
He was Koskov in The Living Daylights, one of my all-time favorite
Bond movies. Also the dude wo played nasty Dr Loyen in Smilla
is a Russian dude with bad hair. You'll know him when you see him.
As I mentioned before,
the 166 minute running time should not put Julia fans off. This is
because Julia is only in the first 90 minutes or so of the movie.
I can hear that you are wondering what happens to her... Let me put
it this way: It's a period piece.
Legends was
a period piece.
Nostradamus
was a period piece.
Macon was
a period piece.
Work it out for yourself.
What usually happens to our Julia in period pieces?