Still Alice (2014) Reviews

• What Would You Do If You Began to Show Signs of Alzheimer's Disease?

  dhainline12015-04-21

  Julianne Moore's character of Alice Howland has to face that eventuality in the wonderful, heart-breaking movie "Still Alice.". Alice is a 50-year-old woman with a charmed life. She is happily married to Dr. John Howland, played by Alec Baldwin. Their son, Tom is training to be a doctor, daughter, Anna is married, pregnant with twins, and a lawyer, youngest daughter, Lydia played by Kristen Stewart who has matured as an actress since the "Twilight" series, is an aspiring actress. All of the performers are great, but Kristen Stewart surprised me the most and she broke the Bella Swan type-cast trap. In her job as a language professor, Alice needs her brain in order to give lectures and write books. When her brain basically craps out on her during a lecture at the college, Alice is confused by why her sharp mind has suddenly failed her. Alice's memory lapses have her confused and upset. She goes to a neurologist who tests her memory. After much testing, the doctor says Alice has an inherited form of Alzheimer's disease she got from her late father. He tells her to have her children tested to see if their late grandfather gave them the faulty gene. Anna tests positive for the gene, Tom tests negative, and stubborn Lydia refuses to take the test. In the end, Alice gets worse and worse. Her twin grandson and granddaughter are healthy, but it is heart-breaking their grandmother won't remember them. Lydia takes up the reins as her mother's caregiver and the most heart-wrenching thing about the movie is how much this horrible disease takes away so much from its victims.

• Still Alice

  potter982014-12-02

  Still Alice is a realistic and emotional story of a woman living with Alzheimer's disease. Julianne Moore successfully shows the struggle, confusion, anger, pain and isolation of having such a disease through her incredible performance. She allows the audience to see what having Alzheimer's could possibly be like. This film also has an amazing screenplay, a screenplay that is raw and honest. There is also a great ensemble performance from the cast, featuring Alec Baldwin as the supportive and loving husband. The movie definitely makes the viewer think deeply about aspects of life such as memories, family, loss and bewilderment which are all addressed in Still Alice. See this film for a moving story, but mostly for Moore's miraculous performance. It wouldn't be a surprise if she won Best Actress in the upcoming Academy Awards.

• Still Alice - a Delicate, Heartbreaking, Intimate and Ultimately Powerful Story, That Is Sadly a Part of Our Everyday Life

  drakula20052014-12-10

  It probably goes without saying, but in my opinion "Still Alice" is right up there among this year's best pictures. And what ultimately makes author Lisa Genova's debut bestselling novel so personal, yet so universal and identifiable in it's messages, are the performances. Alec Baldwin and Kristen Stewart are a part of a strong supporting cast, that will leave a lasting impression in your mind and it will be more than deserved. Both of their characters were so real - warm, supportive and earthly. And while both Baldwin and Stewart have taken the occasional misstep in their respective pasts, both of them once again showed without a doubt their acting abilities and scope, a word linguistics professor Dr. Alice Howland used, albeit with great difficulties, to describe her daughter Lydia (played by Stewart) in one point of the film. And what a performance by Julianne Moore that was! She essentially made an already rich character in Alice, a frankly too young Alzheimer's disease patient, who also happens to be a renown linguistics professor, even more dimensional and rich. Moore's Alice is a strong, intelligent woman when we first meet her at her birthday at the beginning of the film. At that moment, Moore is confident and full of purpose. As she gets diagnosed with a rare form of Alzheimer's disease, that her children might have inherited from her, and time goes by, Alice becomes a shadow of herself, whose mental health deteriorates at an alarmingly fast rate. And that is the part that Moore portrayed with such skill and graceful pain, that the viewer can't help but get irreversibly emotionally involved with her character. We feel for her, we cry with her, we wish she would get better, although it is clear that is sadly not going to happen. And Moore's Alice knows it as well. And that makes the journey through her story even more challenging, difficult and painful for the viewer. Or as Beverly Beckham of The Boston Globe put it "This is Alice Howland's story, for as long as she can tell it". The film was directed and adapted by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, who share both the writing and directing duties on almost all of their projects to date. The two somehow complete each other and find the balance, that is needed to tell such a delicate story in a manner, which can do it proper justice. I will probably be the only one saying this, but I thought the score was tremendous as well. Kudos goes to composer Ilan Eshkeri, who did an amazing job on the film. The music is often intense and minimalistic, it feels like it is just an addition to the already rich environment the characters find themselves in and I would love to see at least a nomination at the Oscars for Eshkeri, although I highly doubt it. So, to wrap it up in a nutshell: Still Alice is a wonderful film, an intimate and fascinating study in the field of family drama, and one of the year's best. I definitely hope to see some awards buzz mainly around the cast - both Alec Baldwin and Kristen Stewart deserve it for their delicate and supportive portrayal of husband John and youngest daughter Lydia, respectively, who never gave up on Moore's Alice. And Julianne Moore - well, what can I say - her brutally sad and honest portrayal of Alice deserves to go down in the books of top-notch acting and she will reap the fruits of her work a long time from now (well, mostly, at the end of February, I hope). So it is a nine out of ten stars from me, only because I felt there could have been more screen time for the other children in the Howland family, and therefore the film could have been at least 10-15 minutes longer. But solely on Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin and Kristen Stewart's impeccable acting, I say this film is among the very best in the subject and also among the best titles this year. My grade: 9/10

• If Someone You Love Has Dementia, You Are Not Alone

  juliasf2014-09-12

  This movie was a great boost to my psyche as someone who has watched my own mother lose her ability to be the fascinating and clever woman she once was. The performances of Alec Baldwin and Ms. Stewart really impressed me. Julianne Moore is always good. If you have lived with the loneliness and the torture of watching someone you love lose his or her mind this movie may just give you the strength to go on. Julianne Moore's performance is particularly compassionate. This movie depicts an excruciating illness, but also illuminates the heroes who emerge and the grace which is possible despite loss.

• I didn't want to see this film, but I'm glad I did

  richard-19672014-12-07

  I had already marked this movie down as a "no" when the cinema preview club we attend showed it this morning. And I'm very glad they did. Few movies about Alzheimer's show things almost entirely from the perspective of the victim, and even fewer try to grapple with her internal thoughts and feelings as the disease progresses. Still Alice does just that. Taking an exceptionally verbal and smart person and giving her early onset Alzheimer's and watching how she deals with it and how she feels about it made this an exceptional film. So does the always-excellent Julianne Moore, who outdoes herself in an Oscar-worthy performance. The movie's full of highlights: the Skypeing between mom and daughter Kristin Stewart, the relatively healthy Julianne leaving a video for her much sicker self to discover; the question only one person asks: "How does it make you feel?" And extra credit for the double use of Lyle Lovett's "If I Had a Boat."