Friday, October 02, 2015

Still Alice

Still AliceThe Gist: A renown linguistics professor suddenly discovers that she carries a genetic marker that has doomed her to develop early onset Alzheimer’s disease. Both she and her family will have to face the consequences of her degrading mental abilities and loss of memory and awareness.

Still Alice is a movie that inevitably will tug at your heartstrings. Julianne Moore is absolutely fantastic in the lead role, for which she finally earned her first (gasp!) Oscar.

She’s flanked by Alec Baldwin (just average), Kate Bosworth (good as the icy, entitled daughter), Hunter Parrish (so nice to see this impossibly handsome actor again), and Kristen Stewart. I was a little wary about her at first because she seemed completely devoid of talent in the few Twilight movies I unfortunately watched, but she’s actually pretty good as the more rebellious daughter who ends up being the most understanding of her mother’s issues.

Some might argue that the pace of Alice’s illness development is too fast, but I found it acceptable given the constraints of film.

The Bottom Line: Still Alice is a really good movie and a powerful exploration of the dramatic and heartbreaking changes such a rare form of this terrible disease brings about in one’s life.

Grade: 8

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