Still Alice (2014)
Rated PG-13
Genre: Drama, medical, mental health
Subtitle: Heavy hitter actors miss the ballpark & pick a bad script!
Who to look for:
Julianne Moore ~ Alice Howland, the subject, a patient. She’s as beautiful as ever
Alec Baldwin ~ John Howland, MD, her husband. Sadly, Alec has no personality at all in this one. Or purpose, really. (Think of the drama we could have had if he had had an affair, left her, demanded more research!)
Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, others
Once Upon a Time…
This will be an easy movie review! In fact, I’ll save you the trouble of even watching it.
Dr. Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) is a linguistics professor at Columbia University. Words are her life. So when she starts forgetting what she was going to say, or can’t remember where she is, she goes to her doctor.The diagnosis: early-onset Alzheimer’s disease.
UGH. So it gets worse. Eventually she has to stop teaching. Since this form of dimentia is supposed to be hereditary, she tells her grown children, and then they worry both for her, and for themselves.
Her brain disorder gets worse. Finally, all she can do is grunt.
The End.
Cuts and Splices
- Okay, it’s hard to make academia exciting. I get it. And ho-hum, who cares when someone is making a speech, and forgets what she was going to say? But then…why make a movie about it?
- This was filmed before the whole Alec Baldwin gun shooting thing. (He is INNOCENT! Only people who have a) never been on a movie set, and b) are gun nuts say he’s gulity. Gun fanatics want it to be clear that gun deaths are human errors, not the fault of the weapons. :)) He has no point in this story, except to look pretty.
Explain the Ending of Still Alice and SPOILERS
Nothing to explain, or think about afterwards.
Other Audience Reviews of this Mental Health Movie
It wasn’t until I went to read other reviews that I saw this film actually won an Academy Award!! I am shook!! Maybe it was just a lackluster year for movies?! Because this one had nothing to it.
Apparently Still Alice was a book, first, by Lisa Genova.
Google: 84% Liked it. Bad taste never disappoints there.
Must watch movie for everyone. Julianne Moore has performed really well. She has captured and presented the whole range of emotions from being an intellectual to the patient of Alzheimer's disease.
I sincerely hope the younger generation cultivates some amount of patience for the older ones as it's going to be harder for us to witness all this and I hope people do not throw their oldies in senior cares. But apart from all that, it's a really good movie.
An absolutely beautiful film that never gets old. Julianne Moore is brilliant and the acting in general is amazing. I love the family in this story, their high quality lifestyle and how it all unfolds. Everyone should see this film. I cry every time.
Roger Ebert: “Roger” praises Moore for her acting, but suggests (rightly) that it’s kind of a made-for-tv movie. 2.5 stars
She’s such a smart, clever and instinctive actress that she never hits a false note. She finds unexpected avenues into her character, a challenging role that requires her to show a mental deterioration that’s both gradual and inherently internal.
The flat lighting, the frequent use of maudlin music, a heavy reliance on medium shots and some awkward cutaways for reactions all contribute to the sensation of watching a rather workmanlike production better suited to the small screen.
From Amazon viewers:
[Richard] Glatzer [one of the directors] had lost his ability to talk by the time him and Westmore decided officially to adapt , and he resorted to using a Text-to-Speech app to communicate his thoughts; challenging enough, what were originally typed out with fingers had to eventually be typed out with toes by the time its production was over.
The book Still Alice is here.
The movie is here:
Amazon Prime
Best Price DVD
That’s a Wrap of Still Alice
I give it 1.5 stars for production value – that Cape Cod beach house (supposedly filmed at the Cape, but I don’t think so) is rad.
What did you think?
Set painter in studio Art Depts. Member Scriptwriters Network, script analyst.
Author, 2 hardcopy books, Barnes & Noble Calendar.
- Emma in the Night ~ Wendy Walker ~ Thriller - May 11, 2023
- Still Alice (2014) ~ Psychology Movie Review ~ Julianne Moore - January 25, 2023
- The Other Emily ~ Dean Koontz - January 23, 2023
