Still Alice
2014
****
Director: Richard Glatzer, Wash Westmoreland
Cast: Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, Hunter Parrish
Alice Howland is a 50-year-old lingustics professor who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. Alice gradually loses words, memories and her cognitive abilities, but desperately attempts to hang on to her personality and her dignity. In the meanwhile, her husband and three grown-up children deal with their feelings of guilt and helplessness. This sounds like prime material for a disease-of-the-week TV movie, but as heartbreaking as this drama is, it never threatens to become a manipulative weepy. Alice's deterioration is depicted in a subtle fashion with cinematic tools. Julianne Moore gives a terrifically nuanced lead performance, which earned her an Academy Award. The directors adapted their screenplay from Lisa Genova's novel.
