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Surprisingly great film that ticks all the expected boxes for an Oscar-baiting medical drama but does so in a restrained and simple fashion, with strong editing and elisions of time helping to mask the ever lessening differences between good days and bad ones for Julianne Moore's Alzheimer's victim. It's an emotionally overpowering film, and Moore is terrific and it doesn't take long to see that her Oscar win wasn't just a career win like Winslet's, but an earned reward for a great performance. Alec Baldwin's performance and character is interesting here too, as he nails the somewhat aloof professional marital partner who, we get the feeling, has never had to deal with anything too serious in this relationship. The film mostly avoids overtly weepy theatrics, though a speech Moore performs late in the film may test the patience of the skeptical-- I think it works about as good as these kind of devices can, and has a playful red herring present that strikes me as being somewhat self-aware at how the whole thing could be perceived. Honestly, in a weird reversal of how it usually goes, I feel like if this one hadn't won the Oscar, a lot more people here would have already sought it out and enjoyed this-- though it's not exactly a "fun" watch. Since this didn't play for commercial audiences outside of its one week qualifying run til this year, I'm counting it as a 2015 film, and it's one of the best of the year.

domino harvey wrote:Still Alice (Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland) Surprisingly great film that ticks all the expected boxes for an Oscar-baiting medical drama but does so in a restrained and simple fashion, with strong editing and elisions of time helping to mask the ever lessening differences between good days and bad ones for Julianne Moore's Alzheimer's victim. It's an emotionally overpowering film, and Moore is terrific and it doesn't take long to see that her Oscar win wasn't just a career win like Winslet's, but an earned reward for a great performance....-- though it's not exactly a "fun" watch...

Finally got around to seeing this, started watching it probably two or three times before I got through it (because of the subject matter, not the filmmaking). I think the fact that Glatzer and Westmoreland were a couple and Glatzer was suffering from ALS at the time is what gives the film its honesty, matter-of-fact tone and one-day-at-a-time pacing. Pretty much devoid of any showboating scenes that these types of Oscar bait films usually have. Like Domino says Moore's performance is an earned Oscar and not a career one. And the ending

Spoiler

isn't dramatic or cathartic, nothing special, just another moment but I have to say it keeps coming back to me more than any other of the past few years.

Still Alice might be ready or a thread given that three of us have seen it. Essentially I'm surprised how good this came out. It's not perfect and isn't a masterwork of cinema, but it is far better then the 'we made it so Julianne Moore gets an oscar' vibe that the marketing suggested. Speaking of even as an agnostic on her Moore does a great job underplaying and overplaying just right while still feeling natural. Her repertoire with Bladwin is great and the way she can transition to the bathroom search shows why she earned that oscar. The support's also excellent somehow managing to escape Moore's shadow for at least a scene each. Stewart in particular does a great Parker Posey. The characters themselves are pretty much the only complaint I have. It's clear that it was needed for Westmoreland and Glatzer's purpose to have them come from this milieu, but because it is such an accurate depiction of hegemonic academic culture and people they can't help but come across as annoying and frustrating. Though in a De Sica sort of way this works to the film's advantage since everyone makes them so sympathetic from the point of the disease that if they are saint Joan or not doesn't matter.

The film, most surprisingly, also has a good aesthetic that manages to stay within the typical indiewood mold without drawing attention to itself or playing like one of those lamed serious movies you'd expect Jay Roach to medicinally direct. It's direct and fluid in a way that allows the film to be educational and a narrative which is such a rare joy in cinema. The film is almost devoid of big moments and when it does have them it presents them in such a way as to remove some of the awards bait sheen. There's of course the aforementioned pee scene, but even the big speech scene being placed at the beginning of the third act rather then being the last scene of the movie as I thought it would be takes away from the catharsis in a fashion allowing it to be only as exciting as it is for the characters. Basically this is about as good as a film aiming to educate and bring awareness to Alzheimer's could be. As an aside is anyone familiar with Westmoreland and Glatzer's other films? This has certainly piqued my interest in them.