Still Alice **** (2014, Julianne Moore, Alec Baldwin, Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth) – Movie Review

Still Alice is a devastating heart-tugger and guaranteed weepie. Julianne Moore is brilliant in a demanding and challenging role as Dr Alice Howland, a 50-year-old renowned linguistics professor struck down with rare congenital, early-onset Alzheimer’s.

You just can’t take your eyes off her, and she must be up for an Oscar. Surely it’s her turn this year! In the event, Moore deservedly triumphed at the Oscars, Golden Globes, Screen Actors Guild, London Film Critics and Baftas by winning the Best Actress awards.

Kristen Stewart is very good in support as her supportive daughter Lydia, and Alec Baldwin is excellent too as the bewildered, resentful, over-busy husband John. Doing well with less rewarding material, Kate Bosworth and Shane McRae co-star as Alice’s other daughter Anna and son-in-law, with Hunter Parrish sympathetic as her son Tom.

Joint directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland make a very good job of their handling and the screenplay, adapting the heart-breaking novel by Lisa Genova.

Moore is Academy Award nominated as Best Actress and has four previous Oscar nominations – for Boogie Nights (1997), The End of the Affair (1999), The Hours (2002) and Far from Heaven (2002). The last two were Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress in the same year.

© Derek Winnert 2014 Movie Review

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