'Still Alice' is a film that boasts a remarkable central performance from Julianne Moore. It tells the story of a University linguistics professor (Moore) as she is diagnosed a rare form of Auzheimer's disease. Richard Glatzer's direction of the movie can be viewed as a parallel to his own life and personal struggle as he lived with ALS disease. 'Still Alice' is full of emotive shots as the characters show care and support to Moore as she tries to continue juggling her career and family life with the disease. Aspects such as the music and cinematography is given a very straight-forward approach to allow the actors' performances to tell the story and to add a true to life direction. Based on the novel of the same name written by Lisa Genova, the screenplay is very faithfully adapted. The film really focuses on the story and the dialogue between the characters and some scenes and interactions are extremely moving thanks to how well it is written. Julianne Moore is perfect as the main character. She portrays her struggle with the disease with so much inner strength and dignity. Moore is supported by a solid cast such as Alec Baldwin and Kristen Stewart but are outshone by her brilliant performance. Overall, 'Still Alice' is a very good film. It is very touching and moving tale about coping with such a life changing and destructive disease. However, it seems to only be memorable due to Julianne Moore's incredible acting. ★★★½
At the ripe old age of fifty, renowned American linguist “Alice” (Julianne Moore) is at the top of her game and looking forward to a married life with three grown up children and a grand-child. Then she starts noticing that she is becoming a little forgetful. Those climbing the stairs then forgetting why you went up in the first place moments start to become more regular. She can’t recall the words for her lectures and presentations, indeed she can’t always even recall the topic she is supposed to be speaking about. These aren’t complete memory blackouts, but they concern her enough to go to doctor who confirms that she has early-onset Alzheimer’s. Her husband (Alec Baldwin) and her children rally around her, they do what they can, but in the end it is the distressing dismantling of a life that Moore presents quite poignantly here as her character’s illness worsens and it’s effects on her family resonate quite profoundly. The children themselves prove quite useful in portraying the differing responses to the illness, with independently-minded daughter “Lydia” (Kristen Stewart) who is already having a tempestuous relationship with her mother being one of the powerful litmus tests offered by auteur Richard Glatzer as they come to terms with the situation. There’s an especially effective scene where she essentially creates a trap-door, or exit strategy, for herself and that illustrates just how difficult it is for someone who’s life has always relied on her cerebral abilities, being gradually eroded to the point where reason becomes something blurred and complicated. It does flirt a little with sentimentality, but for the most part it is a thought-provoking, slightly observational, drama that raised quite a few question about our own mortality.
A sister and brother face the realities of familial responsibility as they begin to care for their ailing father.
Pierre, a professional dancer, suffers from a serious heart disease. While he is waiting for a transplant which may (or may not) save his life, he has nothing better to do than look at the people around him, from the balcony of his Paris apartment.
After the death of a septuagenarian woman, her three children deliberate over what to do with her estate.
Police Inspector Renko tries to solve the case of three bodies found in Moscow's Gorky Park but finds his attempts to solve the crime impeded by his superiors. Working on his own, Renko seeks out more information and stumbles across a conspiracy involving the highest levels of the government.
A saga of class relations and changing times in an Edwardian England on the brink of modernity, the film centers on liberal Margaret Schlegel, who, along with her sister Helen, becomes involved with two couples: wealthy, conservative industrialist Henry Wilcox and his wife Ruth, and the downwardly mobile working-class Leonard Bast and his mistress Jackie.
A wrongfully convicted boy is sent to a brutal desert detention camp where he must dig holes in order to build character. What he doesn't know is that he is digging holes in order to search for a lost treasure hidden somewhere in the camp.
When a sudden plague of blindness devastates a city, a small group of the afflicted band together to triumphantly overcome the horrific conditions of their imposed quarantine.
Jerry (Jamie Draven) was an idealist when he served in the first Gulf War. But when he was later deployed to Iraq, Jerry was an older man, a father of three and embittered by broken promises and unfulfilled desires. When Jerry returns from Iraq he has been transformed by horrors that cannot be forgiven. He lives a life of poverty, his children afraid of him and his wife, Nora (Vinessa Shaw), unsympathetic and unhappy. When Jerry discovers that Nora has betrayed him, his anger and despair drive him to commit an act so heinous and irreversible that nothing he had experienced in combat could have prepared him for.
A young Greek woman falls in love with a non-Greek and struggles to get her family to accept him while she comes to terms with her heritage and cultural identity.
Although barely 30, Claire believes she is showing the first symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, a condition from which her mother has recently died. Her sister, Nathalie, is certain that her memory loss, caused by a lightning strike, is temporary. In the clinic where she is being treated, Claire is attracted to Philippe, a man who is still traumatized after a car accident in which his wife and child were both killed. In spite of their personal tragedies, Claire and Philippe fall in love. When Philippe recovers, Claire moves into his home. Then Claire's condition takes a turn for the worse.
Camille is a professor at a Protestant college who is engaged to Martin, a respected minister and fellow professor. When Camille meets Petra, a bold and flamboyant performer in a circus troupe, she is inexplicably drawn. Pursuing Petra, Camille throws her whole conservative life into disarray.