7/10

When Julianne Moore won the Golden Globe for her turn in this film, i knew i had to check it out. What i found is a film elevated by Moore’s outstanding performance, and an educative look at the disease of alzheimer’s. “Still Alice” shows our title character, Alice Howland, a married woman with three grown children, and a career as an influential linguistics professor. When Alice receives a diagnosis of rare Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease,  Alice and her family find their bonds thoroughly tested. Her struggle to stay connected to who she once was is frightening, heartbreaking, and inspiring. As a film, i found “Still Alice” to be very close to home with a woman close to my life. My Step Mother has been currently battling a disease similar to Alzheimer’s for years, and Moore’s portrayal was a mirrored look at everything you need to know about the condition. The film’s script is a little thin when observed outside of the obvious plot content. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as the movie serves as a reminder to the depressing clarity that every one in three faces with such a scary disease. Julianne’s deterioration never seems forced or over the top. The film’s beautiful pacing is complimented well by Moore’s top notch portrayal stepping up more and more the deeper the film goes. The gutting of this legitimately beautiful and inspiring person is one of the toughest thing’s i’ve had to sit through on the silver screen in the last decade. Kristen Stewart surprisingly also hands in what is easily her greatest performance to date. She plays one of Alice’s children, and it’s clear that she has the closest attachment to her mother. The sorrow in Stewart’s eyes shows that she was perfectly cast. To anyone who knows anything about Alzheimer’s, you know i am not spoiling anything by saying the final ten minutes of this film are absolutely heartbreaking. The relationship by Stewart and Moore helps that bittersweet note feel like the appropriate one chosen. Love is the last thing remaining when all else is lost, and i found the moral of that to be smile worthy. The only thing about the cast as well as the film that i didn’t enjoy was the casting of Alec Baldwin as Alice’s husband. Don’t get me wrong, i enjoy Alec Baldwin, and think there is a serious side to his acting that a lot of his fans don’t get to enjoy often. In this film however, Baldwin is a little over the top. I get that he is dealing with a new found condition for he and his family, but he is the most insensitive pig, and i don’t think 100% of that was written that way. During the film’s opening ten minutes, i made a prediction to myself that Baldwin would be cheating on her. I was wrong about that prediction, but i called this because there is something about his performance that just doesn’t gel with a man married to a woman he’s loved for over 30 years. If he does one thing well, his disappearing act every five minutes makes you feel even more sad for everything Moore is going through. Overall, the film is consistent in it’s tear jerking approach. There are moments when the layers in the plot start to wear a little thin, but “Still Alice” is an good film turned into a great film by Julianne Moore. She is acting supremacy at it’s finest, and is a shoe in to take home the Oscar in March. That is something none of us could ever forget.