Review of Still Alice (2014) by Alice S — 23 May 2015

Julianne Moore is pretty dang good as a fifty-year-old linguistics professor who learns that she has Early-Onset Alzheimer's. Moore's eyes are simultaneously blank and frightened, and her naturally strained smile really works for this tension-filled character. The narrative is rather choppy, but there are some truly great moments: the five-minute-long close-up of Alice ever-so-slightly struggling to complete the doctor's memory quiz, the scene of Alice panicking because she can't find the bathroom and ultimately wetting herself, the harrowing and suspenseful sequence of Alice trying to end her suffering by following the directions she recorded for herself when she was still lucid.

All the supporting characters are somewhat superfluous, save for youngest daughter Lydia, played to varying degrees of competency by Kristen Stewart. Her rocker hair is a cool style choice, but KStew can't stop playing with it, and the beachy waves don't work at all for the Chekov play. She tsks before most of her lines, indicating a lack of breath support, which is even more noticeable when she's trying to deliver classical theatre monologues. She shrugs and shakes her head and shivers like a Chihuahua. She only transcends her crutches when she delivers Harper's monologue from "Angels in America" in the last scene, and even that's not a great barometer of her acting skill because while she's very good at playing Lydia's objective of connecting with her mother, I doubt that her unfaltering gaze and rapid pace would actually work for the role within the role.