I have never worked with or spoken with an individual who has Alzheimer's disease, although I did work with an elderly woman in the psychiatric hospital who had dementia and that was quite challenging. In Still Alice the audience starts out with an advantage over the main character, kind of like the Titanic; we already know what's coming. However it doesn't minimize the angst that one feels for this character, and seeing such an incredibly bright and talented woman lose nearly all her cognitive function is very heart wrenching. Julianne Moore did an excellent job with the character she was playing; you could see the decline slowly coming until she could barely utter a word. Her character, Alice, is a brilliant scientist who finds out she has early onset Alzheimer's disease at age 50, and the film explores how she and her family handle the disease and all of the problems that come along with it. Alec Baldwin was the husband and he did a good job with the character, albeit he was rather static, as were most of the other characters in the film. Kristen Stewart played one of Alice's daughters, and her character actually was the most interesting aside from Julianne Moore's character, which shocks me now that I consider it (I'm not a very huge Kristen Stewart fan). Kate Bosworth has a small role as another one of Alice's children, but her character was also kind of flat. If they had written and fleshed it out more she could have really shined; there was a lot of potential there. The film was.....okay I suppose; it wasn't bad, but it wasn't really that great either. Julianne Moore delivered a great performance, but I don't think she should have taken home the Oscar, which I believe should have gone to Rosamund Pike instead for her work in Gone Girl. The film was actually quite short too which surprised me at one hour and thirty minutes approximately. The ending, which was lame, happened so abruptly that I didn't even realize it until I saw the credits rolling, and I was thinking, "what in the world, I just looked down for a moment to text something on my phone really quick...," but there it went. So I would say that what would have tremendously helped this film be great was about a half hour more of film time, and some better writing of the secondary characters where they are fleshed out more, and also writing more of how they're dealing with Alice's drifting away from reality. A great idea for a film but not really executed the best; and there weren't any technical elements that stood out that well either in the film. Summarizing it as a whole, it was a very lukewarm picture; Julianne Moore's performance is the only reason to watch the film, aside from getting a beginner's grasp on what Alzheimer's may manifest like in people.Still Alice trailer
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