Julianne Moore finally gets the recognition she deserves from the Academy with an attention grabbing performance
that is sure to tug at the heart strings of audiences around the world.
Alice Howland (Julianne Moore) is a happily married woman
with three grown children and a successful career as a renowned linguistics
professor. Soon after turning 50, Alice begins to forget words and decides to
see a neurologist as her memory starts to decline in other ways. It starts with
just missing a few words here and there, but then she starts to forget where
she is, even on the campus where she works. Alice receives the devastating
diagnosis that she has early onset Alzheimer’s disease and that her life, and
that of her family, is about to rapidly and dramatically change.
Alec Baldwin is the husband too wrapped up in his own work
to even notice his wife’s struggle until Alice lets it all spill out one night.
While Alice has to face no longer working, her husband John remains committed
to his own career, testing their bond and making life more difficult for both
of them. Alice’s grown children all have their own issues with eldest daughter
Kate Bosworth trying to get pregnant and Kristen Stewart desperate to become an
actress, much to her mother’s disapproval.
Based on the novel by Lisa Genova, Still Alice is a weepy,
depressing film. Luckily, and ironically for a film called Still Alice, it
barely stays still for a moment. Despite the slow, mournful soundtrack, Still
Alice rushes through its story. Alice’s Alzheimer’s comes on rapidly, affecting
her life and the life of her family quickly and viciously. It is a shame that
there is not more time to get to know the characters of her kids as Bosworth,
Stewart and Hunter Parrish in particular feel completely short changed by a
script that barely explores their reaction to their mother’s illness.
It’s an aggressive, destructive disease that not only eats
at Alice’s mind, but also threatens to attack the three children. The inherited
nature of the disease means that they all have a 50/50 chance of developing it
also, and then on passing it on to their own children. However, this is only
briefly alluded to and the focus remains very much on Moore’s central
character. Alice is a fiercely intelligent woman who relishes her mind and
finds the erosion of her cognitive capacity to be unbearable.
Moore is an actress who often looks on the verge of crying
anyway, but Still Alice gives her the opportunity to really give those tear
ducts a workout. At times trying desperately to appear normal and happy for her
children and at others, letting all her emotions loose, Moore unsurprisingly
delivers on all fronts. Seeing her transformation from remarkable and vivacious
career woman to tragic victim hits home most notably in the scene when her old
self comes face to face with the woman she has become. Before succumbing to the
disease, Alice makes a video for herself to watch in the future, and this
moment really brings home just how much she has changed.
At forty minutes into the film, this is Alice making a tragic,
life-altering decision that will leave audiences feeling defeated and hopeless.
It’s a brave or cowardly choice from Alice, depending on your viewpoint, but it
also lends the rest of the film a terrible inevitability. It is clear that
there is no way that Sill Alice can have a happy ending, no matter what the
outcome is.
Though there are occasional moments of happiness, the score
is all heartbreaking stings and melancholy piano. Directors Richard Glatzer and
Wash Westmoreland aren’t letting anyone off easily when watching this story
full of despair. They plant us in the headspace of Alice with her surroundings
often out of focus , reflecting the confusion and distance she begins to feel,
even in the most familiar of surroundings. They use Moore’s face continuously
to reveal the inner torment that she feels as her memory deteriorates. On the
one hand, there is some respite from the misery in knowing that she lived a
full life and got to watch her children grow up, but on the other, the irony
that such an intelligent woman, so passionate about words and communication is
now starting to lose her ability to speak is all the more tragic.
When Alice sums up living with her disease in an impassioned
speech to the Alzheimer’s Association, it is a rare moment of triumph in a film
that does not deal in joy and overcoming adversity. Still Alice is a film about
loss, about perceptions of people suffering from Alzheimer’s and about the
effects it has on the victims and (to a far lesser extent) those around them.
Despite Moore’s excellent performance, Bosworth, Stewart and Baldwin could have
been given more to do by a script that should have spent more time exploring
the effects on those around Alice.
Over the weekend, we had the Producer's Guild Awards and the Screen Actor's Guild Awards announce their winners for the past year of film making. At the PGA's, the producers of Birdman, The Lego Movie, TV's Breaking Bad and Fargo won the big prizes while there was a fascinating spread of movies that won at the SGA's. Below I have listed the nominees (for the movie categories) and in bold are the winners. Not one movie had two winners, meaning that The Theory of Everything, Still Alice, Whiplash, Boyhood and Birdman all picked up awards. It's great to see all these films picking up something and it will be very interesting to see if this is repeated at the Oscars. Outstanding
Performance by a Male Actor in a Leading Role
STEVE CARELL Foxcatcher
BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH The
Imitation Game
JAKE GYLLENHAAL Nightcrawler
MICHAEL KEATON Birdman EDDIE REDMAYNEThe
Theory of Everything
Outstanding
Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role
JENNIFER ANISTON Cake
FELICITY JONES The
Theory of Everything JULIANNE MOORE Still Alice
ROSAMUND PIKE Gone Girl
REESE WITHERSPOON Wild
Outstanding
Performance by a Male Actor in a Supporting Role
ROBERT DUVALL The Judge
ETHAN HAWKE Boyhood
EDWARD NORTON Birdman
MARK RUFFALO Foxcatcher J.K. SIMMONS Whiplash
Once a year, I like to have a little flutter when it comes to awards season. OK maybe two or three times a year as I'll probably throw a tiny bit of cash down on the BAFTAS and the Oscars. Anyway, the point is I'm not an addict. I just like to liven awards season up with the potential of winning a little money. I'm too stingy and scared and skint to throw down any real money so I keep things very low key, only betting very small amounts.
Last year I came out a tiny bit up after betting on a couple of the awards ceremonies, but this year I'm trying not to play it so safe by betting on a couple of outsiders that may not be the favourites but still have good chances of winning.
I placed my bets at William Hill this year on the following nominees in the following categories:
Julianne
Moore - Maps To The Stars @ 12/1 Best Actress - Musical/Comedy
Stake: £1.00 Potential Returns:
£13.00
Amy Adams
- Big Eyes @ 10/11 Best
Actress - Musical/Comedy
Stake: £1.00 Potential Returns:
£1.91
Ralph
Fiennes - The Grand Budapest Hotel @ 9/1 Best Actor - Musical/Comedy
Stake: £1.00 Potential Returns:
£10.00
Alejandro
Gonzalez Inarritu - Birdman @ 11/2 Best Director
Stake: £1.00 Potential Returns:
£6.50
Eddie
Redmayne - The Theory of Everything @ 1/3 Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama
Stake: £2.00 Potential Returns:
£2.67
Boyhood @
1/6 Best
Motion Picture - Drama
Stake: £2.00 Potential Returns:
£2.33
Felicity
Jones - The Theory of Everything @ 16/1 Best Actress - Motion Picture Drama
Stake: £1.00 Potential Returns:
£17.00
Highlighted are my winners.
TOTAL STAKE £9.00
TOTAL POTENTIAL WINNINGS (I can dream): £53.41
ACTUAL TOTAL: £6.91
What do you reckon are my chances? Will I get my £9 back at least or will I lose it all?
Joseph Gordon Levitt's directorial debut throbs with energy,
intent and depravity. Don Jon is the story of Levitt's Jon, known as Don to his
friends due to his extraordinary and enviable talent with the ladies. Despite his affection
for, and his attention from, the ladies though, Jon likes nothing more than to bash
the bishop to seedy internet porn. His succession of one night stands mean he
can avoid a meaningful relationship and skip easily between the women he takes
home from the clubs and the impossibly endowed women that light up his laptop
by night.
Jon might be played with plenty of cocksure confidence by
Levitt but he is a also just a jerk who is obsessed with jerking off. He thinks
little of women except about where they fit on his appearance scale with 10
being a perfect 'dime'. Enter Scarlett Johansson. The women in Jon's life range
from his phone wielding near silent sister and his stereotypical shrieking
mother to the gorgeous Scarlett Johansson and finally to Julianne Moore, past
her prime but still irresistible in her own unique way. Johansson takes
seductive to a new level while Moore offers something different to the eye
popping proportions of the other women that Jon so vigorously 'admires'.
Jon's life is presented as cyclical and repetitive with
scenes taking on a recurring rhythm; wanking, clubbing, church confessions,
family dinner, working out, road rage and repeat. The introduction of Johansson's buxom
blonde throws a bit of a spanner in the works but the formula remains the same.
Jon does less slapping of the salami and more evening classes to appease his
gorgeous new girl while his family dinners suddenly become a little more
livelier now that his aggressively stereotyped mother and father find his love
life more interesting. Tony Danza's Dad is particularly entertaining, all
ogling eyes and inappropriate responses to his potential future daughter in
law.
Overall, Don Jon is equal parts hilarious and depressing. It
has something to say about relationships and questions the sexualisation of
women in modern culture. In amidst the thrusts of gratuitous nudity and carefully
cut images of hard core porn, there is a message and more than a hint of a
romantic heart at the centre of what looks like a phwoar-some sex comedy at
first. Like Fight Club with its view of modern men shaped by a society that is
forcing them back into their primal man caves, many will find only misogyny
here. There is plenty on offer from Jon and his boys and arguably the
representation of women but deep beneath it emerges something more complex (if
also more formulaic and less funny).
Don Jon is an incredibly confident directorial debut, as
well as giving Levitt a role that demands he is in almost every frame, buffed
up, preening and at his most revealing. It is a brave film and a brave
performance. The laying bare of modern masculinity in the writing, the frequent
bursts of stylistic flair and the nakedness of Levitt's performance all ensure
that Don Jon will stick in the memory, not a discarded tissue for a long time
to... um... come.
