Alice Howland is a renowned linguistics professor happily married with three grown children. All that begins to change when she is diagnosed with Early-onset Alzheimer';s Disease, Alice and her family';s lives face a harrowing challenge as this terminal degenerative neurological ailment slowly progresses to an inevitable conclusion they all dread. Along the way, Alice struggles to not only to fight the inner decay, but to make the most of her remaining time to find the love and peace to make simply living worthwhile.
Kristen Stewart, fresh off the weird festival entry Clouds of Sils Maria with Juliette Binoche, is just as good here as ultimately the only unselfish member of this disappointing family. But come and stay for Moore, an actor for this and all ages.
It's the intent of this moving film to capture something that for obvious reasons is rarely attempted in memoir or movie, i.e., the experience of the deadly disease from the perspective of the sufferer rather than the caregivers.
Sorrow-laden and moving, Still Alice isn't gratuitously grim nor is it easily sentimental. There's humor here -- vaguely gallows-like, perhaps but also earned.
Philadelphia Inquirer
January 23, 2015
The great strength of the film is that it never resorts to cheap sentimentality. The facts themselves are hard enough, crushing enough.
70 percent portrait of a disease/30 percent family drama, recommended as preparation/demystification for Alzheimer's-affected families, and for fans of both Moore and Stewart.
While it's no surprise that Moore is so good, "Still Alice" has an unexpected trick up its sleeve: the sweetly gentle performance of Kristen Stewart, as Alice's actress daughter Lydia.
