Still Alice

This article is about the 2014 film. For the 2007 novel, see Still Alice (novel).
Still Alice

Theatrical release poster
Directed by
Produced by
Screenplay by
  • Richard Glatzer
  • Wash Westmoreland
Based on Still Alice 
by Lisa Genova
Starring
Music by Ilan Eshkeri
Cinematography Denis Lenoir
Edited by Nicolas Chaudeurge
Production
company
Distributed by Sony Pictures Classics
Release dates
  • September 8, 2014 (2014-09-08) (TIFF)
  • December 5, 2014 (2014-12-05) (United States)
Running time
 101 minutes[1]
Country United States
Language English
Budget $5 million[2]
Box office $43.9 million[2]

Still Alice is a 2014 American independent drama film written and directed by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland[3][4] and based on Lisa Genova's 2007 bestselling novel of the same name. The film stars Julianne Moore as Alice Howland, a linguistics professor at Columbia diagnosed with familial Alzheimer's disease. Alec Baldwin plays her husband, John, and Kristen Stewart, Kate Bosworth, and Hunter Parrish play her children, Lydia, Anna and Tom.

Still Alice had its world premiere at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival on September 8, 2014.[5] It received critical acclaim, particularly for Moore's performance, who won awards including the Academy Award for Best Actress, the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role, the Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama, the SAG Award for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role and the Critics' Choice Movie Award for Best Actress.

Plot

Alice Howland, a linguistics professor at Columbia University, celebrates her 50th birthday with her physician husband John and three adult children. Giving a lecture, Alice forgets the word "lexicon", and during a jog becomes lost on campus. Her doctor diagnoses her with early onset familial Alzheimer's disease.

Alice's eldest daughter, Anna, tests positive for the Alzheimer's gene. Anna's unborn twins test negative, as does Alice's son Tom. Alice's younger daughter, aspiring actress Lydia, decides not to be tested.

As Alice's memory begins to fade, she daydreams of her mother and sister, who died in a car crash when she was a teenager. She memorizes words and sets a series of personal questions on her phone, which she answers every morning. She hides sleeping pills in her room, and records a video message instructing her future self to commit suicide with the pills when she can no longer answer the questions. As her disease advances, she becomes unable to give focused lectures and loses her job. She becomes lost searching for the bathroom in her own home and wets herself, and does not recognize Lydia after seeing her perform in a play.

John is offered a job at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Alice asks him to postpone it, but he feels this is impossible. At her doctor's suggestion, Alice delivers a speech at an Alzheimer's conference about her experience with the disease, using a highlighter to remind herself which parts of the speech she has already spoken, and receives a standing ovation.

Alice begins to have difficulty answering her phone questions. She loses the phone, causing her anxiety; John finds it a month later in the freezer, but Alice thinks it was only missing for a day. She visits Anna in the hospital to meet her newborn twin grandchildren, but does not recognize her daughter.

After a video call with Lydia, Alice inadvertently opens the video with the suicide instructions. With some difficulty, she finds the pills and is about to swallow them, but when she is interrupted by the arrival of her caregiver she drops the pills on the floor, quickly forgetting her suicide plan.

John resolves to move to Minnesota and Lydia moves back from California to care for Alice. Lydia reads her a section of the play Angels in America and asks her what she thinks it is about. Alice, now barely able to speak, responds with a single word: love.

Cast

Production

The film was produced by Lex Lutzus and James Brown of Lutzus/Brown along with Pamela Koffler of Killer Films and Marie Savare. It was executive produced by American journalist and author Maria Shriver along with Christine Vachon of Killer Films and Declan Baldwin of Big Indie pictures.[7]

Principal photography began in New York on March 3, 2014.[8] Scenes were shot at 162nd Street between Edgecombe and Amsterdam in New York as well as at Columbia University, Lido Beach, New York and Dobbs Ferry, New York.[9] Filming wrapped in early April.

On July 22, 2014, with the announcement of film's premiere at TIFF, the first still of Julianne Moore as Dr. Alice Howland from the film was released.[10]

Release

Sony Pictures Classics bought the US distribution rights for the film in a low seven figure deal that was announced on September 11, 2014. SPC gave the film a one-week qualifying run for the Oscars starting December 5, 2014, with a wider theatrical release on January 16, 2015.[11][12] The film went into full wide release in the United States on February 27, 2015.[13]

Piracy

The film was part of the confidential data stolen in the Sony Pictures Entertainment hack incident; it was leaked[14] onto peer-to-peer file sharing websites on November 27, 2014, over a month ahead of its release. Along with it came Fury and three other at-the-time unreleased Sony Pictures films (Annie, Mr. Turner and To Write Love on Her Arms).[15] Within three days of the leak, Still Alice had been downloaded by an estimated 103,832 unique IPs.[15]

Reception

Box office

As of 2016, Still Alice has a domestic gross of $18.7 million and internationally $25 million.[2]

Critical response

Still Alice premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival to positive reviews, with emphasis on Julianne Moore's performance. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 88% based on 166 reviews, with an average rating of 7.5/10. The site's consensus reads, "Elevated by a gripping performance from Julianne Moore, Still Alice is a heartfelt drama that honors its delicate themes with bravery and sensitivity."[16] On Metacritic, which assigns a weighted mean rating out of 100 reviews from film critics, the film has a score of 72 out of 100, based on 41 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[17] The National Board of Review Awards named Still Alice as one of the top ten independent films of 2014.[18]

Peter Debruge of Variety wrote in a positive review that the film had been shot "in such a way that activity is constantly spilling beyond the edges of the frame, giving the impression that characters’ lives continue when they’re not on camera, even as Alice’s seems to be closing in around her. Just as her kids look for ever-fainter signs of their mother behind those eyes, we lean in to watch Moore the actress turn invisible within her own skin."[19]

Moore received the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance

Deborah Young of The Hollywood Reporter called the film "warm, compassionate, but bitingly honest" and asserted that Moore had a "career-high performance." Young also praised the direction of the film, noting that "the directors tackle a subject where a restrained, understated approach is the best insurance against sloppy sentimentality. It pays off handsomely in the film’s closing moments, a poignant, poetic confrontation between the generations that draws the best from Moore and reveals unexpected depth in Stewart."[20]

Gregory Ellwood of Hitfix praised Moore: "In each scene she peels a little bit more of Alice away as the emotional pain of the disease takes its toll..." Ellwood also praised the direction, stating, "The duo behind the critically acclaimed Quinceañera let the film's narrative unspool in as restrained a manner as possible. There are no unbelievable hysterics. There are no self-aware screaming matches."[21]

Tim Grierson of Screen International praised the understated direction and Moore's performance, as well as Baldwin, Stewart, and Bosworth's supporting work: "Baldwin is particularly good as an ambitious medical researcher who is losing not just his wife but also a woman who was as driven as he was." Grierson added, "With nuance, Bosworth and Stewart both play women who seem to have been profoundly shaped by their impressive mother, and we feel the characters’ confusion at having her influence suddenly ripped away from them (Stewart especially shines, initially playing a prototypical starving-artist type who surprises her family by her response to Alice’s diagnosis)."[22]

Accolades

For her performance as Dr. Alice Howland, Julianne Moore won the Academy Award for Best Actress among other awards and nominations. Julianne became the seventh actress and 14th actor overall in a leading role who won the Academy, BAFTA, Golden Globe, SAG, and Critic's Choice Award for a single performance.

List of Accolades
Award / Film Festival Category Recipient(s) Result
Academy Awards[23] Best Actress Julianne Moore Won
Alliance of Women Film Journalists[24] Best Actress Julianne Moore Won
EDA Special Mention Award – Actress Defying Age and Ageism Nominated
AACTA International Awards[25] Best Actress Julianne Moore Won
BAFTA Awards[26] Best Actress in a Leading Role Julianne Moore Won
Chicago Film Critics Association Awards[27] Best Actress Julianne Moore Won
Critics' Choice Movie Awards[28] Best Actress Julianne Moore Won
Dallas–Fort Worth Film Critics Association[29] Best Actress Julianne Moore Runner-up
Detroit Film Critics Society[30] Best Actress Julianne Moore Nominated
Dorian Awards[31] Best Actress Julianne Moore Won
Dublin Film Critics' Circle[32] Best Actress Julianne Moore Won
Florida Film Critics Circle[33] Best Actress Julianne Moore Runner-up
Golden Globe Awards[34] Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama Julianne Moore Won
Georgia Film Critics Association[35] Best Actress Julianne Moore Nominated
Gotham Independent Film Awards[36] Best Actress Julianne Moore Won
Hollywood Film Awards[37] Hollywood Actress Award Julianne Moore Won
Houston Film Critics Society Awards[38] Best Actress Julianne Moore Won
Humanitas Prize Feature Film Wash Westmoreland and Richard Glatzer Won
Independent Spirit Awards[39] Best Female Lead Julianne Moore Won
International Cinephile Society Awards[40] Best Actress Julianne Moore Runner-up
London Film Critics Circle Awards[41] Actress of the Year Julianne Moore Won
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards[42] Best Actress Julianne Moore Runner-up
MPSE Golden Reel Awards[43] Feature English Language – Dialogue/ADR Javier Bennassar Nominated
National Board of Review Awards[44] Best Actress Julianne Moore Won
Top 10 Independent Films Still Alice Won
Online Film Critics Society Awards[45] Best Actress Julianne Moore Nominated
Palm Springs International Film Festival[46] Desert Palm Achievement Award Julianne Moore Won
San Francisco Film Critics Circle Awards[47] Best Actress Julianne Moore Won
Satellite Awards[48] Best Actress – Motion Picture Julianne Moore Won
Screen Actors Guild Awards[49] Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Leading Role Julianne Moore Won
St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association[50] Best Actress Julianne Moore Nominated
Toronto Film Critics Association Awards[51] Best Actress Julianne Moore Runner-up
Washington D.C. Area Film Critics Association Awards[52] Best Actress Julianne Moore Won
Women Film Critics Circle Best Actress Julianne Moore Won
Courage in Acting Won

References

  1. ↑ "STILL ALICE (12A)". British Board of Film Classification. December 1, 2014. Retrieved December 1, 2014.
  2. 1 2 3 "Still Alice (2015)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved April 26, 2015.
  3. ↑ "Kristen Stewart, Alec Baldwin, Kate Bosworth Join Julianne Moore in ‘Still Alice’". thewrap. Retrieved 4 March 2014.
  4. ↑ "AFM: Julianne Moore Boards Adaptation of ‘Alice’ Novel (EXCLUSIVE)". variety. Retrieved 4 March 2014.
  5. ↑ "Advertisement". Variety. Retrieved December 2, 2014.
  6. ↑ Still Alice novelaccessed 1-25-2016
  7. ↑ "Kristen Stewart confirmed for Still Alice". Retrieved 2 April 2014.
  8. ↑ "Kristen Stewart Isn't Changing Her Routine Now That She's in NYC". Retrieved 4 March 2014.
  9. ↑ "Filming Locations for ‘Still Alice’, starring Kristen Stewart and Julianne Moore, in NYC Mar. 3 – Mar. 7". Retrieved March 4, 2014.
  10. ↑ "TIFF First Look: Kate Winslet In 'A Little Chaos,' Paul Dano As Brian Wilson In 'Love & Mercy' & Julianne Moore In 'Still Alice'". July 22, 2014.
  11. ↑ Mike Fleming Jr. "Julianne Moore Movie ‘Still Alice’ Headed For Awards-Season Run - Deadline". Deadline. Retrieved December 2, 2014.
  12. ↑ "Advertisement". Variety. Retrieved December 2, 2014.
  13. ↑ "'Still Alice' Oscar buzz brings attention to Alzheimer's". Retrieved February 27, 2015.
  14. ↑ Justin McCurry. "North Korea denies hacking Sony Pictures". the Guardian. Retrieved December 17, 2014.
  15. 1 2 "Sony’s New Movies Leak Online Following Hack Attack". Variety. Retrieved December 2, 2014.
  16. ↑ "Still Alice". rottentomatoes.com. January 16, 2015.
  17. ↑ "Still Alice". Metacritic.
  18. ↑ Hilary Lewis. "'A Most Violent Year' Named Best Film by National Board of Review". The Hollywood Reporter.
  19. ↑ "Advertisement". Variety. Retrieved December 2, 2014.
  20. ↑ Deborah Young. "'Still Alice': Toronto Review". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved December 2, 2014.
  21. ↑ "Review: Julianne Moore is shattering in wonderfully restrained Still Alice". HitFix. Retrieved December 2, 2014.
  22. ↑ "Still Alice". Retrieved December 2, 2014.
  23. ↑ "Academy Awards nominations 2015". Oscars.go.com. 15 January 2014. Retrieved 15 January 2014.
  24. ↑ "2014 EDA Awards Winners". Alliance of Women Film Journalists. January 12, 2015. Retrieved January 12, 2015.
  25. ↑ Hawker, Philippa; Boyle, Finlay (7 January 2014). "AACTA international nominations 2015: The Babadook a surprise inclusion". The Sydney Morning Herald (Fairfax Media). Retrieved 7 January 2014.
  26. ↑ "Film in 2015". bafta.org.
  27. ↑ "2014 Chicago Film Critics Association Awards Nominations". Retrieved December 12, 2014.
  28. ↑ Gray, Tim (December 15, 2014). "‘Birdman,’ ‘Grand Budapest’ Top Critics Choice Awards Nominations". Variety. Retrieved December 15, 2014.
  29. ↑ "The 2014 Dallas–Fort Worth Film Critics Association Winners". Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  30. ↑ "The 2014 Detroit Film Critics Society Awards Winners". Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  31. ↑ "The 2014 Dorian Awards Winners". Retrieved January 21, 2015.
  32. ↑ "2015 Dublin Film Critics Circle Awards Announced". entertainment.ie. December 22, 2015.
  33. ↑ "Florida Film Critics Circle Winners". Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  34. ↑ "2015 Golden Globe Nominations". Retrieved December 11, 2014.
  35. ↑ "2015 Georgia Film Critics Association Winners". Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  36. ↑ "Gotham Independent Film Awards 2014 Nominations". Rotten Tomatoes. October 23, 2014. Retrieved October 24, 2014.
  37. ↑ Aaron Couch. "Hollywood Film Awards: Complete Winners List". The Hollywood Reporter. Retrieved December 2, 2014.
  38. ↑ "The Houston Film Critics Society Award Winners for 2014" (Press release). Houston Film Critics. PR Houston Film Critics. 12 January 2015. Retrieved 12 January 2015.
  39. ↑ "‘Birdman’ Tops Spirit Awards Nominations (Full List)". Variety. November 25, 2014. Retrieved November 26, 2014.
  40. ↑ "2015 ICS Award Nominees". icsfilm.org. February 2, 2015. Retrieved February 2, 2015.
  41. ↑ "35th London Film Critics Circle Awards". criticscircle.org.uk. December 19, 2014. Retrieved December 19, 2014.
  42. ↑ "40th Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards Winners Published". lafca.net. December 7, 2014. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
  43. ↑ "'Birdman,' 'Apes' Top 2015 Golden Reel Nominations". Deadline.com. January 14, 2015. Retrieved January 14, 2015.
  44. ↑ "National Board of Review Announces 2014 Award Winners". National Board of Review. December 2, 2014. Retrieved December 2, 2014.
  45. ↑ "'Boyhood,' 'Grand Budapest' lead with 2014 online film critics nominations". HitFix. Retrieved December 8, 2014.
  46. ↑ "Julianne Moore earns Palm Springs Film Festival’s Best Actress award". HitFix. November 13, 2014. Retrieved November 14, 2014.
  47. ↑ "2014 San Francisco Critics Circle Awards Nominations". December 13, 2014. Retrieved December 13, 2014.
  48. ↑ "The International Press Academy Announces Nominations For The 19th Annual Satellite™ Awards". Yahoo!. December 1, 2014. Retrieved December 1, 2014.
  49. ↑ "2015 SAG Awards nominations - complete list". Retrieved December 10, 2014.
  50. ↑ "2015 St. Louis Gateway Film Critics Association Winners". Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  51. ↑ "The Toronto Film Critics Association names Richard Linklater’s Boyhood the Best Film of the Year". Retrieved January 15, 2015.
  52. ↑ "Boyhood and Birdman Dominate This Years Washington DC Film Critics Awards". WKRG.com. Retrieved December 8, 2014.

External links

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