Still Alice

First Hit:  Powerful acting in a very strong film.

Julianne Moore plays Alice Howland, famous and prestigious linguistic professor at Columbia University, who discovers that she has Familial Alzheimer’s disease which has a 50% chance of being passed on to her children.

Her three children Anna (Kate Bosworth), Tom (Hunter Parrish), and Lydia (Kristen Stewart), all have different relationships with their mother and are accurately testy with each other. Alice’s husband John (Alec-Baldwin) is also at Columbia and is very supportive of his wife’s oncoming illness.

This film is about what happens within this family as Alice’s disease takes ahold of her. The scenes are well done and allow the audience to feel along with both Alice and the others.

Moore is Oscar extraordinary. She delivers on all levels and the ending scene when she utters, says it all. Baldwin is very strong as the loving husband. Bosworth is very good as the know-it-all, professionally focus, and protective of her mother kind of daughter. Parrish was overshadowed by the other actor, but good at times. Stewart delivered. The complex, rebellious and understanding daughter role fit her perfectly. Richard Glatzer wrote this wonderfully compelling script and his own direction with Wash Westmoreland was spot on.

Overall:  This was a very good film and the acting sublime.

21

First Hit: The film started out well. In fact I enjoyed the premise of a young strong mind finding traction in the hot fast world of gaming, however at some point it turned more towards being unbelievable or false.

Based on a true story, Jim Sturgess plays Ben a young bright MIT student doing what he can to enter Harvard Medical School.

In one scene he is meeting with a Harvard representative who is telling him that to receive an all paid trip to Medical School on a grant, he must have, besides perfect school and test scores, a dazzling life experience story to tell.

The rep wants to be dazzled. Ben walks away dejected because his life has been all study and no play he doesn’t have any life experiences to dazzle the Harvard rep, nor does he have the $300,000 it takes to pay for school.

During a class taught by Professor Micky Rosa (played by Kevin Spacey), Ben impresses Mickey with an answer to a math problem. Upon further questioning by the professor Ben impresses the whole class with his thought process and brilliance.

Days later Ben is invited to sit in a meeting with the Professor and some students who have created a team that counts cards in 21 and plays for money in Las Vegas on the weekends.

They want him to join the team because they lost one of their players. On this team is the girl of his dreams Jill Taylor (played by Kate Bosworth). Although it tempting as a way to pay for school he initially declines their offer.

Jill comes to see him and he is finally convinced to try this but sets a limit that he is only there to win $300,000 for his tuition and after that he is out.

At this point the film starts telegraphing itself with the high life he gets caught into while gambling in Las Vegas. After a few trips, he finds himself to be really good at the game and starts to think he is better than the rules set up by the team.

At one point he disregards the signals by his team members and ends up losing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Although counting cards is not illegal, casinos don’t like it and anyone suspected of counting gets a reminder that counting is not tolerated.

Ben gets his lesson from Laurence Fishburne who has strong feelings against card counters and as we find out Professor Rosa.

Overall: This was an entertaining film, more at the beginning than at the end where the real character seemed to get lost. Some of the gambling scenes are great.