While winning an Oscar can often help to improve the profile of a film, that doesn’t appear to have been the case for Still Alice, having had a relatively quiet and limited release in cinemas, despite helping Julianne Moore pick up the Best Actress award at the 2015 Academy Awards. Now it’s on it’s way to DVD, it’s a good opportunity for anyone that missed its short run on the big screen to see the performance that picked up the Oscar in a film that bizarrely didn’t get any other nominations.
Release date
Still Alice premiered at the 2014 Toronto International Film festival on the 8th September 2014, before going on to open at the box office in North America on the 5th December 2014. The UK release date for the film was a little later on the 6th March 2015. It’s scheduled for a DVD and digital download release in the UK on the 6th July 2015, following on from its existing release in North America on the 12th May in the same year.
The movie doesn’t appear to be getting a Blu-ray release in either the US or the UK, which gives a pretty good indication of the low expectations for the home entertainment release. However, if you go on critical acclaim and award wins it should probably be up there in your must-see film list for the year.
Story
The plot is an adaptation of the 2007 novel of the same name, which was written by Lisa Genova, telling the story of Alice Howland, a fifty-year-old university professor who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. As the form of dementia starts to take hold swiftly, Alice and her family must come to terms with situation, which has no known cure.
Happily married to her husband John and with three grown-up children – Anna, Tom and Lydia – Alice faces crisis point as the reality of the diagnosis sinks in, forcing her to re-evaluate her life and her relationship with her family. The heartbreaking and inspiring plot is made all the more difficult by the fact that familial early onset Alzheimer’s disease is genetic and could have been passed on to her children, which gives Alice another big worry to deal with at a time when she’s just trying to stay connected to the person she’s always been.
Cast
In addition to Julianne Moore’s (Crazy, Stupid, Love) Oscar winning performance as Alice, the film also stars Alec Baldwin (To Rome With Love) as her husband John, Kristen Stewart (On The Road) as her youngest daughter Lydia, Kate Bosworth (Blue Crush) as older sister Anna and Hunter Parish (Gone) as her son Tom. The cast also included Shane McRae, Stephen Kunken, Victoria Cartagena, Seth Gilliam, Daniel Gerroll, Erin Darke, Kristin Macomber and Caridad Montanez.
Production
Still Alice was written and directed by Richard Glatzer & Wash Westmoreland, with executive producers Marie Savare, Christine Vachon, Maria Shriver, Emilie Georges, Nicholas Shumaker, Celine Rattray and Trudie Styler. Lex Lutzus, James Brown and Pamela Koffler produced the movie with co-producers Declan Baldwin and Elizabeth Stearns, Denis Lenoir was the director of photography, Nicolas Chaudeurge editor, Tommaso Ortino production designer and Ilan Eshkeri (Shaun The Sheep) scored the film.
First impressions
This is a movie that’s worth watching when the DVD and digital download release date arrive just to see Julianne Moore’s Academy Award winning performance. If you need additional sway you can look at the fact that she also picked up the Best Actress award in the BAFTA’s and the Golden Globes, along with the sheer abundance of positive reviews the film has received since its premier at TIFF 2014. Check out the trailer below to make up your own mind.
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