Still Alice (2014)

Julianne Moore is Dr. Alice Howland, a linguistics professor who starts to worry when she realises that her ability to recall words seems to be diminishing. After a number of sessions with a doctor it becomes clear, although not quite believable, that she has early onset Alzheimer's disease. She has to break the news to her family, and also has to set in place a number of measures that will help her live a nirmal life for as long as possible.

This is standard stuff, very much TV-movie-of-the-week. The screenplay, by Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland, is based on a novel by Lisa Genova, which at least makes everything more interesting and powerful by having Alice be a linguistics professor. She arguably knows the value of individual words more than most, highlighting the deterioration of her mental acuity in the first stages of her illness.

Glatzer and Westmoreland also direct the movie together. While they don't show themselves to be experts in the field, they're smart enough to cast well and intersperse the second half of the movie with some moving moments.

Moore is excellent in the main role, as you'd expect her to be. There are one or two moments in the first half of the movie that have her repeating herself from past performances, but it's when she starts to lose aspects of her main identity that she truly shows what she's capable of. It's not up there with her best performances, in my opinion. It's still very good stuff though. Alec Baldwin puts in another great supporting turn (he's never disappointing in those roles), and Kate Bosworth and Hunter Parrish are two of the three grown-up children who struggle as they see their mother losing her mind. But it's the third child I'm going to spend the most time discussing. She's an aspiring actress, and still finding her place in the big world before all of her hopes and dreams are dashed. Played by Kristen Stewart, she's the best of the supporting characters, and Stewart gives perhaps the best performance in the film. Often sidelined, and often treated as if she doesn't know her own mind, she can probably see the situation that her mother is going through from a much closer perspective than anyone else around her, leading her to be the most selfless and sympathetic of the group.

It's a shame that the film just isn't a bit better. I guess it's difficult to make a movie like this feel like anything more than a well-intentioned melodrama. The cast all try hard, but can only raise it up so far. It's worth your time, and those wanting some inoffensive drama will certainly enjoy it a bit more than I did. Ultimately, it's quite forgettable, which is a tragic irony.

6/10

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The Bay (2012)

It's a real shame that many people will see The Bay as just another in the never-ending stream of found footage movies being release nowadays. It IS a found footage film, in many ways, but the framing structure is that of someone presenting this material to the world. This isn't just raw, shaky-cam footage from start to finish. In fact, there's not that much shaky-cam thanks to webcam footage and dashboard cameras being the main source of the filmed evidence being shown, at last, to the world.

Kether Donohue plays Donna Thompson, the woman speaking directly to camera and setting the scene. A few years ago, on the 4th of July, a mysterious medical condition started to infect the population of a small Maryland town and ruin the celebrations. It turns out that there's something bad in the water, something that some people may have already known about but set out to keep a secret.

Marketed with the increasingly tiresome tagline "From The Producers Of Paranormal Activity And Insidious", the thing to note about The Bay is who it's directed by as opposed to who produced the thing. Barry Levinson is the man sitting in the big chair and it's fascinating to see how he deals with the constraints and problems inherent in the faked cinema verite style. Funnily enough, the end product reminded me most of Hugo by Martin Scorsese, thanks to the way an "old hand" has come along to direct a film in a particular style of the here and now and shown all of the youngsters how it can still be handled masterfully.

The movie doesn't run for that long, and a number of small moments are shown repeatedly to make the big points that the final edit of the material wants to push into the public consciousness, but it doesn't feel rushed either. Things are set up and develop with efficiency and skill. Donohue makes for a likeable lead while Kristen Connolly, Stephen Kunken, Will Rogers and Frank Deal are all excellent as some of the main people caught up in the events of the day for various reasons.

While it's not all that scary or atmospheric in the traditional horror sense, there is a lot here that scares because it all feels very plausible. I don't want to spoil things by providing too much detail but the origin and details of the outbreak will make you wriggle in discomfort and start to worry about how close to reality it could actually be.

A lot of credit for the effectiveness of the movie should also go to writer Michael Wallach. This is his first filmed script, as far as I'm aware, and he does a great job of delivering the required information, providing moments of real nastiness and also being unafraid of leading viewers towards a conclusion that is foretold from the outset.

Don't be put off by the fact that The Bay is a found footage movie. Don't be put off by the fact that it's from those ubiquitous producers of Paranormal Activity and Insidious. Instead, let the fact that it's a very good film helmed by a great director encourage you to give it a chance.

7/10

The Bay is available on Amazon Instant Video here - http://www.amazon.com/The-Bay/dp/B00A0G162U/ref=sr_1_9?s=instant-video&ie=UTF8&qid=1352032372&sr=1-9&keywords=the+bay