Still Alice (2014)

'Still' Good: Julianne Moore struggles to hold on to memories.

There’s a thrilling moment in “Still Alice” in which the title character, Alice Howland (Julianne Moore, in her Oscar-winning performance), has just finished one of her frequent runs on the campus of Columbia University, where she works as a linguistics professor. The imagery in this early scene unfolds like a puzzle—if you didn’t already know that the movie was about a character dealing with a diagnosis of early-onset familial Alzheimer’s disease, it might be fun to guess.

As the scene continues, Alice stops and breathlessly surveys her surroundings, which appear as a hazy blur in the distance. Cut to a shot of Alice, whose initial expression of surprise crosses into fear as the camera begins to slowly swirl around her. It’s only after a few deep breaths that the world, literally, comes back into focus. For the brainy Alice, who’s only 50 and not accustomed to being lost, the thought of suddenly being cornered in a confused fog is highly disconcerting.

From this point, the fact that the film’s look settles down into something familiar and routine is a bit of a letdown. In cinema when the subject is illness, there’s a lot of latitude to be visually ambitious—Ingmar Bergman’s “Cries and Whispers” comes to mind—but co-directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (who also teamed up to write the screenplay, from a novel of the same name by Lisa Genova) take a mostly bland, televisual approach.

While imperfect, “Still Alice” remains effective and has a lot to appreciate, namely the performances. Besides Moore’s characteristically impressive work, there’s Alec Baldwin as her loving but career-minded husband John, a doctor struggling to balance caring for his wife with new job opportunities; Kristen Stewart in a sharp turn as Lydia, youngest of two daughters and an aspiring actress who eventually moves back home from California to look after her mom; and Kate Bosworth, underused as older daughter Anna, who learns she has the gene to eventually inherit her mother’s disease but is oddly left on the fringes of the story.

Much of the film chronicles various stages of Alice’s illness. There are good days, such as a lovely scene in which Alice and Lydia go for a walk at a beach on Long Island and mom acts like her old self, needling Lydia about going college and having a back-up plan in case acting doesn’t work out; and bad days, such as a heartbreaking scene where Alice frantically searches at home for the bathroom and freezes in panic when she can’t find it.

There is unexpected humor, too, such as when Alice pouts about reading the same page of “Moby Dick” over and over. John suggests something lighter and Alice, in a moment of hilarious, self-deprecating clarity quips, “What, like ‘The Cat it the Hat?’” Ultimately, “Still Alice” seems less a story about disease than a story about a family’s commitment and love for each another.

There are some moments of manipulative melodrama—planning ahead, Alice uploads a video to herself with instructions on taking a bottle of sleeping pills for when she gets too sick, and inevitably stumbles upon it later—but otherwise the film is careful about being too preachy or exploiting the circumstances for false sentiment and maudlin payoffs. Perhaps the most genuinely moving scene occurs when Alice gives a speech on Alzheimer’s at a medical convention and her voice quakes when she talks about her love of communication.

Indeed, it’s a sad irony that much of Alice’s life and success has to do with a fascination with words, and that by the end she has almost none of them left to say.

Jack & Diane (2012)

Riley Keough and Juno Temple in "Jack & Diane."

The dominant images of “Jack & Diane”—nosebleeds, facial cuts, vomiting, people sitting on toilets—all suggest unpleasant bodily fluids flowing. Although the movie was filmed in and around Brooklyn, N.Y., its favorite location seems to be the bathroom.

The film—a confused, queasy mix of horror and teen romance involving two young women and bizarre visions of werewolves—appears to be inspired in some part by the “Twilight” franchise. Furthermore, the strange idea of lesbianism hooking up with lycanthropy seems to be independent writer-director Bradley Rust Gray’s ill-advised way of making the material more edgy and mainstream.

Though they are about the same age, Diane (Juno Temple) plays the naïve, sexy nymphet to the short-haired, boyish and ostensibly more experienced Jack (Riley Keough). The couple’s initial encounters are oddly associated with pain (Diane gets a nosebleed and Jack gets hit by a car), a gimmick that seems meant to suggest vicissitudes in their relationship—ranging from clichéd to maddeningly incomprehensible—that lie ahead.

Out of the little that happens in this ponderous and overlong film, nothing is more fraught with unease than the couple’s attempts at love making, which are either interrupted by a snarling wolf man that looks borrowed from an 80s movie (like “The Howling” or “Silver Bullet”), or haunted by creepy cutaways that feature gooey body parts in grotesque close-ups. For what it’s worth, the latter is done using stop-motion animation supplied by the talented Quay Brothers, creators of the intriguing (and much better) short film, “Street of Crocodiles.”

“Jack & Diane” is a considerable step back for Rust Gray, who showed promise with his subtle and contemplative 2009 film, “The Exploding Girl.”

The Descendants (2011)

George Clooney (left), Shailene Woodley (middle) and
Amara Miller star in "The Descendants."

In “The Descendants”—director Alexander Payne's sad, smart and wonderful chronicle of a family in crisis—George Clooney plays Matt King, an attorney and husband living in Hawaii who learns that his wife, Elizabeth, has been having an affair and was prepared to leave him.

Matt doesn't get the news from his wife, but from Alex (Shailene Woodley), his cynical and detached 17-year-old daughter who is plucked from boarding school early on in the film. There is one more daughter, 10-year-old Scottie (Amara Miller), small and sensitive but, like her older sister, precocious and feisty and sometimes overly crude. The family is brought together by an emergency; Elizabeth is in the hospital with a serious head injury suffered while water skiing. She’s in a coma and doctors inform Matt that she’s not going to wake up.

Meanwhile, Matt is the lone trustee to a large, lucrative swath of land on Kauai currently held in a trust. The trust is due to expire and several of Matt’s relatives, like the affably duplicitous Cousin Hugh (Beau Bridges), want him to sign the multimillion dollar rights over to a developer. Despite the imminent payday, Matt isn’t so sure he wants to spoil pristine land that’s been in the family for generations.

But much of what drives the film remains closer to home. Alex acknowledges that her alienation largely has to do with the hurt in learning of her mother’s deceit and unfaithfulness. Now, like her father, she is forced to deal with this anger and betrayal in the midst of devastating pain. Her mother will never have the opportunity to say she’s sorry, so the family will have to decide on their own whether to forgive her.

Matt decides he needs to find Elizabeth’s cheating sidekick—a slippery real estate agent named Brian (Matthew Lillard)—reasoning that if he cared enough about Elizabeth to have an affair, he should care enough to say goodbye. Matt also meets Brian’s wife, Julie (Judy Greer), and the two seem to share a spark of chemistry even before any secrets are revealed. In a lesser movie, Matt would pull a cheap stunt like sleeping with Julie to get revenge on Brian. But “The Descendants” is more intelligent and grown up.

As he showed in “Sideways” and “About Schmidt,” Alexander Payne is strikingly efficacious at weaving subtle humor into intimate, melancholy stories about infidelity and suffering. Although he’s drifted from the darkly ironic, brilliantly funny satire of “Election,” Payne’s films have become more naturalistic and human and few filmmakers are able to make you care more about characters.

“The Descendants” was based on a novel by Kaui Hart Hemmings. It’s a film filled with agonizing situations and painful revelations, but even though the characters are sometimes roiling in confusion and frustration, there’s never a hint of melodrama or overplaying, no formulaic outbursts or clichéd subplots. Instead, conflicts are handled with patience and restraint.

When there is a moment of genuine emotional release, Payne handles it masterfully, as is the case when Matt first informs Alex of the grim prognosis of her mother. Alex is swimming outside in the pool. At this point, she is still furious with her mother, but hasn’t contemplated the specter of death. It’s the worst news of her young life.

Alex pauses and slowly sinks beneath the surface. Payne’s camera goes underwater with her, where she clenches her hands tightly against her face and begins to sob before swimming distraughtly towards the other end of the pool. It’s a delirious, powerfully moving image—one of the most heartbreaking in recent memory—and because of Payne’s direction and Woodley’s performance, it’s also beautifully lyrical and positively exquisite.

The Brass Teapot (2013)

Tempest in a 'Teapot': Juno Temple in "The Brass Teapot."

Juno Temple, the fetching British actress, Indie-movie ingénue and Hayden Panettiere look-alike, plays a poor but happy young newlywed in first-time director Ramaa Mosley's “The Brass Teapot,” a sometimes funny but ultimately uneven comic fantasy about post recession struggles and the evil influence of vast capital gains.

Living in a modest house somewhere in Indiana (the movie was actually shot in Upstate New York), the seemingly blissful union of Alice (Temple) and John (Michael Angarano) is tested by a shrinking job market and vaguely mounting money worries. While John spends the day bottling up frustrations as a middling call center employee—riding a bike to work and absorbing constant abuse from his loathsome boss—Alice has yet to find an opportunity to trade in her college degree for a substantial salary.

Fortunately, when the couple somehow avoids evisceration after a truck smashes into their tiny Pinto, it spells the beginning of a lucky streak. Sure enough, Alice shakes off the accident and heads into a roadside antiques store, stealing a shiny brass teapot that catches her eye. Naturally, the teapot turns out to have magical powers, but instead of a genie popping out granting wishes, the ancient gizmo dispenses crisp hundred-dollar bills whenever the couple hurts themselves.

Soon the couple finds all sorts of unique ways to bash and bruise each other in order to cash in. And the more they pummel themselves—Alice batters John with devastating haymakers, burns herself with a curling iron and punches a hole through a kitchen cabinet—the more greenbacks come spitting out of the teapot like some sadistic fountain. Early on, the movie gets a lot of laughs by playing much of the violence for broad slapstick.

But amidst the painful revelry, there are ominous corners in Tim Macy’s screenplay. “This will end badly,” John warns before the couple is consumed by greed. Eventually, they ditch their humble lodgings, along with any sense of fiscal restraint, and move into a lavish mansion in an upscale part of town. They also leave old friends behind and take up with snobby new ones.

There’s an intriguing moral dilemma and a touch of social commentary at work here, but Mosley seems hesitant to explore anything subtle or personal. The closest the movie gets to a psychological subtext occurs when Alice and John, confronted with inexplicably dwindling payouts, realize that the teapot will now only reward them for leveling emotional pain at each other.

The revelations that follow—a string of hurtful secrets detailing everything from personality flaws to infidelity—threaten to compromise their marriage. Meanwhile, Mosley’s use of metaphoric storm clouds gathering and looming over the characters adds an unexpected visual flourish.

But Mosley abandons a chance to steer the material towards legitimate dark comedy. Instead, the film gets bogged down by a tedious plot involving a pair of false-bearded Jewish goons trying to reclaim the teapot, bumbling redneck villains trying to steal it, and a cryptic Chinese emissary wanting to take it away.

By the time the movie gets to its surprisingly angry, exaggerated climax—a bloody gun battle that has shadings of Tarantino without any of the style—the slapstick comedy that worked in the first hour has long since grinded into excess and the overwhelming feeling is more resignation than redemption. “The Brass Teapot” goes to great lengths introducing possibilities, but never far enough to realize them.

Corpse Bride (2005)

Helena Bonham Carter voices the title character in
Tim Burton's 2005 stop-motion animated film.

Just in time for Halloween, Tim Burton's “Corpse Bride” arrives on the Netflix streaming platform during the month of October. It's also the ten year anniversary of the stylish and often amusing stop-motion animated film from 2005.

Set in Europe during Victorian times, the simple story of an arranged marriage between two young people hits a snag when the timid hero, Victor (voice of Johnny Depp), bolts from a rehearsal ceremony and into the forest in a fit of nervousness. Trying to practice delivering his vows, he slips the bride’s ring onto a craggy tree branch that turns out to be the skeletal remains of Emily (Helena Bonham Carter), a former bride-to-be herself until her suitor turned out to be an evil, pilfering murderer.

This sets the stage for Burton's bizarre love triangle that alternates between two highly distinct worlds—one above, the other beyond the grave—as the perpetually frazzled Victor is eventually confronted with the choice between returning to his flesh-colored fiancée (Emily Watson) in the land of the living, or staying with his accidentally betrothed Emily, now tinted blue and decaying but still ebullient and loving, in the land of the dead.

As far as where it fits within Burton’s stop-motion oeuvre, “Corpse Bride” isn’t as inspired or imaginative as “The Nightmare Before Christmas” and lacks both the thematic complexity and emotional depth of the masterful “Frankenweenie,” but it’s still an entertaining, comically morbid visual treat.

From Beyond: Victor (Johnny Depp) and Bonejangles
(Danny Elfman) get jazzy in "Corpse Bride."

Not surprisingly, Burton’s vision of the afterlife turns out to be more fun. While scenes of the living take place in stuffy mansions and unfold in dull, sepia tones, the land of the dead is a considerably more colorful and lively place. Much of the action takes place at a swinging nightclub called “The Ball and Socket,” where the music is loud and drinks flow—quite literally—right through you.

It’s here where the best moment of “Corpse Bride” arrives early on, when a singing, dancing, one-eyed skeleton in a derby hat named Bonejangles (voiced by Danny Elfman, Burton’s regular sound man) does his best Sammy Davis Jr., fronting a hip jazz band of assorted undead for an upbeat romp called “The Remains of the Day.”

The song is so good in fact that subsequent numbers turn up dead on arrival. Which, given the subject matter, is perhaps appropriate.