STILL ALICE

Life is seemingly idyllic for 50-year-old Alice Howland a renowned Professor of Linguistics at Columbia University who is happily married with three grown up children.  Then suddenly out of the blue she forgets a word or two midway in a tutorial, and then cannot remember the occasional appointment although this hardly registers with her at all.  That is until one day out on her usual run around the campus Alice suddenly realizes that she doesn’t recognize where she is even though she is literally standing outside her own office building. A subsequent trip to a Neurologist rules out a brain tumor or stroke which had been her worst fears, but further investigation reveals something that she had never even considered: early-onset Alzheimer's.  If that is not bad enough for Alice as she comes to terms with the fact that she will eventually be unable to recognize her own children, she then learns that her disease is hereditary and she may inadvertently pass it on to them too.

Alice takes a reasoned and logical approach to her situation even though filled with rage that she will lose all that she has worked for and achieved in the past 50 years in probably just a matter of months. Whilst still very much aware of her situation in these early stages Alice makes plans for her uncertain future by visiting Special Care Facilities and making contingency plans for when she can no longer answer a series of personal questions about her life, which have now become part of her daily routine.  She desperately tries coming to terms with the fact that life as it had previously existed is now over and so insists on continuing teaching, until that is she tells all to her Department Head who promptly dismisses from her position. Having a lack of a daily purpose seems to help speed up her degeneration, and being left at home all with just a carer to look after her is difficult for this once extremely active workaholic to come to terms with. Her husband John a fellow academic is very understanding and completely supportive of all her needs but nevertheless still refuses to take a sabbatical year off to share what will be her last few months of coherence, and he is in fact planning to accept a new important job in another State.

The story based on a novel by neuroscientist Lisa Genova unusually tells the tale from Alice’s point of view instead of solely focusing on the effects her illness has on family and friends. The fact in this case it was initially harder to diagnose was, as her doctors point out, due to the fact that intelligent people like Alice are capable of devising elaborate ways to work around their initial symptoms that mask the problem. Whilst writer/directors Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland have not shied away from showing the sheer sadness in watching Alice’s life disintegrate in front of her own very eyes, they have rather brilliantly avoided the temptation to milk the situation and let this turn into a weepy melodrama.  In fact there are some tender touches of humor that never let us forget that before Alice became a victim, she was a very articulate and witty women.

The sublime Julianne Moore imbues Alice with a powerful voice in a beautiful pitch-perfect low-key performance that makes it all feel so real. She makes us appreciate that life is simple not fair, and that you have to appreciate it whilst you are able too. It deservedly won her a long overdue Best Actress Oscar.  It was very much her picture, but nevertheless kudos to her fine supporting cast that included Alec Baldwin who delivered a subtle understated performance as her husband John, and Kristen Stewart as her youngest daughter Lydia who refused to give up her own dreaming of acting, but nevertheless became the one family member who would really be there for her all the way.

The story has particularly resonance with married couple Westmoreland and Glatzer as the latter has his own debilitating disease after being diagnosed with ALS. The fact that he has chosen to write and direct this exceptionally beautiful movie with his husband shows that he certainly hasn’t given up, a message that is also very important to Alice who refuses to just give in.

★★★★★★★★★★

HYENA

The ‘hyena’ in this slick and brutal crime thriller is a burly bent copper called Michael Logan who plays so closely with fire, he is definitely going to get more than his fingers burned if things turn out as badly as they probably will. The film opens with Logan taking a call and then driving off into the night to meet up with three equally brutish looking types who we assume are thuggish crooks. Putting on police vests and caps they burst into the back door of a nightclub and immediately set about beating up the guys running the place. Initially we assume they are fake cops, but after handcuffing the men and then helping themselves to all the cash and drugs in the place it is clear they are cops of the corrupt variety.

Next day a brutal pair of Albanian brothers suddenly interrupt a meeting with a Turkish drug dealer that Logan is planning on going into business with. Whilst Logan is quick enough to hide, the poor Turk is bloodily killed in what is the start of an incessant slew of seemingly endless violence that fills the next 112 minutes.  The Albanians are switching from prostitution and human trafficking into the drugs trade and are intent on taking over as the new crime lords in this very seedy part of Notting Hill, which looks nothing like the pretty gentrified area where Hugh Grant swept Julia Roberts off her feet.

Logan is convinced that he can deal with the ruthless Brothers, but as their reign of mindless bloody terror gets completely out of hand, it eventually becomes apparent that he too may also end up as one of their victims too.

The movie’s multi-layered story line gets extremely complicated and has more than it’s fair share of clichés. What is particularly depressing in this overtly masculine film for ‘big boys’ is like so many others in the genre, the only females portrayed are just sad hopeless victims. This is writer/director Gerard Johnson’s sophomore feature and once again he at least had the good sense to cast his cousin the actor Peter Ferdinando in the lead.  His performance as Logan was one of the best things in what is otherwise an rather annoying exercise of gratuitous violence that makes a Jason Statham flicks seem positively tame.  

P.S. The one other good element is the soundtrack by Matt Johnson aka THE THE.

★★★★

WHIPLASH

19-year-old Andrew Neyman wants to be the next Buddy Rich. This aspiring young drummer who is completely obsessed with his burning ambition has managed to get himself enrolled at the prestigious Shaffer Conservatory of Music in Manhattan, which is ranked No. 1 in the country. Now he is desperate to be recruited into the School’s band led by its legendary leader Terrence Fletcher. Even after he catches Fletcher’s attention one day and is invited to become the Band’s alternate drummer, he is never sure if he will succeed and achieve his dream especially when Fletcher’s initial charming approach soon dissipates to reveal his true nature.

The bald-headed Fletcher is nothing short than a sadistic bully akin to the worse kind of Army Drill Sergeant who insists on insulting, terrorizing and abusing his talented charges.  However Andrew is not only willing but even eager to take all the public humiliation Fletcher dishes out since it forces him to suffer for a cause he chooses to believe will be worth it. After all his other idol Charlie Parker only went from good to great after a traumatic incident that induced him to sacrifice a year to intensive practice.

During the Band’s rehearsals for some upcoming crucial Competitions Fletcher deliberately demands the near impossible, berating any of the frightened players who make a mistake and even those who don’t.    He promotes Andrew from page-turner to featured drummer and then quickly demotes him back again after screaming more abuse at him and making him cry in the process.  There are times he pushes Andrew to practice so hard that his hands actually bleed, and then still not content he hurls a cymbal across the room at him.

Out of school, Andrew is very much a loner, and when he does eventually pluck up the courage to ask a girl out and start dating her, he very quickly dumps her because he feels she maybe a distraction from all the practice he needs to do to appease Fletcher in the hope of eventually becoming the lead drummer.  He is also afraid of emulating the failure of his father who’s writing career never took off and he ended up be resigned to settling with just being a schoolteacher instead.

This exhilarating indie movie was the Opening Gala of the Sundance 2014 Film Festival having started life however as a three-sequence film that won the U.S. short film jury prize at Sundance the previous year. It stars the immensely talented Miles Teller (‘The Spectacular Now’) as young Andrew struggling to maximize his artistic talent regardless of the intense physical and mental pressures.  It is however the subliminal career-defining performance from veteran character actor J R Simmons that ignites the screen as Fletcher a profane and seemingly unstoppable villain that has propelled this wee movie on to a much wider audience than it would normally have expected to reach.  It has won a strew of well-deserved Awards culminating in a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award. 

The music throughout is also quite electric and wonderfully adds tension to some of the more frenetic scenes. This very personal second film from writer-director Damien Chazelle, ended up with an unprecedented 3 Academy Awards (Film Editing and Sound Editing) which certainly also makes him a talent to look out for too. 

Fletcher cuttingly remarks at one point that the lamest two words in the English language are ‘good job’ so we will carefully note that this is not good, but an excellent one.

★★★★★★★★★