Nobody Knows Hollywood

Cake and Still Alice are a most uncomfortable and yet, appropriate set of movies to pair together. Both deal with tragedy. Both deal with women who have gone through and are going through tremendous pain and loss. Both edge suicide very closely. And both come out the other side, though in very different ways. I don’t deem any of these as spoilers because neither of these films, in terms of their content, is shockingly new. That’s not a criticism either – a film’s success does not hinge on its freshness, in my opinion, but rather upon its execution of the known through a new lens. Still Alice is, by far, the more successful of these two films in that regard. As I’ve written before, it’s very important in every review or discussion of a film for the reviewer to acknowledge his own biases so the comments are understood through that particular lens. Still Alice punched me in the gut from the get go because of my relationship with my parents, both of whom have diseases that, wh...

When I first saw the trailers for this film I was immediately repulsed. It looked simplistic, manipulative and, once again, like "white people saved the black people (you're welcome black people)" - link .  The last film to pull this trick in a similar manner (both irritating me as a film and receiving far too acclaim for my taste) was "The Blind Side". Occasionally, Hollywood and the "powers that be" seem hell-bent on making a point. With "The Blind Side", they seemed to be to saying "Sandra Bullock is not just America's Sweetheart, but also an Oscar Winner". Her performance was solid in a very average film. Not, in my opinion, Oscar-worthy. That's not to say she's not a fine actress who could, in a better role, deliver what I would consider an Oscar-worthy performance. It's just that in this case, there was a decision made that it was her time and that trumped the evaluation of the actual performance. With that...