STILL ALICE

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STILL ALICE starts Julianne Moore in as Oscar-winning turn as Alice Howland - a successful College professor diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's Disease.  The first half hour of the film sees Alice suspect that something serious is behind her sudden memory loss and come to a diagnosis. The second half hour sees the family come to terms with her rapidly deteriorating condition - their bickering, frustration, love but lack of understanding.  The final third of the film focuses on Alice's relationship with her youngest daughter, played by Kristen Stewart - a relationship that was fraught when Alice was well, but finds a new sympathy in her illness.  Alice herself is alienated from herself and much of the rest of her family. This is the true cruelty of Alzheimer's Disease and in that sense the title of the film is ironic. When you take away a woman's intellect, her memory, her job, her sense of self, what is left?

21 - far less interesting than you might have hoped

21 is a movie about a bunch of MIT math geeks who go to Vegas, count cards, make a pile of money, but then incur the ire of their svengali-like professor and a Vegas security guard. And no, I'm not spoiling the plot. The trailer does that already, and even if it didn't, you'd figure out all the plot twists well before they occured. The movie evidently wants to dazzle us with a story of an improbable rise to wealth and equally precipitous fall; it wants us to enjoy the vicarious ride from geek to cool. Let's all buy in to that Ocean's Eleven glamour! Sadly, it doesn't live up to its billing. Like I said before, this is mainly because the story - as bizarre as it is - simply isn't interesting enough to hold our attention for two hours. How many times can we really get interested in a geek becoming popular, being mean to his childhood friends, losing everything and learning what "really matters"? The narrative arc contains no elements of surprise and the supporting characters are insufficiently drawn. Added to this, beyond Jim Sturgess in the title role, the rest of the cast was pretty unimpressive, not least Kevin Spacey in one of his trademark over-bearing, hammy performances.

21 is already on release in the US, Israel, Brazil and Germany and opens this weekend in the UK, Greece, Iceland, Spain and Sweden. It opens on the 17th in Belgium, Argentina, Russia, Estonia and Italy. It opens on April 25th in Turkey. It opens in May in Portugal, Australia, Finland and Japan. It opens in June n France, Singapore, Mexico, Norway and the Netherlands.

Smoking kills and Jesus loves me: what I learned from SUPERMAN RETURNS

Gosh, Mission Impossible III is looking better by the week isn't it? Actually, I don't really mean that. SUPERMAN RETURNS is brilliant in parts. Unfortunately those are all parts that are taken entirely from the Richard Donner classics starring Christopher Reeve as Superman, Margot Kidder as Lois Lane and Gene Hackman as Lex Luthor. The director of this new version - Bryan Singer - brilliantly uses the old footage of Marlon Brando as Superman's daddy to open the movie. It gives us that epic, mythic, inspirational feeling that we need. And then, when you get that opening orchestral score by John Williams, I defy even the most cynical of film-goers not to feel like a ten-year old kid again. The set pieces where superman saves a crashing plane, or has bullets bouncing off his body, or lugs a kryptonite continent into space - are outstanding. The CGI is great, the production design is amazing, and Brandon Routh certainly looks every inch the Man of Steel. To see him flying through space, almost for kicks, at the end of the movie as that iconic music starts up again, is a thing of joy. I was glad to have Superman back on the screen.

But the film is by no means perfect. SUPERMAN was always an odd super-hero. Updating BATMAN or SPIDERMAN for the modern age is easy because their pathologies match our own insecurities and cynicism. But SUPERMAN was never a conflicted soul. Sure, he wanted to protect Lois and could not be with her, but this was nothing compared to the angst of the Bat. So, in making SUPERMAN RETURNS the producers had two options. The first was to keep SUPERMAN 100% good, primary-coloured and battling easily delineated evil. Trouble is, in a world where the Evil Empire has been replaced by splinter cells and we have all read THE WATCHMEN, that option seems unsatisfying. The other option is to somehow "update" the franchise.

SUPERMAN RETURNS falls between two stalls. On the one hand, Singer keeps the iconic good versus evil stuff, ladelling on the Christian imagery until it sticks in the throat. On the other hand, he makes Lois a single mum balancing work and child-care, not to mention an inconvenient and ill-used fiance. These innovations seemed weaker than the narrative purity of the original movie. This isn't helped by the fact that Clark Kent (Routh) and Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) have remarkably little screen time together and no chemistry. Where are all those great screwball comedy moments from the old movies?! Kevin Spacey is a shameless ham as Lex Luthor, and poor old Frank Langella has little to do as Perry White. Worst of all, Jimmy Olson is now just an idiot. Also, why cast an actor of such great comic potential - Kal Penn - as Luthor's henchman to have him say ABSOLUTELY nothing?!

Overall then, SUPERMAN RETURNS is a partial success. It's great to see Superman save the world, but you know, how about we save the preaching for church, and next time, let's hope for some actual character development. It's hard to believe that this film was written by the same people who gave us X2.

SUPERMAN RETURNS is on global release.