Kristen Stewart and Julianne Moore in Still AliceSTILL ALICE

In Still Alice, newly minted Oscar winner Julianne Moore plays Alice Howland, a 50-year-old recently diagnosed with a hereditary form of Alzheimer's. At one point in the movie, after a series of not-bad days and pretty-awful ones, Alice and her family attend an off-Broadway production of The Three Sisters starring the youngest Howland daughter, Lydia (Kristen Stewart). We see Lydia enact Chekhov's dialogue with appropriate, impressive anxiety and fortitude, and our view of Alice in the audience suggests that she sees it, too. After the play ends, the family goes backstage to congratulate Lydia, and Alice, with carefully chosen words, praises her daughter for her complex rendering of Chekhovian heart and humanity. Lydia smiles and blushes; this might be the most interest her mother has ever shown in her acting career. Then Alice asks what play Lydia is doing next, and whether she'll be sticking around New York much longer. And in the reaction shot that follows, the heartbreak in Lydia's eyes verifies what we immediately suspect: Alice, at this moment, has no idea who Lydia is.

Ethan Hawke in The PurgeTHE PURGE

If you blended The Hunger Games, David Fincher's Panic Room, and Shirley Jackson's classic short story "The Lottery" with generous helpings of ice, you'd wind up with the scare-flick smoothie that is The Purge. An eventually underwhelming yet bluntly effective chiller by writer/director James DeMonaco, the movie, admittedly, does lose its way before its 90 minutes are up. But considering how few modern releases in its genre find their way at all, it's hard to deny the primal pleasures of DeMonaco's outing, even if the film remains more thought-provoking in concept than it proves to be on-screen.

Rooney Mara and Daniel Craig in The Girl with the Dragon TattooTHE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO

Although I haven't read the book and now have no desire to, my guess is that those who love author Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo will likely love the new film version, which boasts exceptional style and (as I understand it) doesn't significantly veer from the novel's narrative. Similarly, those who genuflect at the altar of David Fincher - and I'm occasionally one of them - will find plenty to adore here, as the director's signature imprint is on every seedy, suggestive, sepia-toned image.