Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
A short kid from a Canadian army base becomes the international pop culture darling of the 1980s—only to find the course of his life altered by a stunning diagnosis. What happens when an incurable optimist confronts an incurable disease?
STILL is an unusually intimate and emotionally resonant biographical documentary that weaves archival footage, dramatic recreations, and candid interview material into a surprisingly cinematic whole. Fox's story — the meteoric rise, the hidden diagnosis, the public struggle — is told with remarkable narrative momentum and unflinching honesty, earning the Plot a 4 for how compellingly it structures a life story audiences think they already know. The 'acting' dimension here reflects Fox's own on-camera presence and candor, which is genuine but not extraordinary as a formal performance. Cinematography is solid and inventive in places, particularly in the recreated sequences, but stops short of truly distinguished visual work. Novelty is above average for the genre — the blending of fiction and documentary techniques gives it a distinctive texture — but it doesn't reinvent the biographical documentary form. The ending, however, is genuinely exceptional: Fox's acceptance, humor, and defiant optimism land as earned rather than saccharine, providing one of the more quietly devastating and uplifting documentary conclusions in recent memory.