‘Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie’ Review: Hiding in Plain Sight

NYT MOVIES: ‘Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie’ Review: Hiding in Plain Sight
By Ben Kenigsberg
Section: Movies
Source: New York Times
Published Date: May 11, 2023 at 03:00AM

The “Back to the Future” star time-travels through his career in this documentary, charting his experiences learning to live with Parkinson’s disease.

With apologies to Dr. Emmett Brown, you don’t need a flux capacitor to build a time machine. All you need to do is make a film. “Still: A Michael J. Fox Movie,” a new biographical documentary from Davis Guggenheim (“An Inconvenient Truth”), zips through the “Back to the Future” actor’s career with humor and style; it gives the impression that its subject is willing to answer any question. Fox appears, head-on, in contemporary interviews with an off-camera Guggenheim. None of the charisma and charm that made him a star have diminished.

But much of what distinguishes “Still” — as it’s simply titled onscreen, sans marketing hook — is how cleverly it has been edited. While this documentary draws on a standard tool kit of re-enactments and archival material, its best device is to use clips of Fox’s own movies as a counterpoint to his words, as if Fox weren’t playing fictional characters, but himself.

In a way, he was. “Still” charts his experiences learning to live with Parkinson’s disease, a diagnosis he kept private for years before going public in 1998. One montage — tackily but irresistibly set to INXS’s “New Sensation” — illustrates how he managed to hide his illness in plain sight. Movies like “For Love or Money” (1993) and “Life With Mikey” (1993) reveal his practice of putting an object in his left hand to mask its trembling. What looked like nimble character work was, even then, documentary evidence.

Read More at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/11/movies/still-a-michael-j-fox-movie-review-hiding-in-plain-sight.html