Fight Club (1999), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Gladiator (2000), Psycho (1960), The World of Apu (1959), The Shining (1980), Sunset Blvd. (1950) ... Let's take a look at the ranked list of the best Mental Illness movies.
Storyline: In the mid-1970's, a homely, friendless Australian girl of 8 picks a name out of a Manhattan phone book and writes to him; she includes a chocolate bar. She's Mary Dinkle, the only child of an alcoholic mother and a distracted father. He's Max Horowitz, an overweight man with Asperger's, living alone in New York. He writes back, with chocolate. Thus begins a 20-year correspondence, interrupted by a stay in an asylum and a few misunderstandings. Mary falls in love with a neighbor, saves money to have a birthmark removed and deals with loss. Max has a friendship with a neighbor, tries to control his weight, and finally gets the dream job. Will the two ever meet face to face?
Plot Keywords: stop motion, black comedy, understanding, traumatic childhood, suicide, shoplifting, rooster ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: In a tale that almost redefines sibling rivalry, faded actresses Blanche and 'Baby' Jane Hudson live together. Jane was by far the most famous when she performed with their father in vaudeville but as they got older, it was Blanche who became the finer actress, which Jane still resents. Blanche is now confined to a wheelchair and Jane is firmly in control. As time goes by, Jane exercises greater and greater control over her sister, intercepting her letters and ensuring that few if anyone from the outside has any contact with her. As Jane slowly loses her mind, she torments her sister going to ever greater extremes.
Plot Keywords: sibling rivalry, psychological horror, wheelchair, abusive relationship, sister sister relationship, dysfunctional family, jealousy ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A young woman, Karin, has recently returned to the family island after spending some time in a mental hospital. On the island with her is her lonely brother and kind, but increasingly desperate husband ('Max von Sydow'). They are joined by Karin's father ('Gunnar Björnstrand'), who is a world-traveling author that is estranged to his children. The film depicts how Karin's grip on reality slowly slips away and how the bonds between the family members are changing in light of this fact.
Plot Keywords: mental illness, father son relationship, father daughter relationship, brother sister relationship, schizophrenia, reference to god, existentialism ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Scarlett is a woman who can deal with a nation at war, Atlanta burning, the Union Army carrying off everything from her beloved Tara, the carpetbaggers who arrive after the war. Scarlett is beautiful. She has vitality. But Ashley, the man she has wanted for so long, is going to marry his placid cousin, Melanie. Mammy warns Scarlett to behave herself at the party at Twelve Oaks. There is a new man there that day, the day the Civil War begins. Rhett Butler. Scarlett does not know he is in the room when she pleads with Ashley to choose her instead of Melanie.
Plot Keywords: narcissistic personality disorder, american civil war, black stereotype, battle of the sexes, high society, cotton, old maid ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Three emotionally abused people from the fringes of society get locked in a convoluted love triangle. Yuu, a Catholic boy searching for true love ends up taking erotic photographs of women in public until he discovers Yoko, whom he sees as his Virgin Mary. Yoko, an antifamily, misandristic girl finds that her foster mother will be marrying Yuu's father. Koike, an "original sinner", coordinates a plan to convert Yuu's family to her cult. Under her careful direction, their lives come crashing together in one fateful street fight.—Anonymous
Plot Keywords: upskirt, short skirt, sexual fantasy, schoolgirl uniform, high school girl, skirt, schoolgirl ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Based on the novel written by Stephen Chbosky, this is about 15-year-old Charlie (Logan Lerman), an endearing and naive outsider, coping with first love (Emma Watson), the suicide of his best friend, and his own mental illness while struggling to find a group of people with whom he belongs. The introvert freshman is taken under the wings of two seniors, Sam and Patrick, who welcome him to the real world.
Plot Keywords: mental illness, coming of age, high school, gay, depression, first love, gay friend ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Nina (Portman) is a ballerina in a New York City ballet company whose life, like all those in her profession, is completely consumed with dance. She lives with her obsessive former ballerina mother Erica (Hershey) who exerts a suffocating control over her. When artistic director Thomas Leroy (Cassel) decides to replace prima ballerina Beth MacIntyre (Ryder) for the opening production of their new season, Swan Lake, Nina is his first choice. But Nina has competition: a new dancer, Lily (Kunis), who impresses Leroy as well. Swan Lake requires a dancer who can play both the White Swan with innocence and grace, and the Black Swan, who represents guile and sensuality. Nina fits the White Swan role perfectly but Lily is the personification of the Black Swan. As the two young dancers expand their rivalry into a twisted friendship, Nina begins to get more in touch with her dark side - a recklessness that threatens to destroy her.
Plot Keywords: ballerina, ballet, sex scene, lesbian kiss, masturbation, female masturbation, madness ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Blanche DuBois, a high school English teacher with an aristocratic background from Auriol, Mississippi, decides to move to live with her sister and brother-in-law, Stella and Stanley Kowalski, in New Orleans after creditors take over the family property, Belle Reve. Blanche has also decided to take a break from teaching as she states the situation has frayed her nerves. Knowing nothing about Stanley or the Kowalskis' lives, Blanche is shocked to find that they live in a cramped and run down ground floor apartment - which she proceeds to beautify by putting shades over the open light bulbs to soften the lighting - and that Stanley is not the gentleman that she is used to in men. As such, Blanche and Stanley have an antagonistic relationship from the start. Blanche finds that Stanley's hyper-masculinity, which often displays itself in physical outbursts, is common, coarse and vulgar, being common which in turn is what attracted Stella to him. Beyond finding Blanche's delicate ...
Plot Keywords: off screen rape, mental illness, middle aged woman, sister sister relationship, domestic violence, new orleans louisiana, nervous breakdown ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Boston spinster Charlotte has had her life controlled entirely by her mother; a wealthy mother, Mrs. Henry Vale. Feeling despondent, she's convinced to spend some time in a sanitarium. Soon, Charlotte's transformed into a sophisticated, confident woman. On a cruise to South America, Charlotte meets, and begins a torrid affair with Jerry Durrance, a married architect. 6 months later, she returns home, and confronts her mother with her independence. One day, after a brief argument, her mother has a heart attack and dies. Charlotte inherits the Vale fortune but feels guilty for her mother's death. She returns to the sanitarium, where she befriends a depressed, young adolescent, named Tina. The young girls' depression brought on by having been rejected by her mother; Charlotte's former lover, Jerry's wife. Charlotte takes Tina home to Boston with her
Plot Keywords: domineering mother, emotional blackmail, mother daughter relationship, mental illness, dysfunctional family, self esteem, nervous breakdown ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Mima leaves the idol group CHAM, in order to pursue her dream as an actress. Mima climbs up the rocky road to success by performing as rape victims and posing nude for magazines, but is haunted by her reflections of the past.
Plot Keywords: stalking, actress, ambiguity, film within a film, hallucination, mind game, obsessed fan ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Mortimer Brewster is a newspaperman and author known for his diatribes against marriage. We watch him being married at city hall in the opening scene. Now all that is required is a quick trip home to tell Mortimer's two maiden aunts. While trying to break the news, he finds out his aunts' hobby; killing lonely old men and burying them in the cellar. It gets worse.
Plot Keywords: switchblade, police officer, grave, harpsichord, trumpeter, toy, costume ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: An intense film about time travel, this Sci-Fi entry was directed by Terry Gilliam, a member of the comedy troupe Monty Python. The film stars Bruce Willis as James Cole, a prisoner of the state in the year 2035 who can earn parole if he agrees to travel back in time and thwart a devastating plague. The virus has wiped out most of the Earth's population and the remainder live underground because the air is poisonous. Returning to the year 1990, six years before the start of the plague, Cole is soon imprisoned in a psychiatric facility because his warnings sound like mad ravings. There he meets a scientist named Dr. Kathryn Railly (Madeleine Stowe) and Jeffrey Goines (Brad Pitt), the mad son of an eminent virologist (Christopher Plummer). Cole is returned by the authorities to the year 2035, and finally ends up at his intended destination in 1996. He kidnaps Dr. Railly in order to enlist her help in his quest. Cole discovers graffiti by an apparent animal rights group called the Army ...
Plot Keywords: time travel, virus, mental institution, underground, psychiatrist, plague, madness ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: Donnie Darko doesn't get along too well with his family, his teachers, and his classmates; but he does manage to find a sympathetic friend in Gretchen, who agrees to date him. He has a compassionate psychiatrist, who discovers hypnosis is the means to unlock hidden secrets. His other companion may not be a true ally. Donnie has a friend named Frank, a large bunny which only Donnie can see. When an engine falls off a plane and destroys his bedroom, Donnie is not there. Both the event, and Donnie's escape, seem to have been caused by supernatural events. Donnie's mental illness, if such it is, may never allow him to find out for sure.
Plot Keywords: surrealism, parallel universe, time travel, masturbation, schizophrenia, psychology, child pornography ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: A veteran of World War I marries and settles happily into a tidy, humble life until an accident brings back memories of a former life of wealth and privilege while blocking all recollection of his existence since the war. Thus one man disappears, and another man long missing turns up and claims his vast inheritance. What does his devoted wife, whom he no longer recognizes, do?—Paul Emmons <pemmons@wcupa.edu>
Plot Keywords: sailor, loss of son, doctor, dressing room, drink, family relationships, father son relationship ...
Movie Details Click Here!Storyline: This movie chronicles the life and times of R. Crumb. Robert Crumb is the cartoonist/artist who drew Keep On Truckin', Fritz the Cat, and played a major pioneering role in the genesis of underground comix. Through interviews with his mother, two brothers, wife, and ex-girlfriends, as well as selections from his vast quantity of graphic art, we are treated to a darkly comic ride through one man's subconscious mind. As stream-of-consciousness images incessantly flow forth from the tip of his pen, biting social satire is revealed, often along with a disturbing and haunting vision of Crumb's own betes noires and inadequacies. As his acid-trip induced images flicker across our own retinas, we gain a little insight into this complex and highly creative individual.—Tad Dibbern <DIBBERN_D@a1.mscf.upenn.edu>
Plot Keywords: cartoonist, counter culture, cult figure, dysfunctional family, father son relationship, medication, mental illness ...
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