Highest-Rated Movies about 'Mental Illness'

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.

#1. Fight Club (1999)

Storyline: A nameless first person narrator (Edward Norton) attends support groups in attempt to subdue his emotional state and relieve his insomniac state. When he meets Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), another fake attendee of support groups, his life seems to become a little more bearable. However when he associates himself with Tyler (Brad Pitt) he is dragged into an underground fight club and soap making scheme. Together the two men spiral out of control and engage in competitive rivalry for love and power. When the narrator is exposed to the hidden agenda of Tyler's fight club, he must accept the awful truth that Tyler may not be who he says he is.

Plot Keywords: surprise ending, fighting, multiple personality disorder, dark humor, insomnia, anti establishment, homoerotic ...

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#2. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Storyline: McMurphy has a criminal past and has once again gotten himself into trouble and is sentenced by the court. To escape labor duties in prison, McMurphy pleads insanity and is sent to a ward for the mentally unstable. Once here, McMurphy both endures and stands witness to the abuse and degradation of the oppressive Nurse Ratched, who gains superiority and power through the flaws of the other inmates. McMurphy and the other inmates band together to make a rebellious stance against the atrocious Nurse.

Plot Keywords: mental institution, mental illness, 1960s, sadistic psychopath, sexuality, lobotomy, native american ...

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#3. The Silence of the Lambs (1991)

Storyline: F.B.I. trainee Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster) works hard to advance her career, while trying to hide or put behind her West Virginia roots, of which if some knew, would automatically classify her as being backward or white trash. After graduation, she aspires to work in the agency's Behavioral Science Unit under the leadership of Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn). While she is still a trainee, Crawford asks her to question Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Sir Anthony Hopkins), a psychiatrist imprisoned, thus far, for eight years in maximum security isolation for being a serial killer who cannibalized his victims. Clarice is able to figure out the assignment is to pick Lecter's brains to help them solve another serial murder case, that of someone coined by the media as "Buffalo Bill" (Ted Levine), who has so far killed five victims, all located in the eastern U.S., all young women, who are slightly overweight (especially around the hips), all who were drowned in natural bodies of water, and all who ...

Plot Keywords: serial killer, psycho thriller, cult film, bad guy wins, strong female character, strong female lead, murder of a police officer ...

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#4. Gladiator (2000)

Storyline: Maximus is a powerful Roman general, loved by the people and the aging Emperor, Marcus Aurelius. Before his death, the Emperor chooses Maximus to be his heir over his own son, Commodus, and a power struggle leaves Maximus and his family condemned to death. The powerful general is unable to save his family, and his loss of will allows him to get captured and put into the Gladiator games until he dies. The only desire that fuels him now is the chance to rise to the top so that he will be able to look into the eyes of the man who will feel his revenge.

Plot Keywords: gladiator, roman empire, mother son relationship, battlefield, combat, slavery, blood ...

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#5. Psycho (1960)

Storyline: Phoenix office worker Marion Crane is fed up with the way life has treated her. She has to meet her lover Sam in lunch breaks, and they cannot get married because Sam has to give most of his money away in alimony. One Friday, Marion is trusted to bank forty thousand dollars by her employer. Seeing the opportunity to take the money and start a new life, Marion leaves town and heads towards Sam's California store. Tired after the long drive and caught in a storm, she gets off the main highway and pulls into the Bates Motel. The motel is managed by a quiet young man called Norman who seems to be dominated by his mother.

Plot Keywords: motel, shower, money, maniac, private detective, blood, corpse ...

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#6. The World of Apu (1959)

Storyline: Liberated from any form of attachment that was holding him back from immersing himself into Kolkata's urban lifestyle after Sarbojaya's death in Aparajito (1956), Apu, now an optimistic, 23-year-old idealist and struggling author, has no other choice but to give up his degree for lack of financial resources. Being no longer accountable to anyone, Apu barely manages to scrape by, content with a meagre income and a humble roof over his head, until an unforeseen complication during the wedding of Aparna, the delicate sister of his university friend, Pulu, leads to an act of kindness and a wonderful, youthful romance. All his life, death, and the sense of loss, have been accompanying Apu in his perpetual odyssey of spirituality and knowledge, and now, a lifetime of joys, hopes, sadness, and tragedies culminate in the most momentous decision of his life. But, life's mysterious duality cannot be defined by tragedy. What more could one ask for than a child's charming, wide-eyed smile?—Nick Riganas

Plot Keywords: bride, manuscript, aspiring writer, third part, insanity, death of wife, marriage ...

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#7. The Shining (1980)

Storyline: Signing a contract, Jack Torrance, a normal writer and former teacher agrees to take care of a hotel which has a long, violent past that puts everyone in the hotel in a nervous situation. While Jack slowly gets more violent and angry of his life, his son, Danny, tries to use a special talent, the "Shining", to inform the people outside about whatever that is going on in the hotel.

Plot Keywords: labyrinth, identical twins, hotel, breaking down a door, snow, typewriter, based on the works of stephen king ...

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#8. Sunset Blvd. (1950)

Storyline: In Hollywood of the 50's, the obscure screenplay writer Joe Gillis is not able to sell his work to the studios, is full of debts and is thinking in returning to his hometown to work in an office. While trying to escape from his creditors, he has a flat tire and parks his car in a decadent mansion in Sunset Boulevard. He meets the owner and former silent-movie star Norma Desmond, who lives alone with her butler and driver Max Von Mayerling. Norma is demented and believes she will return to the cinema industry, and is protected and isolated from the world by Max, who was her director and husband in the past and still loves her. Norma proposes Joe to move to the mansion and help her in writing a screenplay for her comeback to the cinema, and the small-time writer becomes her lover and gigolo. When Joe falls in love for the young aspirant writer Betty Schaefer, Norma becomes jealous and completely insane and her madness leads to a tragic end.

Plot Keywords: butler, madness, recluse, hollywood california, actress, delusion, comeback ...

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#9. Taxi Driver (1976)

Storyline: Travis Bickle is an ex-Marine and Vietnam War veteran living in New York City. As he suffers from insomnia, he spends his time working as a taxi driver at night, watching porn movies at seedy cinemas during the day, or thinking about how the world, New York in particular, has deteriorated into a cesspool. He's a loner who has strong opinions about what is right and wrong with mankind. For him, the one bright spot in New York humanity is Betsy, a worker on the presidential nomination campaign of Senator Charles Palantine. He becomes obsessed with her. After an incident with her, he believes he has to do whatever he needs to make the world a better place in his opinion. One of his priorities is to be the savior for Iris, a twelve-year-old runaway and prostitute who he believes wants out of the profession and under the thumb of her pimp and lover Matthew.

Plot Keywords: taxi driver, child prostitution, mentally unstable, urban decay, manhattan new york city, neo noir, street life ...

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#10. A Clockwork Orange (1971)

Storyline: Protagonist Alex DeLarge is an "ultraviolent" youth in futuristic Britain. As with all luck, his eventually runs out and he's arrested and convicted of murder and rape. While in prison, Alex learns of an experimental program in which convicts are programmed to detest violence. If he goes through the program, his sentence will be reduced and he will be back on the streets sooner than expected. But Alex's ordeals are far from over once he hits the mean streets of Britain that he had a hand in creating.

Plot Keywords: gang, rape, gang rape, sexual assault, forced to strip, female full frontal nudity, female removes her clothes ...

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#11. Full Metal Jacket (1987)

Storyline: A two-segment look at the effect of the military mindset and war itself on Vietnam era Marines. The first half follows a group of recruits in boot camp under the command of the punishing Gunnery Sergeant Hartman. The second half shows one of those recruits, Joker, covering the war as a correspondent for Stars and Stripes, focusing on the Tet offensive.

Plot Keywords: military, vietnam war, u.s. marine, u.s. marine corps, boot camp, vietnam, violence ...

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#12. M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder (1931)

Storyline: In Germany, Hans Beckert is an unknown killer of girls. He whistles Edvard Grieg's 'In The Hall of the Mountain King', from the 'Peer Gynt' Suite I Op. 46 while attracting the little girls for death. The police force pressed by the Minister give its best effort trying unsuccessfully to arrest the serial killer. The organized crime has great losses due to the intense search and siege of the police and decides to chase the murderer, with the support of the beggars association. They catch Hans and briefly judge him.

Plot Keywords: psychopath, serial child killer, tragic villain, crime investigation, organized crime, investigation, letter ...

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#13. A Woman Under the Influence (1974)

Storyline: Peter Falk is a blue collar man trying to deal with his wife's mental instability. He fights to keep a semblance of normality in the face of her bizarre behavior, but when her actions affect their children, he has her committed.

Plot Keywords: mental illness, marriage, working class, independent film, domestic violence, husband wife relationship, mental breakdown ...

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#14. A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Storyline: From the heights of notoriety to the depths of depravity, John Forbes Nash, Jr. experienced it all. A mathematical genius, he made an astonishing discovery early in his career and stood on the brink of international acclaim. But the handsome and arrogant Nash soon found himself on a painful and harrowing journey of self-discovery. After many years of struggle, he eventually triumphed over his tragedy, and finally - late in life - received the Nobel Prize.

Plot Keywords: mathematician, mental illness, schizophrenia, conspiracy, psychiatrist, based on book, paranoia ...

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#15. Room (2015)

Storyline: ROOM tells the extraordinary story of Jack, a spirited 5-year-old who is looked after by his loving and devoted mother. Like any good mother, Ma dedicates herself to keeping Jack happy and safe, nurturing him with warmth and love and doing typical things like playing games and telling stories. Their life, however, is anything but typical--they are trapped--confined to a 10-by-10-foot space that Ma has euphemistically named Room. Ma has created a whole universe for Jack within Room, and she will stop at nothing to ensure that, even in this treacherous environment, Jack is able to live a complete and fulfilling life. But as Jack's curiosity about their situation grows, and Ma's resilience reaches its breaking point, they enact a risky plan to escape, ultimately bringing them face-to-face with what may turn out to be the scariest thing yet: the real world.

Plot Keywords: escape, kidnapping, mother son relationship, based on novel, female protagonist, locked in a room, imprisonment ...

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