Girl, Interrupted

Rating:
Summary: Impressive Work.
Review: Girl, Interrupted starts unconvincingly, but it makes up for a boring start when Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder) arrives at Vannacutt Mental Institution when she is accused of killing herself.

All the performances in Girl, Interrupted are downright amazing. Winona Ryder hasn't been this good in an extremely long amount of time, Angelina Jolie earned her Golden Globe undoubtely; her performance is strong and convincing. While those two leads got the most credit, other more un-known actors like Clea DuVall, Brittany Murphy and Elisabeth Moss also put in amazing effort in this impressive and satisfying drama.

Rating:
Summary: Don't interupt this girl
Review: This is a great movie! The acting is subtle yet powerful and the story is dynamic and moving. This is a must see for Jolie and Ryder fans. Brittany Murphy also gives an inspired performance. I really recommend this movie to girls 15 and up. Most women can relate to what one or more of the charactors go through. Men also can gain valuable insights into the mind of the opposite sex by watching this film.

Rating:
Summary: Looking for answers
Review: I liked Girl Interupted because I myself am a borderline patient. When I found out that Susanna Keyson had written a book about her detailed life dealing with this situation I thought I would check it out. All my life I've been wondering what exactly it is to be borderline and like the character and the real Susanna, she found it very difficult to describe. I could relate to her story and I'm glad she has met her goal of becoming a writer but not all of us are that lucky. I find myself struggling everyday with the issues described in the movie and I've been in and out of hospitals and treatment centers and last but not least a group home. I'm trying to make it but people don't understand that I'm not crazy, I just am in between seeing reality and non reality. That's what being a borderline is or that's what I've been told. Sometimes, though I have to convince my self of that because I tend to judge myself the way the world would. I think more people need to be aware of this illness and I'm glad a movie was made about it. The CD soundtrack is awesome too.

Rating:
Summary: Girl Interrupted- The best story about Metal Illness ever
Review: This movie helped me in many ways. I have a mental Illness that I have just recently been trying to cope with and when I saw this movie it touched me in many ways. I love Winona Rider in this movie she plays a new patient to the word and will some come to relize that she will not be able to cope by herself.She befriends her roommate and some others that know how to manipulate the staff and how to get around the issues such as meds and how they always must take them so they can sleep. The issues in this movie are very strong and I think should not be watched by a younger addeinence but I recemend this for early teens such as myself

Rating:
Summary: "I didn't try to kill myself...I had a headache"
Review: "Girl, Interrupted" is the true story of Susanna Kaysen (Winona Ryder), a young woman who was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder during the 1960s. My favorite parts of the film were the transitions between scenes; the movie flowed beautifully. Susanna signs herself into Claymoore, a mental institution, after a failed attempt at suicide. At Claymoore, she meets a wide variety of different girls, each with different problems. There is Lisa the sociopath, played by Angelina Jolie and Daisy, a loner, played by "Clueless's" Brittany Murphy. Whoopi Goldberg rounds out the cast as Valerie, the head nurse on Susanna's floor. A bit reminiscent of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," "Girl, Interrupted" is one of the finest films I have ever seen. Winona Ryder is brilliant, I have never seen her portray a character better.

Rating:
Summary: Thought provoking and alluring.
Review: I liked this movie and read the book, so I did see some discrepancies. Yet, Winona Ryder's portrayal is magnificent and made me question the stereotypes we put on the "mentally insane." After all, who are we to judge someone else when our lives are so messed up?

All in all a wonderful film for those looking for a change from all the teen bimbo movies or slasher films.

Rating:
Summary: Profound and deeply touching
Review: "Your heart is cold... you need this place to feel alive..."

This one of many powerful lines in this movie, that actually takes place near the end, sums up one of the souls of the female characters. I have read that this movie cannot help but be compared to ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST, but, having never seen that supposed masterpiece, I had no such encumbrences to my enjoying this magnificent film with my girlfriend. The magic of this movie to me is not so much in its ability to make a mental institution come alive, but its ability to make the girls in it and their lives and relationships become as real as anyone you've ever met or knew. There are times when you can't help but feel *God, it must be hard to eke out an existence in a mental hospital and get well in your soul*. But those times immediately set the stage for scenes and dialogues that make you say *God, it must be hard to have been a young woman in 1967* no matter where she was or what she was going through. That leads to you almost unnoticeably saying in your heart, as Wynona Rider's performance, Good Cop/Bad Copped by the amazing Jolie in this film (with both backed up with incredible supporting characters) enters every corner of your mind: how hard it must be at times to be a young woman, whose soul is scarred while on the verge of discovering who she is, anywhere, in any way, at anytime.

GIRL, INTERRUPTED is the profound and poignant story of a woman whose path from girlhood to womanhood, from silly giggle to sexy laugh to wisdom smile, was painfully interrupted- and then had that path take on such unimagineable twists and turns that she would come out with a greater potential for wisdom, peace and love than she otherwise would ever have had. It is in that context that the mental institution as a whole becomes a subordinate character like Whoopi Goldberg's as the wise Nurse- in fact, little more than the powerful metaphor the film's title triumphantly is.

This is one of those movies that makes you say "Oh, a chick flick with good actresses" when you read the title, but leaves you deeply touched and pondering its significance as it easily transcends even the compliment inherent in that stereotype when you see it, with powerful dialogue and brilliant ensemble acting. Worth watching a couple of times, and definitely worth owning.

Rating:
Summary: Divas on Parade
Review: Anjali Jolie won an Oscar for her portrayal of Lisa, a ferociously self-absorbed sociopath held captive at a mental hospital in the early 1960's. Jolie knows a good acting opportunity when she sees one - she doesn't just chew up the scenery here, she positively lunges at it, rips it to shreds, then lunges for more. She's also the primary reason to see this otherwise tepid drama in which Winona Ryder (in a finely understated performance) is sent to a mental hospital after a suicide attempt.

The movie doesn't delve very deep into it's characters' mental ailments, and in one strangely wayward moment, the suicide-prone Ryder is told by a hospital nurse to simply "grow up."

Those hoping for a "Cuckoo's Nest" with women won't be satisfied, and yet, this will surely become a favorite teen-girl pajama-party rental for years to come.

Rating:
Summary: Great performances save weak meladrama
Review: Great performances and interesting claustraphobic sets create an intense film. But.....after the first hour you begin to wonder where its all going. The only downer to the film is that it just plain gets thin. It was a good, and perhaps in a diffrent year would have had more recogniztion, but look elsewhere for serious hard-hitting drama.

Rating:
Summary: Very touching drama
Review: Some audience members might find this all-girl version of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest to be unsatisfactory and overly glossy, but when closely examined and carefully observed the film is a delicate and touching portrayal of adolescent unhappiness and the difficulties of finding your place in a very crazy world. Winona Ryder gives her finest performance to date as real-life Susanna Kaysen, whose experiences in a private mental institution during the late sixties were the subject of her highly successful autobiography "Girl, Interrupted". Director James Mangold (Heavy, Copland) has done a fine job in fashioning a fluid narrative from a very sketchy character study, and his work is effective most when he emphasizes telling the story from within the main character's point of view. Ryder's realizations throughout the film are so moving that they make a somewhat predictable story into a very memorable one; her first major step in facing her problem while standing in the middle of the parking lot with draft dodger boyfriend Toby (Jared Leto) is probably the most heartbreaking scene in the whole film for me. The supporting cast is not to be overlooked, however, since one doesn't watch the film without first mentioning the highly praised support offered by Angelina Jolie as Lisa, the sociopath who has been in the institution for eight years and doesn't show signs of being released any time soon. Others in the ensemble include Clea DuVall as pathological liar Georgina, Elisabeth Moss (remember her as Baby Louise in Bette Midler's version of Gypsy?) as burn victim Polly, and, most disturbingly, Clueless' Brittany Murphy as Daisy, a girl with so many secrets and so many mental disturbances it would ruinous of your viewing experience for me to mention them all (she really got under my skin, I can't help but tell you). To top it all off, there's a beautiful and sensitive performance by Whoopi Goldberg as Valerie, the wise nurse who recognizes Susanna's extraordinary intelligence and uses it to help steer her in the right direction. Goldberg's performances in dramas tend to always be wise and sensitive and beautiful (Corrina, Corrina being an expert example), but here she's even more memorable than she's ever been. I won't even begin to talk about the contribution made by Vanessa Redgrave's two small scenes because then this article would never end. Suffice it to say that though it's not the most groundbreaking piece of storytelling ever to have hit your VCR, it certainly has a lot of truth to it, and a lot of wisdom worth taking away with you.