Rating: 
Summary: amazingly touching and real
Review: Many people believe that movies can't touch our emotions, can't be about anything true. I challenge anyone who believes that to see this movie. Because of its quietly sad plot with brief moments of happiness, this movie shows a very real image of the life of a group of girls just coming-of-age in a repressive lifestyle. 5 sisters live with their parents, who restrict the girls lives so much that the youngest, at the age of twelve, attempts to commit suicide. Believing that their youngest daughter simply needs to meet the "right" kind of young gentlemen, the parents of the girls throw a party, inviting neighbor boys who happen to be in love with the girls. This having the opposite result than intended, the youngest daughter successfully kills herself. Her suicide starts a year of tragedy, first love, and heartbreak for the four surviving sisters, leading to complete and total oblivion. Told in flashback by the boys in love with the sisters, this story touches you in many ways because it seems so real. We were there, we saw it happen, we remember everything. Why? Because we all went through it, everyone who was a teenager. The wonderful acting, direction, and screenplay blend to make a movie that haunts you, doesn't let you go. You can't simply walk away from this movie. You almost have to deal with everything you take in from it, because its real life, and you can't walk away from real life.
Rating:
Summary: more than a movie
Review: you say this movie isnt for teens? well, im 15 and this movie is so important for my life i cant explain it. its a movie that stays in my mind forever and really explains so much in a way other than words. even just like the lighting or the music, it touches my inner soul and its just me. dont pretend to like it if it doesnt have a huge impact on you. movies are more than entertainment. they make a person evolve. read the book too. its written so well, i cant explain it. no words. its more than anything. i just want to watch it again.
Rating:
Summary: caught banality of the 'burbs better than American Beauty
Review: The Virgin Suicides is about the 5 Lisbon sisters, beautiful, blond, secluded by their teacher father and their housewife mother in 1970s suburban Michigan. The story opens with the youngest girls' unsuccessful suicide attempt. To cheer the girls up, the parents throw a party and invite the neighborhood boys who have always admired the girls but have never gotten close enough to befriend them. At the party, Cecilia is succssful in suicide. The story traces the next year of the Lisbon girls' lives, how they are allowed to go to one school dance, where one of them sneaks off with a boy. Afterwards, they are secluded from everything and everyone -- even school, where their father teaches and doesn't notice they are absent. It all culminates into a horrible ending that you can't quite believe.
Rating:
Summary: Not a teen movie!
Review: This solid movie adaptation of Jeffrey Eugenides' book is about as good as a movie can be. It takes a difficult subject in teenage subject and manages to turn it into something not only tragic but beautiful and sometimes even gently humorous. This is a turn away from teen movies in that it is completely unconventional. It is an adult drama that is poignant and evocative. The movie starts as it means to continue, with a visually arresting suicide attempt of Cecelia Lisbon, a 13 year-old girl. The Lisbon sisters are a group of five girls that, during the 1970's, haunted and mesmerised the neighbourhood boys. Put basically, this is a study of sexual awakening and innocence. One obviously noticeable thing about 'The Virgin Suicides' is the acting. Kathleen Turner and James Woods play the restrictive parents of the sisters, and kudos should go to Turner for giving an unsentimental turn in a highly difficult role; she pulls it off perfectly. Kirsten Dunst, the rising star of her generation, is the more prominent of the sisters, Lux as she romances Trip Fontaine (Josh Hartnett). After a great deal of effort, the girls get to go to the school prom and experience the teenage life that they have been left out of so long. With the subtle yet engrossing romantic plot, you'd be forgiven if you forgot the shadow that Cecelia's death casts over the proceedings. The girls seem fine, almost unaltered, but the mysterious beauty and innocence of the sisters continues to haunt the dreams of the neighbourhood boys. The central irony of wanting to get closer to the girls yet wanting them to remain perfect is well realised and show what an assured directorial debut this is, possibly the best since Sam Mendes's 'American Beauty'.
Rating:
Summary: one of the most important films of our time
Review: this is sophia coppola's directorial debut and she has literally struck gold. although i've never read the novel from which this terrific film was based, i was thoroughly impressed and do believe this to be one of the most important films of our time. this is a film we will be glad to look back on 20 years down the road and it's gonna be amazing to see people's responses at that time. virgin suicides captures all the sure fire innocence of growing pains in the seventies which any episode of brady bunch would've completely avoided at all costs. one could learn a great deal from this movie concerning the value of life and how truly misunderstood teenagers have been through the years. perhaps ms.coppola is urging us to recongize the importance of a life and that we all should be cognizant that life itself is irreplaceable. nothing should be considered trivial. having said that, i feel ms.coppola is also showing that memories of the faithful departed are proven to be a substantial thing when it comes to knowing which direction in life we are headed and knowing our love for the deceased will live as long as we choose to remember them. great performances all around give this film a tremendous amount of strength and air has composed a haunting but sensual soundtrack. a must see film !! kirsten dunst's best performance since interview with the vampire in my opinion.
Rating:
Summary: It's Up To You . . .
Review: What makes The Virgin Suicides so unique and emotive is that it shares a wonderful quality for personal interpretation with the viewer ... Like poetry, or song lyrics that don't "over-explain", The Virgin Suicides allows the viewer to become part of the picture because of personal experience .... ( Without giving away too much .. ) You can FEEL what is happening during the scene in which one of the daughters leaves a party ... A feeling of dread, yet understanding, all done in a very moving way ... And that tone runs throughout the film; very dreamlike and surreal, yet done in a way in which you feel as if you have experienced it as well ... I won't rehash the storyline, but I will say that I was very moved and taken in by the performances, and Sofia does a brilliant job directing ... I don't say this about many films, but I highly recommend that you give an 2 hours of your time to a film that will stay with you forever ...
Rating: 
Summary: A film that will leave it's mark in your mind.
Review: This movie is one of a kind. A group of girls so full of youth and beauty and a group of guys who are so gripped by them they become an obsession to them. The girls are living in a prison, with their mother and father watching their every move. They have dreams of being free, wandering through wide open fields and imagining their wildest thoughts. One day a boy arrives on the scene and he changes the girls lives forever. For a moment the girls are free and start to experience life outside their parents limitations. The events of one night take their toll on the girls lives and there was no going back to normality from then on.
Such a beautifully crafted movie. The choice of actors couldn't have been better. Kirsten Dunst played Lux like a true star. Lux being the more outrageous and dangerous of the girls, she battles with demons inside but her face shows a different thing.
Kathleen Turner as the mother was one of the best castings of them all. The way she portrayed this mother who could not let her daughters grow up and be teenagers and even when she gives them freedom she feels great regret and fear. Josh Hartnett as Tripp, the guy who's passion for Lux drives him crazy. He walks into the girls lives and makes one night for them the most fun they're likely to have in their short lived lives. I could mention all the actors in this because they were all perfect for their roles, but if you watch the film you will see them and judge for yourselves. This movie left me thinking for weeks on end and to me a movie that can have a lasting effect on you, well thats got to be pure excellence.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing Personal...
Review: Less than stellar film from Marc Jacobs' perfume model of the moment, Sofia Coppola. The music was great, Josh Hartnett was hilarious in his giant, moppy wig as Trip Fontaine, and Kirsten Dunst turns in a pretty good performance... but overall, this was a distant, dreamy picture, without much focus... It's pretty maybe yeah, but on the shallow side.. When it ended, I kept thinking someone should do a sequel, maybe from the girls' point of view this time... or perhaps instead one showing the girls choosing to live, to grow up and grow old.. the things they would face, the joys, the sorrows, the Real Life stuff that makes life so beautiful... Capturing them eternally at that moment, on the cusp of adulthood, like Romeo and Juliet, is an interesting idea, but it's not entirely harmless, either... both the suicides themselves, and the closed-in, stuck state the girls seem to be in seemed to be sending out entirely the wrong message to the likely audience of the film (teenagers themselves)... I mean, I understand, the girls were held back by their repressive parents, and that they were the victims.. I just didn't see why the film had to leave it at that... the girls give up, kill themselves, and are remembered forever in the beautiful, crystallized sunlit glow of the neighborhood boys... are they cut-out figures?? What's up with that? What about their own dreams? Their own desires? Their own obsessions? for me, it was like a black and white film, when I was in the mood for color... That said, the cinematography Was nice, and the shots of the sun through the trees.. but overall this movie is a light and fluffy dream, like cotton candy, nothing more.... I would have liked it more had the period of time been set in the boys' memory forever as they grew up and left the neighborhood, (with the girls still alive, but getting older themselves as well)... all of us have to wave goodbye to that awkward, confusing time of youth anyway... it was just a pity to see the two-dimensional girls left forever in that state, when what would have been more perfect is if they'd lived.. and looked back themselves.... the fact that they were glorified as ephemeral fanstasies instead of human beings made me sad, like the film had missed the point of it all.. adolescence is fleeting, beautiful... but to have a long life, lived well, and a voice of your own, well, nothing compares to that...
Rating: 
Summary: HELLO! was i the ONLY ONE watching?
Review: "blah blah blah sofia coppola hollywood royalty blah first movie blah blah blah virgin suicides hauntingly recaptures teen angst blah blah." the critics have said a lot about this movie, but an important point they all seemed to miss was that the movie was crap! yeah, the movie was haunting, but ANY movie where you kill off 5 beautiful teenage girls is not going to be a cheery walk in the park. the cinematography was pretty good, i'll give it that. the five Lisbon girls (the virgins who commit suicide) are definitely aloof and scenes of the movie shot in soft-focus represent that (in some artsy way). they're beautiful, blonde, and they don't talk too much: they're the ideal of the male fantasy. and they mysteriously kill themselves. why? we the audience never find out. this movie leaves you with far more questions than answers. why would 5 gorgeous girls throw their whole lives away? because their parents are overbearing? that's the lamest excuse to kill yourself i've ever heard. every teenager hates their parents at some point in their lives, but obviously not every teenager goes off and kills him or herself. the girls are a mystery and the viewer never gets the opportunity to identify with them. they live pointless and short lives and they leave this world selfishly taking their lives and offering no real explanations. this movie lacked something rather essential: a point. i learned nothing from this movie. at the end i was in no way motivated or inspired. after watching the virgin suicides, i would have felt depressed but i didn't form any real emotional attachments with any of the characters so instead of depressed, i had this weird empty feeling. i felt like i was just shown a picture of something i didn't want to see (like a naked, hairy fat man holding a toy poodle, wearing a tutu, sitting spread eagle): i was left with a disturbing image of an example of how sick and weird some people are. just like the Lisbon girl's suicide, i have no idea why the naked fat man chose to do what he did in the picture, but quite fankly, i don't care. i'm left with a horrible image in my head i can't shake. this movie was crap. it was pointless. i wouldn't recommend it to anyone, unless they were watching a crappy teen-angst/depression movie marathon. if the movie had a stronger plot and better acting, maybe it would deserve more than one star. but it doesn't. i think one star is far too generous at that.
Rating:
Summary: The Movie is an Abridged Version of the Book
Review: I have seen the movie several times and I have also read the book. To tell you the honest truth, the movie is actually better than the book. When Coppola wrote the screenplay for this movie, most of the time, she quoted the dialogue and the narrator's comments verbatim from the book. If you hated or disliked the movie for some reason, blame the author of the book-Jeffery Eugenides-because Coppola followed the book faithfully. One reviewer complained that we never really understand why the girls committed suicide and we never really get to know the characters of the parents and the Lisbon girls. Let me tell you, the book definitely does not address these aspects very well at all. In fact, I would say that it is this lack of knowledge, on the part of the narrators, in regards to the Lisbon family, which keeps their obsession with the girls going. The narrator tells us that even as adults, he and his friends keep going over the evidence trying to put it all together and figure out, for certain, what happened and why in regards to the Lisbon girls. In my opinion, Coppolla actually did a better job of characterizing the Lisbon family than Eugenides did. It may sound like I did not like the book, but this is not true. What I am really saying is that Coppola took a good book and made a good movie that was a very faithful representation of the book it was based on. Obviously the suicides of the five Lisbon girls are tragic, but what I find to be the biggest tragedy, in this movie/book, is that these adult men have let their childhood crushes and fantasies about these girls ruin their chance of ever finding happiness and fulfillment in their relationships with other women. Reality almost never lives up to fantasy, and a living woman can never compete with a ghost who has been idealized.
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