Girl, Interrupted (1999, R)

This movie is kind of a One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, minus Cool Hand Luke, with a generation-x twist (the generation, not the terrible movie).  OK, I guess that description requires familiarity with a few other movies to make sense, so I'll try again.  It's a period piece taking place in the 1960's, though with rare exception it feels very much like a '90's movie: the tone and most of the wardrobe and dialogue feel gen-x'y, but one nurse's eyeglasses, one campaign sign in a front yard, and a couple of "current events" named put it in the '60's.  It takes place largely in a privately run mental hospital/clinic, specifically in the women's ward, and it's largely about what life is like in the hospital and generally for anyone who feels they don't belong (so it's a very gen-x teen [an extinct breed at this point] friendly film).  The movie is also incredibly full of "it girls" from the last couple decades.  Wynona Rider (Edward Scissorhands, Bram Stoker's Dracula) plays the lead, a recent high school graduate whose depression and borderline personality disorder ("borderline" is the incredibly non-useful name for a specific personality disorder, not to mean that it is borderline to another disorder) give her troubles.  At the hospital that she is convinced to check herself into, she runs into characters played by Angelina Jolie (Tomb Raider, Pushing Tin), Brittany Murphy (Love And Other Disasters, Uptown Girls), Clea Duvall (The Grudge, the television series Heroes), Elizabeth Moss (Get Him To The Greek) and Angela Bettis (Drones, the 2002 remake of Carrie).  Among the hospital staff are the head nurse played by Whoopi Goldberg (Sister Act, Ghost) in what is probably my favorite of her roles yet (she tends to be a bit too over-the-top for my taste, but she was the intelligent firm-ground for this film) and staff psychologist played by Jeffrey Tambor (Hellboy, television series Arrested Development) who I was worried would be a lot creepier character than he was.

The film focused on the interactions between the different characters (Jolie's character was by far the strongest personality in the film, and I'm pretty sure this was what put her on the map for Hollywood.  She was at once everyone's enemy and everyone's best friend; the Avatar of Chaos as opposed to Goldberg's Order), and about Rider's character arc hopefully ending in functional mental health.  While the beginning of the film had a bit of what some might call teenage whininess (which I must admit bugged me a little, especially when she's writing in her journal with different scripts for each line like it's artistic or something [that's a technique for scrapbooks and ransom notes dammit!]), the story overall was pretty good and built strong character relationships.  We got to see a pretty good spread of mental disorders, causes and reactions (and as graduated student of psychology, this was kind of interesting for me [there were some discrepancies with the methods of modern treatment and the rights of patients which I think were due to the different era of the story taking place, rather than poor writing]).  It's not a feel-good movie, but it does have its happy moments.  If you liked One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest or to an extent Cool Hand Luke, then you should like this film.  If you don't like watching a movie and wishing the main characters would get over themselves and get through their s#!t, then this is not for you.  For me it was about 4 out of 5 stars.  I should add that the song Downtown is currently stuck in my head due to repetition in the movie, but I don't find that altogether unpleasant.