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Posted
18 hours ago, shadow_operative said:

the best depiction of mental illness that i've ever seen -by far- was in that episode of Dave where Gata has a manic/bipolar breakdown. that episode is the gold standard for depicting this particular illness in a realistic light, from beginning to end. i found it be a very impactful episode of television, and i'd recommend that episode to anyone who's dealt with this sort of thing.

That guy is Lil dicky’s real-life hypeman & he really is bipolar. Great episode.

Posted

The Aviator. The scene with Alan Alda as Senator Brewster where he serves Howard Hughes a glass with a fingerprint on it was so well done. Shows on one hand a brilliant Howard Hughes, nearly foiled by an imperfection. The obsessiveness that drives greatness can also correlate with mental illness.

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Posted (edited)

Has anyone watched Manic, it was from 2001 and had Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zoey Deschanel. I watched it a long time and remember very little about it besides it being set in a mental institution and it being pretty good.

Edited by qwertyu1234
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Posted
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Josh Lucas had an interview where he was out of the loop on the direction Bale took for the role and thought he was untalented and stiff. He just didnt get the memo that Bale was playing an especially hollow person. It wasnt until the screening until he got it.

Lucas and the other talented actors were somewhat charismatic and all narcissistic, 80’s bad boys. Bale was playing a sociopath who attempted to be them but unable to pull it off fully. The director believed that sociopaths were naturally unfunny, though they could fake it for a short while by mimicking when necessary.
Posted
On 3/17/2025 at 7:02 AM, Mrs Whiggins said:

Sybil  (Sally Field & Joanne Woodward)

What's Eating Gilbert Grape (Johnny Depp & Leonardo DiCaprio)  mental disability

The Soloist (Jamie Foxx & Robert Downey Jr)

 

Does The Omen count?

The Soloist is a GREAT addition. 

No, the Omen or the Exorcist or Hereditary or any other possession movies don't count. I don't even think the Shining counts. Possession and hauntings change a person's thoughts and behaviors, but they are external to the person. It looks like madness, but it's not -- it's possession. The Shining is a perfect example. Jack's character clearly seems to delve into madness as the movie goes on, but it's exclusively due to possession / haunting that has existed in the Overlook Hotel for many iterations over time. Also, the boy sees visions at times (blood in the elevator, the twins, etc), and he's clearly not mentally ill. 

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Posted
The Soloist is a GREAT addition. 
No, the Omen or the Exorcist or Hereditary or any other possession movies don't count. I don't even think the Shining counts. Possession and hauntings change a person's thoughts and behaviors, but they are external to the person. It looks like madness, but it's not -- it's possession. The Shining is a perfect example. Jack's character clearly seems to delve into madness as the movie goes on, but it's exclusively due to possession / haunting that has existed in the Overlook Hotel for many iterations over time. Also, the boy sees visions at times (blood in the elevator, the twins, etc), and he's clearly not mentally ill. 

I think the book was more about the mental illness with Jacks character. And the film also dives into how isolation can lead to madness. Neither was about possession, though the movie went more supernatural I think.
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Posted
10 hours ago, Eskimohorn said:


I think the book was more about the mental illness with Jacks character. And the film also dives into how isolation can lead to madness. Neither was about possession, though the movie went more supernatural I think.

I didn't read the book, but the movie seems pretty clearly to be about a haunted hotel, referencing the previous caretaker's murder spree. True that Jack's character was a broken man who was an insecure domineering drunk, but he wasn't mentally ill and he didn't kill his family because he went crazy from isolation. The isolation combined with his already low threshold for stress made him a vulnerable target for murderous intent by the hotel's spirit. I mean he wasn't possessed like Regan from the Exorcist or anything, but how else do you explain Danny seeing visions of the twins or the bloody elevator, having the shining with old man Halloran, having Halloran know that something bad was going to happen, or the photo in the closing frame of the movie if it's not due to an evil force at the hotel? 

Anyway, regardless, my point is that possession doesn't equate to mental illness. 

Posted
4 hours ago, honolulu horn said:

I didn't read the book, but the movie seems pretty clearly to be about a haunted hotel, referencing the previous caretaker's murder spree.

 

16 hours ago, honolulu horn said:

The Soloist is a GREAT addition. 

No, the Omen or the Exorcist or Hereditary or any other possession movies don't count. I don't even think the Shining counts. Possession and hauntings change a person's thoughts and behaviors, but they are external to the person. It looks like madness, but it's not -- it's possession. The Shining is a perfect example. Jack's character clearly seems to delve into madness as the movie goes on, but it's exclusively due to possession / haunting that has existed in the Overlook Hotel for many iterations over time. Also, the boy sees visions at times (blood in the elevator, the twins, etc), and he's clearly not mentally ill. 

IIRC Stephen King's complaint about the film was that his book was about a sympathetic author who gets driven mad, while Jack Nicholson was pretty much there from the start. 

Posted
I didn't read the book, but the movie seems pretty clearly to be about a haunted hotel, referencing the previous caretaker's murder spree. True that Jack's character was a broken man who was an insecure domineering drunk, but he wasn't mentally ill and he didn't kill his family because he went crazy from isolation. The isolation combined with his already low threshold for stress made him a vulnerable target for murderous intent by the hotel's spirit. I mean he wasn't possessed like Regan from the Exorcist or anything, but how else do you explain Danny seeing visions of the twins or the bloody elevator, having the shining with old man Halloran, having Halloran know that something bad was going to happen, or the photo in the closing frame of the movie if it's not due to an evil force at the hotel? 
Anyway, regardless, my point is that possession doesn't equate to mental illness. 

Mental illness was a theme in the movie. Kubrick made a point of visually and symbolically conveying isolation and the effect it had on characters. The movie explored supernatural and tangible elements more than the source material, much to Stephen Kings dismay.

You could argue mental illness is a red herring and its really a ghost story. Really Kubrick dialed up visual elements because he wasnt gonna go surreal showing whats happening in Jacks head all the time.

And since i read the book more recently than watch the movie, i may be spouting some bookfag nonsense. But “shining” is confused with psychotic or maybe schizophrenic episodes. Dr Sleep i think even confirmed Jack suppressed episodes of shining with alcohol.

Bottom line, shining (communicating with the dead) may or may not be related to mental illness. But the movie still explores themes of mental illness even if it’s just for show before showing the haunted elements.
Posted
21 hours ago, Eskimohorn said:


I think the book was more about the mental illness with Jacks character. And the film also dives into how isolation can lead to madness. Neither was about possession, though the movie went more supernatural I think.

Specifically, about Jack's alcoholism.  The whole book is basically a giant "dry drunk," what happens to varying degrees when an alky stops drinking without taking steps leading to recovery.  Any recovering addict can see that it's an extreme, but accurate, portrayal.

Which is ironic, because King was an active alcoholic/addict at the time he wrote it.  He's been pretty candid about that since recovering in the late 80s, but it would seem that he'd had some abortive attempts at recovery at the time of writing, experiencing dry drunks himself, which is not something he's mentioned.

Posted

Adolescence streaming on Netflix.
Basic premise is how incel culture and social media influence the psyche of young teens, focusing on a 13 year old boy and his family.

Extremely well done. Probably gonna win a bunch of awards.

Posted (edited)
On 3/17/2025 at 3:06 PM, Kennythetiger said:

The Dream Team. 

Exactly the one I was thinking of. If you think about it his role in Night Shift kinda typecast him and he just leaned into it. Beetlejuice, Birdman, Pacific Heights, Clean and Sober. They're all mentally ill characters to some degree. You could throw in The Founder. If you don't think Ray Kroc had a screw loose, then you are wrong. Knox Goes Away is excellent on many levels.

Edited by RPM

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