A couple of years ago we asked our readers to tell us their
favorite movies about mental illness. In the comments, someone asked if we could do a poll on what
types of movies people who live with bipolar disorder like the best. We thought this would be interesting, too. Do we, as a group, go for drama, comedy or something in between? Do we prefer our fantasy in live action or animated form? Are we pure escapists? (I am!)
The examples given are movies I like, with a couple of noted exceptions. They are given just to show the sort of movies I'm talking about in a particular genre. Please note that in Comedy I didn't list such movies as Dumb and Dumber because I hate that type of movie, but the category does include slapstick (my love for slapstick is confined to the Three Stooges). Similarly, the Horror category includes all the slasher films like the Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street series, but I do not watch gory movies so I didn't list them.
Select as many as you like, and leave a comment after the poll if you want to talk about a category I left out (I can only put in ten but there are many more - westerns, martial arts, anime, who knows what), or tell us your all-time favorite film (mine is a tie between the Lord of the Rings series and How Green Was My Valley).
My current top choices would be Action/Adventure, Fantasy, and Crime/Mystery/Suspense, with romantic comedies thrown in (a sub-category I didn't have room to list).
~Marcia
Examples - My personal favorites of each type of movie:
- Action/Adventure
Die Hard and sequels, Spiderman, Pirates of the Caribbean
- Animated
Shrek, Snow White, Fantasia, Finding Nemo, Toy Story
- Classic/Historical
Pride and Prejudice, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, How Green Was My Valley
- Comedy
Kindergarten Cop, My Best Friend's Wedding, Airplane!
- Crime/Mystery/Suspense
The Bone Collector, Dead Again, Silence of the Lambs, The Fugitive
- Documentary/Docudrama
Bowling for Columbine, An Inconvenient Truth, Fahrenheit 9/11
- Drama
A Beautiful Mind, Little Women, Steel Magnolias
- Fantasy
Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia, The Neverending Story
- Horror
Child's Play (I've only seen the first one), The Faculty, The Haunting (hated the remake, LOVE the original)
- Science Fiction
Star Wars (actually, I only liked the first one, saw it 12 times in the theater), The Abyss, StarGate, X-Files
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I voted…nice poll that everyone can enjoy.
It would be hard to list favorites because I’ve seen so many good, and a few great, movies — thousands over the 60-odd years I’ve been to the movies. If I had to pick one film I think probably the greatest I’ve seen, and certainly among the greatest ever made, it would be actually three films: the so-called “Apu Trilogy” of Satyajit Ray (Pather Panchali, Aparajito, and The World of Apu). I don’t think anybody can watch these three films and not retain indelible memories of their great, deep, compassionate look into humanity.