Good start, but then it gets ruined

Fantastic!

Pretty good movie overall. First half was nothing special but it got better as it went along.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The first time I watched this movie a couple of years ago, I wasn't too impressed with it. I've seen it several more times since and it's not a bad movie; its more than watchable, but left more questions than answers in the end.I'll leave the cinematography reviews to others who know more about that subject.**** SPOILER ALERT **** In the end, my feelings at the end of this movie were mixed. Now I love a movie with an ending that leaves the viewer to ponder the whats and whys of a character or their actions.However, this movie isn't a suspense so these questions, I feel, are pretty crucial to the plot.The first and biggest questions to me is: WHY oh why do the girls signal for the boys across the street to come over, say they are going for a car ride and end up all killing themselves either before or while the boys are waiting for them to get ready. What is the point in that??? It's not like the boys found their bodies and alerted anyone. They ran away.Another question is the fact that Lux is having sex with multiple men and boys on the roof of her house. Why the roof? Wouldn't her parents hear something on the roof and possibly inspect what it could be? Why not in the guy's car down the street or in the basement or, well, anywhere but the roof?I realize this is taken from the novel (that I haven't read), but surely I can't be the only one with these questions. There are others but I'll leave it at that.

I expected "The Virgin Suicides" to be a heart-wrenching study of five repressed and abused girls who commit suicide. Instead, I got a movie that was... empty, more than anything.Right off the bat it is established that the five sisters of the Lisbon family, aged 13-17 have killed themselves. We hear this from the narrator, a boy who lives across the street from the sisters. His voice-over is retrospective, and it implies that many years have passed since the events of the movie. The movie covers roughly a year leading up to the suicides, and all of the events that transpire in that time (spoiler alert: not much happens)."Romeo and Juliet" is a tragedy. If you read or watch the play, you see the two main characters live their lives and you understand how they are led to suicide. In the play, all the characters are fleshed out and have clear motivations behind their actions. "The Virgin Suicides" is like Romeo and Juliet told from the perspective of Balthasar, Romeo's servant. We don't get the whole picture. In fact, we don't really get any picture at all. All of the sudden, the teenage kids are dead, and we don't know why.Why did the girls do it? The parents don't seem to be abusive. A little strict, sure, but no reason to kill oneself. We get quick glimpses into the mother's supposed cruelty, but she's really not that bad- as far as the viewer can see. The most memorable line in the movie comes from the youngest sister, when she goes to therapy. The doctor asks her why she has attempted suicide, saying he sees no great struggle in her life. The girl responds by saying "clearly doctor, you've never been a teenage girl." This is the closest thing we get to a reason that these girls kill themselves, and it's pretty flimsy and uncompelling.There's nothing wrong with this movie technically. The acting is fine, the writing is good, and the sets look like they are from the 1970s. The soundtrack is pretty good, and I'd say that Coppola has a nice directing style in the movie.There isn't enough substance in this movie for me to recommend it. The credits rolled and I felt like I had missed the whole thing.

The movie brought high school movie sub-genre to a weird spot as it places the high school life backgrounds and all the complexities surrounding it facing the contrast element of death and loss and coping with them. The movie goes curiously with it's opening and builds its story casually after-wards. The time frame background permits the story to exhibit cultural practices that may be deemed strange by people nowadays. Yet these weird practices gives a great way for the story to development into it's unpredictable ending. The acting overall is surprisingly good. James Woods and Kathleen Turner did their parts well in acting out as the parents. This movie sure was a showcase to display then young talents such as Kirsten Dunst, Josh Hartnett, Hayden Christensen and even Leslie Hayman. Cameos and smaller parts by Michael Pare and Danny DeVito nicely add some flavor to the movie as a whole.

An extremely hard novel to adapt to the big screen, from one of my favourite novelists Jeffrey Euginides comes the directorial debut of Sofia Coppola who would go on to direct the award-laden Lost In Translation. Kirsten Dunst plays the role very well and the performances given from the parents of the five elusive Lisbon sisters, Kathleen Turner and James Woods were very impressive. The film cleverly mirrors the pungent adolescent anxieties and dark trails of obsession that are laced throughout the novel, however the film is less visceral and more Hollywood than would've been preferred, Sofia polished most of the feeling out of the film, however the story and style forgive all the film's flaws.