American Beauty | | Cast : | Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening | | Director : | Sam Mendes | | Studio : | Universal Studios | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, DTS Surround Sound, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | October 01, 1999 | | DVD Released Date : | August 05, 2005 | | Language : | English (Original Language) | | Audience Rating : | R (Restricted) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 01, 2005 | | Summary | Beautiful!! | Content
 | -I remember seeing this movie for the first time in grade 5. And believe it or not--the storyline is just as clear now as it was then. Lester is unhappy with his life and makes an effort to change it. A previous reviewer went on about how Lester wasn't a true protagonist. I beg to differ. Lester represents about 95% of the middle aged men in America. He is sexually frustrated, he has an awful relationship with both his wife and kid, plus he wakes up every morning to work a dead end job that makes him unhappy. Other than continuing down this miserable path, he does something about it. He chooses to better himself, and that ultimately makes him a hero. In my opinion, he's the bind that holds the movie together. He uses a very dark, morbid sense of humor that cracks me up every time he's on screen. His actions are justifiable. And also somewhat relatable.
-Another thing I like is the movie's incredible use of imagery. American Beauty has some of the best cinematography I've ever seen. The scenery is absolutely breath taking. And it's simple--not too over the top. They didn't have to travel across seas to find amazing landscapes. They just took a contemporary American home and made it both symbolic and beautiful.
-The scripting is also right on point. Today's movies have way too much dialogue. But Beauty's characters say more through their actions than they ever could with words--and that's a rare find in recent cinema.
-American Beauty is just that. A beautiful film that centers around a dysfunctional American family. It's dark, depressing--yet realistically portrayed. I would definitely recommend. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 21, 2005 | | Summary | Study in American Misanthropy by Brit director | Content
| Beauty" begins with Lester Burnham (Spacey), so beaten down by lifeless routine, that he has lost even the ability to feel pain or anything. Lester's harpy of a wife Carolyn (Benning), a status-hungry real-estate velociraptor is only capable of dishing out bile. Between the two suffers Jane, their self-loathing daughter (Thora Birch from "Ghost World). We also meet those who surround them, a gay couple; a retired homophobic marine; his catatonic wife, their seemingly psychotic, voyeuristic and pot-selling son Ricky, and Jane's obviously psychotically vain friend Angela.
Life though beautiful obviously isn't as nice as it looks. Lester's cozy suburban home encloses his frigid wife and remote daughter, and for him it's a loveless shelter when he's not at work in his dead-end job. Then something happens: On the verge of losing his job, Lester quits and blackmails his boss for a generous severance package. Now free, after a fashion, he entertains lustful thoughts of Angela while buying weed from Ricky, who unbeknownst to Lester, has become Jane's lover. Freed from the daily grind, and with Ricky and Angela seeming to urge him on, Lester recreates himself as a teenager, directionless and determined at the same time. His approach to life disdains the carpediem that typified Hollywood "Dead Poets" rip-offs of the early 1990's for something more along "let the day pass you by." His wife, determined to succeed in real estate, is revealed not just amoral, but stunningly shallow - a walking manifestation of sheer materialism and ostentation. All who populate "Beauty" live in some illusion - Lester with his renewed youth, Carolyn and her dreams of success, Ricky and Sarah and their fantasies of a future together, Angela's fantasy of herself on the cover of "Elle", Ricky's father's mirage of the all-American family..etc. After meandering, the script decides that somebody will have to wake up and take reality on the chin for everybody else - and the script settles on Jane and Ricky. Bad move: Jane and Ricky prove so mature in their love for each other, that they prove better able to wake up and smell the coffee than the rest of the cast. Instead of a searing portrait of the disintegration of family life, Ricky and Jane prove that love and the family is alive and well. The closer they get, the more we realize that Jane won't be destroyed by her self-loathing, and that Ricky's not really a psycho at all. (If children are our future, then we could do far worse than Ricky and Jane.) As Ricky and Jane straighten themselves out. The rest of the flick seems out of whack - as if the script suddenly became terrified of its capacity for mass destruction and wanted to turn into a sunny parody of its earlier self. Jane contemplates life without bust enlargement; Carolyn's crass materialism, never disavowed, is mollified by her affair and possible love for her competitor in the real estate market (surprisingly refreshing Peter Gallagher); and Lester's attraction for Jane's friend is more mutual than irony should allow. The only constant in this perfect storm is Ricky's father, a die-hard Marine whose only apparent role is to set the story firmly in America (apparently the only Western nation that British-born director Sam Mendes can conceive of teeming with right-wing, jingoistic, homophobic, militaristic robots).
The script's sudden risk-shyness infects the characters so, that by the end of the film, all they can do is feel satisfied with each other. Even Lester, the most beaten down of them all, feels fine.
I enjoyed the leads of this flick enough to overlook how otherwise overrated it really is. "American Beauty" never exploits its fictional setting to achieve any sharper edge on a now well-worn theme of the darkness underlying American family life. Surprisingly, it never explains the film's core plot point: Burnham's dramatic character shift (occurring in the film, but apparently late in life). We get the idea that people have treated him like dirt for ages, yet in the first shot, he's already equipped to turn the tables on his boss and his wife, and attract Angela as well.
What undermines the film the most is the persistent hint that those on the other side of the camera may be in thrall to the greatest illusion of all - that this really is a deep look at the shattered psyche of the American family that hasn't been done to death decades ago. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 21, 2005 | | Summary | Best Picture? You're kidding me, right? 2 and 1/2 stars | Content
| Besides the funny moments in this film, there is nothing good about it. Kevin Spacey delivers some very funny moments and the music in the movie is good but the movie itself isn't good at all. First of all, it's nothing about beauty. So don't expect this movie to be beautiful. It's disturbing and grotesque. I'm sure that everyone probably agrees with me that there is normally a protagonist in movies. Well, not here. There are no heroes but only perverted and strange people.
There's the frustrated dad who doesn't get any sex from his wife and whose daughter hates him. He only is freed from his problems with his family when he falls in love with his daughter's best friend. I know, that's disgusting. So now, he's working out, blackmails his boss, smokes pot and does whatever he wants. No hero there.
The girl that he falls in love with is obssessed with sex and finds herself to be "not oridinary" and beautiful. She's very dirty and isn't a hero.
Then, there's his wife, the realtor who likes material possessions and cheats on him and doesn't seem to care. She calls herself a victim, and may I ask: "of what?" You're rich, you have a family, how the hell are you victim? And then she even considers killing her husband because she's a victim. And she doesn't even know that he is fantasizing about someone. Wow. No hero there.
Then there's their daughter who hates both of them, especially her dad. For what reason? I don't know! She even jokes about wanting to kill him. That's not a very pleasant joke! She wants breast implants even though she has large enough ones. (She flashes her boyfriend). No hero there.
Then, there's the daughter's boyfriend. He's a psycho who films everything and sells pot secretely. When you're supposed to like him, it's hard to.
Then there's the boyfriend's dad who is a veteran army lieutenant. He's abusive and very violent and mean. And he has some skeletons in his closet. No hero there either.
See, the movie was hard to watch because you don't like any of the characters in the movie. It was depressing to see our society shown as it is and without any character that you like, well...
The movie had too many sex references and also had lots of uneccessary and weird stuff. Like when Kevin Spacey's character fantacizes, WEIRD!
The worse for me though is that I had lots of high expectations for this movie and it ended out being nothing spectacular, just a mediocre and not memorable movie. The acting is good as are some jokes, but it really isn't what everyone says it is. It's not original and is very strange. There were also many random scenes in it and well...
I don't even recommend it for a rent unless you want to see what the fuss is all about but the academy must have different opinions than me because this movie didn't deserve best picture. I enjoyed Kevin Spacey as usual in a very strong performance but the movie wasn't strong or interesting. It was about a man breaking free thanks to an 18 year old girl that he falls for but unfortunately the movie didn't do what I thought that it would.
Buddy Kane: "Who's the king?"
Me: "Definitely not Sam Mendes!!!!!" |
| Rating | | | Date | July 20, 2005 | | Summary | AMERICAN BOOTY.... | Content
| Some serious eye candy in this movie! I liked the story to this
movie, it was good, and different. Kevin Spacey was great, as
usual, and the two teenage girls, were sexy and easy! |
| Rating | | | Date | June 30, 2005 | | Summary | Beauty is Full of Poetic Grandeur. | Content
| American Beauty
By
Nick Schwab.
(Medium Spoiler Warning!)
With a flourishing directional eye, debut director Sam Mendes has created a film that is a dazzling comment on typical suburbia life. Structured out of slightly sarcastic characterizations, yet bitter truthfulness, Mendes has taken the coming-of-age genre, or rather, the re-coming-of-age genre, and turned it upside down and then inside out, like an alchemist. As he takes a story that is basically about one man who doesn't want to continue growing up, and turns it into a symbolic and metaphor-laced allegory of greatness.
Mendes tells his story with a know-it-all level of commitment to the styles of film and the material. Which is shown in the fact that he tells his story with an abundant amount of style, yet unlike some directors, the style never gets in the way of the story. This shows Mendes is a graceful director, with both really good ideas, and remarkable technical skill.
This technical skill can be seen also through famous Cinematographer Conrad L. Hall's photography, that helps add to the film's sunny-suburbia look, as it slowly begins to become more skewed in both its lighting and the character actions. This is shown when the film first takes off and is rather peaceful in appearance, which is seen in many overhead and wide-angle shots of the sunny, beautiful street below. Then by the ending, the film takes a turn into being darker, while the depicted street is being soaked in rain. It is during this time in the film that the photography and the character's actions resemble a play that will end in tradegy, of which it certainley does.
The central cast plays their role with a knowing candor of their characters. Kevin Spacey gives a superior show as the central character, that is never a caricature of a rebel without a cause, but is rather a realistically portrayed one. One character in the film called Spacey's character, "pathetic," while another character called him, "funny." These statements are exactly what Spacey makes his character, that is pathetic, but not unrealistic and comical, but not always funny. With those character elements, Spacey then gives Lester a sense of unsureness and hostility that gives him a teenager mentality. This mentality might make him a guy that some people would like to hang around with, at least, as long as you're under twenty years old.
Annette Benning is another standout as Carolyn, Lester's wife. She's becomes the house's breadwinner and her character posses a personality that is built on high expectations. Benning makes her appear as a character that is determined yet vulnerable, which can be seen in the film, in the scene in which she falls into the bed of another man, when things aren't going right at the home. Another standout is Thora Birch as the daughter. She plays a virginal-like character, and is the film's voice of reason.
There is more then meets the eye in American Beauty, which can be told by the tagline to the film, which tells the audience to, "look closer." This statement is true, as the audience must look closer to bring the metaphors, symbolism and meanings into the light. Starting with the film as a social commentary with its meaning planted in the fact that, "all is not right in suburbia." The film which ends with a murder, is perfect reason to look closer into suburbia life and see in it a shade of darkness.
Further in-depth would bring you to see that the film features a bold statement about humans sex drive. To be more precise, it's about Kevin Spacey's character, Lester Bernaham, an older man that drive has been restated when he catches sight of Angela Hayes, played by Mena Suvari. In turn, it is also about adolescents sex drive, and how Angela's one is young and blossoming.
It is these mature themes that make American Beauty a very smart film. The film never gets to be exploitative, or even that raunchy, showing the film to take a sincere approach to the material. The ending of American Buety is partly tragic, yet is built around happiness. The moral of the story shows the beauty of the film, which is simply just to love living, because some day life always comes to an end.
Grade- A |
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