American Beauty (DVD)

...take your attention away from American Beauty. There was a lot of hype built around its release but it doesn’t disappoint. Sam Mendes has done a terrific job in portraying Mid-life crisis and how people deal with it. This film also portrays tearaway teens, reluctant homosexuals and obsessions. Intriguing no? *This may ruin the plot for some people so don’t say I didn’t tell you so ;-)* The story begins with a shot of Middle America ...
...Burnham family live. This particular bit of scenery showing the trees in autumn seems to symbolise Lester Burnham, a 42-year-old man who is fed up of being average. Like him the trees are ready to shed their leaves and end up looking like they are coming to the end of their life, this is why I think the shot is used throughout the film. Kevin Spacey is the star of the show and for good reason. He is best known for roles in Usual Suspects, Seven ...

mmuk 11.05.2001 · Read full review
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Review of American Beauty (DVD)

...world a better place. American Beauty is such a film. For a directors first movie to be such an absorbing spellbinding production is amazing. The film has the feel of a number of cinematic gods who have combined, used all the known wisdom gathered over a century of film making, and produced a near perfect film. Sam Mendes deserves every honour he has gained from this film. The story is told is a comparatively simplistic way, there is no deviation ...
...view is of normal suburban American life, the actions and consequences credible and believable, the emotions familiar to anyone who truly lives in our world rather than merely exists in it. This is a film capable of making you look around the cinema, the street, your home afterwards and see things a new way. It is that powerful a film. On the surface the film revolves around Lester Burnham who is married to Carolyn And they have a teenage daughter ...

polydeuces 23.11.2001 · Read full review
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Review of American Beauty (DVD)

...lead as a normal middle-aged American guy working in the magazine industry. He is having marriage difficulties; problems relating to is daughter and problems at work. Spacey’s character basically decides that he’s had enough with his current life. He becomes very “taken” with one of his daughter’s friends and her flirting with him is one of the main factors influencing his life style change. We see his metamorphosis ...
...to be and have the American Beauty that everyone else is striving for. She’s good looking, popular with the right people, she’s experienced if you know what I mean. She apparently has it all. But does she? The boy next door has had mental problems - mainly due to his father’s abusive nature. He is the only one that sees the beauty in everything (even death). He and his supply of drugs are the catalysts to Spacey’s newfound ...

earningstuff 18.03.2001 · Read full review
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Review of American Beauty (DVD)

...the story of your typical American family. Mom & dad only sleep together now, don’t like each other, dad is having a mid life crisis, mom is having an affair, daughter thinks dad is a creep for fancying her friends and mom is a hypocrite. Familiar? Yes, it was a bit for me as well. Overall this is not a bad film but somehow is less than the sum of its parts. Kevin Spacey again shows why he is one of the best actors currently around with a ...
...time he wins a victory against his wife or the world at large. Annette Benning plays the ice maiden wife well and a good supporting cast helps. But there is for me only one scene that stands out – Asparagus anyone? Somehow though, it just never quite fits together for me and the 2 hour running time feels like the full 2 hours. Given the many and colourful recommendations I had to see this film, it doesn’t live up to the hype. The film ...

ultras67 05.04.2001 · Read full review
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Review of American Beauty (DVD)

American Beauty follows the lives of a small group of people who are all related by the fact that they live within 3 doors of one another and while everything may look peaceful and serene from the outside, we are given a glimpse of what is really going on inside. Cast ---- Lester Burnham - Kevin Spacey Carolyn Burnham - Annette Benning Jane Burnham - Thora Birch Ricky Fitts - Wes Bentley Angela - Mena Suvari Colnel Fitts - Chris Cooper Barbara ...
...plot is partially narrative driven by Spacey who makes a statement at the beginning of the film and keeps you hanging on to see if it's true. In the meantime you are treated to a few days in the lives of the characters, who will enchant you the instant you come into contact with them. Spacey plays a guy in the midst of a mid-life crisis and the breakdown of his marriage. Sexually frustrated, he becomes infatuated with Angela, a friend of his daughter. ...

ayanayuk 04.09.2001 · Read full review
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Review of American Beauty (DVD)

...opinion, basically all about the American Dream going rotten and families falling apart. And it does have a definite appeal, the confidence and flow of the acting and gorgeous images stand out. And watching this film, you will need full concentration, if you turn it off and come back you will perhaps miss it's appeal. But if your prepared to sit and watch all the way through, then you will definitely be able to find something to interest you in this. ...

Sid76 02.03.2001 · Read full review
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Review of American Beauty (DVD)

American Beauty is a very strange beast of a film; it should have been critically acclaimed but made no money. It is directed by a first time director with a theatre background and is a study of families falling apart in American suburbia, normally the plot of a daytime TV movie rather than a box office smash. But thanks to a great script, superb acting and wonderful debut director Sam Mendes the film made $336m at the box office. The Film Unlike ...
...looks at serious issues for American suburbia, but it does so under a smokescreen of black comedy, from the opening masturbation in the shower scene through “fuck me, Your Majesty” to the one-word riposte by Angela to a school colleague which according to the director caused four people to walk out of a preview screening. This wonderful writing allowed the film to gain access to a far wider audience than it otherwise would have done. ...

jtimothy 25.01.2001 (05.02.2001) · Read full review
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Review of American Beauty (DVD)

...not in fact just the American dream, as it is not confined to Americans, but in fact touches on human needs in general. The story tells about average people in average lives, and their situations are a little exaggerated to get the point across, but what comes from a story like this is a list of questions that I ask myself about my life, and about the lives of people around me. It portrays a husband in an unsatisfactory marriage, where communication ...
...common and an everyday thing, and when I look around me at people that I know, is not dissimilar to many couples, where one persons personality is stifled by another. This is not a film about infidelity, or in fact about middle aged mens fantasies. It goes beyond that. It travels into the area of what people want from their lives, the little things that they had when they were younger, like optimism, hope, and that real buzz that runs down your ...

thingywhatsit 09.11.2004 · Read full review
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Review of American Beauty (DVD)

With his first production for the silver screen director Sam Mendes has created a film that really does live up to it’s name – it’s a real beauty. It tells the story of Lester (Kevin Spacey), a man fed up with his mundane existence, his ‘stepford wife’ and his oh so grateful daughter for either of who he can do nothing right. From the moment the film starts and Lester announces that he only has one year to live, although ...
...intriguing than it first seems. It’s a classic black comedy about a man who doesn’t know what he wants from life but he knows it’s not what he’s got – and things will have to change. In the beginning of course Lester doesn’t know his life is mundane, but he’s about to be awakened from this mundane slumber that is his life by a chance encounter with his daughters cheerleader friend, would be supermodel Mena ...

Pulpdiction_1999 14.02.2001 · Read full review
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Review of American Beauty (DVD)

A deeply disturbing film that some will find just plainly odd and offensive, this is a sophisticated and wickedly funny look at suburban life when things go wrong. Of the two families concerned, the first is headed by Lester Burnham (played by the dryly funny Kevin Spacey) as the patriach who leaves his job after blackmailing his boss. He yearns for meaning in his life and sets out to do so in his own strange way. His wife Carolyn (played by Annette ...
...love with Lester and has a brief affair with a fellow estate agent (Peter Gallagher) and is soon discovered in a hilarious set-piece at a hamburger joint’s drive-through. Their daughter Jane has fallen out with both of them and can’t seem to bond with them and decides that it’s only a matter of time before she escapes them. Someone she befriends is the next door neighbour’s son Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley), a loner who videos ‘everyday’stuff (in the ...

redcockney 09.08.2000 · Read full review
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Review of American Beauty (DVD)

I've been avoiding writing this review since I watched the video over Christmas, because I am afraid no matter what I write I cannot do the film justice. It has so many different themes, different threads to follow that nobody could hope to sum it up in anything less than a dissertation. So be aware that this is inevitably less than the film as a whole. Our hero is Lester Burnham, a middle-class white man living in suburban America. His life is ...
...to the fact that this has left him rather sedate. He feels bored, his life is going nowhere and even his family dislike him. His daughter, Jane, is also feeling the depression of mundanity, and as well as saving up for breast augmentation hates her father. The film is odd already in that the two lead characters, who we are encouraged to feel near equal sympathy for, have a very bad relationship. His wife, Caroline, runs a local estate agency, and ...

Xamis 01.02.2001 · Read full review
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Review of American Beauty (DVD)

...more a comment on contemporary American society. I find it hard to imagine this working quite as well in a British setting, but in the middle class American setting it's in, it's perfect and a disturbing commentary. From the obsessive housewife Carolyn (Anette Bening) to the nubile cheerleaders and beyond, these are characters right out of America's Dream..but with a very bitter twist. Interesting that the director, Mendes, is a Brit - maybe this ...
...be able to give this disturbing new spin on it? My guess is that this is a movie you'll find it hard to forget after the video stops rolling, and it's one of the very few I've cried through the end credits of! This is a tragedy (masquerading as a comedy?)in so many ways, utterly preventable and yet totally inexorable.....and surprisingly unpredictable, to the point that at least one of the dooyoo opinions I read on it *totally* missed the point! ...

lily7star 22.03.2001 · Read full review
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Review of American Beauty (DVD)

...benchmark by which all multi-layered American dramas are judged, Altman's 'Shortcuts'. The reason this structure works so effectively is that it doesn't insult the audience's intelligence by employing scenarios that entirely rely on coincidence, alternatively using a more realistic narrative approach. The movie has a feel of 'Peyton Place' gone awry, or a 'Blue Velvet' minus the Lynch-esque surrealism. It's a tribute to the faith invested in debutante ...
...handled with such understated flair and sincerity. Mind you, he did have all the experience that years spent as a theatre director brings and award-winning Conrad Hall as his cinematographer, and along with Thomas Newman's poignant score, this combination dictates the whole atmosphere. Any film which leaves the viewer pondering its ramifications for days after they've left the cinema, can only be regarded as essential viewing. ...

maxshreck 26.03.2002 · Read full review
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Review of American Beauty (DVD)

...to every cloud. American Beauty focuses on the seemingly ordinary family of Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), for whom repetition has become a way of life. His wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening), is having a midlife crisis of her own while his daughter Jane (Thora Birch) can't stand the sight of him. However, when lester finds his job at risk, he decides to catch up on the years he has missed. When he falls in love with Jane's best friend, Angela (Mena ...
...her talents extend further than American Pie, and is brilliantly suited to her part. I must admit that the first time I watched this film, although I really enjoyed it, I wasn't quite sure why. Then I saw it again and everything became clear. The film somehow succeeds in showing the true beauty of life, without being naive to the horrors of reality. I think one of the main things it demonstrates is the insignificance of society in comparison to ...

krabople 13.09.2001 · Read full review
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Review of American Beauty (DVD)

American Beauty was the 1999 big award winner, was it worthy of all the praise? In a word yes. It has a great script, great acting and is well directed. It also has a great look at a suburban american life that isn't all roses and actually doesn't have a happy ending. But what I like is that it's darkly funny. BRAD[reading Lester's job description] "My job requires mostly masking my contempt for the assholes in charge, and, at least once a day, retiring ...
...I fantasize about a life that less closely resembles Hell" The above is just one primary example of the great dialogue that is bitter and sums up what a lot of people in dead end jobs feel. For those that haven't seen the film then let me summarize the plot. Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham, a middle aged man in a downhill marriage to his wife Carolyn (Annette Bening). His teenage daughter is very nagst ridden, the three of them don't get along. ...

utero 09.07.2001 · Read full review
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Review of American Beauty (DVD)