Rating: 
Summary: Deeper than Most Could See
Review: This movie is secretly Zen and more profound than most critics ever noticed. If you can see beyond it's surface to the REAL story underneath, you will not only be thoroughly entertained, but perhaps even slightly changed.
Rating: 
Summary: It's Hollywood's best nineties' movie!
Review: First, I want to make something sure: I love America! It's a wonderful country with wonderful people, but I think, Americans can't criticize this movie correctly, 'cause it expresses very hard and evil things about this country. And may be you lose your opjectiv opion. (By the way: Please excuse my English, which is not perfect...) In fact, this movie is simply fantastic! Don't forget, there are a lot of brilliant and superb actors, like Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening or Chris Cooper. They all show an incredible performance! Then there is a script, the world has never seen before. It's magnificent and full of ingenius dialogues, may be no movie had before. And finally there is a director named Sam Mendes, who combined all this features to one great movie! Think so or don't think so: I love this movie and I want to recommend it to everybody! It's cinema of its greatest kind!
Rating: 
Summary: what's so beautiful?
Review: if this movie is what america finds beautiful, then this country is in more trouble then i thought. i have nothing against satire, as long as in the end a lesson of some kind has been taught. what lessons were taught by American Beauty? apparently, that it's okay to have an affair if your husband is a jerk. that it's okay to be a drug dealer if your father is a jerk. that it's okay to lust after your daughter's friend, as long as your wife doesn't love you. that it's okay have no moral standard what so ever as long as you live in suburban hell. i'll allow for other people to seek out their own meaning to the madness that is American Beauty. some of my friends say it made them sit in the empty theatre and think for a while. me too. think about why i spent my evening watching a film that paints a not-too-condescending portrait of debauchery in America. i found there to be interesting aspects of the film. certain scenes between wes anderson and chris cooper were extermely well written and acted, as was the now famous "pass the asperagus" dinner table scene. but for each well done moment, there were ten more that left me scrathing my head in bewilderment. the direction by sam mendes is so obviously theatrical with his use of lighting and shadows that one wonders why he doesn't just stay on broadway. and just because he introduced the Great White Way to Nicole Kidmans breasts doesn't mean he had to do the same with two under age actresses is scenes that were at best superfluous and at worst exploitive. that is all.
Rating: 
Summary: Liked It
Review: People are going to be offended by it because it deals with homosexuality. GASP! People are going to be offended by it because Lester Burnham lusts over a teen. GASP! People are going to be offended by it because Lester Burnham yells back at his wife and daughter. GASP! People are going to be offended by it because there's some voyeurism in it. GASP! People are going to be offended by it because there's nudity. GASP! People are going to be offended by it because there's foul language. GASP! People are going to be offended by it because it's slow, not a lot of special effects, explosions, etc. GASP! Don't people realise that the director knows that a lot of people are going to be offended by things? If he didn't, he wouldn't have thrown that stuff in the movie. People are too easily offended. These kinds of things happen all over the world, in suburbia and in the inner city. Get over it people! If you have an opend mind and don't mind a movie that has a lot of truths in it, no matter how stereotypical or cliched, then you'll enjoy this simple film. If you want to know how the acting is, read the reviews below mine. Was this review helpful to you? Naahhh.....
Rating:
Summary: Not as beautiful as it thinks
Review: 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 their neighbors - an openly gay couple; a retired homophobic marine; his withdrawn wife and their seemingly psychotic, voyeuristic and pot-selling son Ricky. Life, it's obvious here, isn't as nice as it looks, and it don't look that nice - loveless marriages, dead-end jobs and fake friends seem to be the norm, but nobody can bring themselves to admit that they're beat. Then something happens: On the verge of losing his job, Lester quits and blackmails his boss for a generous severance package. It's not clear where his new-found courage has come from - whether from his lust for Angela, one Jane's friends (Mena Suvari) or weed supplied by Ricky - who also becomes 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 endless summer, Carolyn and her dreams of success, Ricky and Sarah and their fantasies of a future together, Angela's fantasy of herself, 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 can absorb the punishment meant for 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. It puts a serious damper on the energies of the film, as if the script were suddenly 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 is Ricky's father, a die-hard Marine whose only apparent role is to remind us that the story is set in America (apparently the only nation that British-born director Sam Mendes can conceive is full of 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 and 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. 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: 
Summary: Superb acting saves this movie
Review: I found this movie condescending and predictable. The notion that middle-aged folks in the suburbs can't see how unhappy they are has been re-hashed by Hollywood so many times this movie hardly registers as original. The cast is purely steroetypical fare: The mid-life crisis-plagued Lester, his neo-Nazi ex-military neighbor, the baracudda wife. The only character who deserves any sympathy is Lester's daughter, who thanks to years of neglect is so starved for attention of any kind she becomes involved with the drug-dealing death-obessesed boy next door. What saves the vanilla screenplay is the fantastic acting and directing. Kevin Spacey and Annette Benning turn out terrific performances. The supporting cast is top-notch. The director keeps the movie interesting and watchable but ultimately can't hide what it really is at it's core: Hollywood's inability to understand the common man. Most of us regular folks already know money isn't everything. We already know the importance of being able to stop and smell the roses. But thanks for bashing us over the head (literally) with your message.
Rating:
Summary: This isn't about America and it isn't about Beauty.
Review: Radical London playwrights Sam Mendes and Alan Ball, have contructed a missle into the heart of the American suburban multiplex. It's aim, with the aid of treasonists, Steven Spielberg and Paul Allen, is to put a stake through the heart of the American Family and the love between fathers and daughters, and mothers and fathers. I hated this movie. One day there will be a return to Truth, Justice, and the American Way. It will be more intelligent than the drivel of these Oxford types, and the public will have lines around the block for months, making billions domestically. Its too bad that the auspices of this film aren't revealed to be what they are: men without love and men without families. They hide behind capable actors and flashy production design. But if you LOOK CLOSER, they are cowards. They would never come at you face to face. They hide; and the great filmmakers of the next generation are watching and will prevail!
Rating:
Summary: Good and weird movie!!!!
Review: I liked this, movie it won Best Picture this year, and Kevin Spacey is a good actor i've seen some of his movies. Well the girls in this movie were pretty. Well this is a weird movie some parts were alittle gross well some people will like it. enjoy.
Rating:
Summary: Beautiful
Review: I have not seen the DVD, so this refers only to the movie. Simply simply simply one of the best movies I have ever ever ever ever ever seen... you'll get your long reviews and such right below mine, but you don't need them. This movie is great, and is right up on my list with Magnolia, Roger & Me, etc... and I'm sick of people talking about how Spacey's character (Lester Burnham) is a little perverted... or how the ending didn't "make sense"... you have to be dense not to understand the ending. I don't need everything spelled out for me, and the finale of this movie is more than clear. ONE OF THE TOP TEN OF ALL TIME!
Rating:
Summary: I love this movie!
Review: This is my favorite movie of 1999, except for "Run Lola Run". I've seen it 5 times and I'm still not sick of it. The cinematography is really great, Conrad Hall still has it going on at age 80, the scene with the plastic bag is very poetic and reminds me of single little scenes in Kurosawa movies, like in "Sanjuro" where a camellia blossom falls off a tree and into a babbling brook while birds chirp overhead. The camera follows the camellia floating on the water for a few seconds and then switches back to the story. Those little scenes are sometimes what you remember the most about a movie. I think it's a good slice of life that could be anywhere, not just someplace in the USA. I saw it with a friend from Finland, who loved it and identified with it just as much as any American. There are a lot of messages in this movie, just you have to open yourself to them. A lot of people here in San Antonio didn't like it and thought it was weird, but for those of us willing to take a deeper look at ourselves and the world we live in, it hits the nail on the head on how mundane our lives really are. A co-worker of mine told me seeing this movie changed his life, and I believe it. A classic!
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