Rating: 
Summary: Who Cares? Watch The Ice Storm.
Review: Ooooooooooh, the suburbs are petri dishes that breed boredom and contempt. Crass consumerism is rampant. Parents and teens are disconnected. Tell us something new. None of the plot points were innovative or even shocking. So what- the weird kid sells high grade pot. The successful gay couple are "startlingly" normal. The military man is a closet homosexual. The ad guy father rediscovers the joys of getting high and gets back in touch with himself as a sexual creature. His wife is high strung and out of touch with the joy of living. His daughter pouts because her family [is dysfunctional]. His daughter's best friend has apparently overdosed on an unhealthy combination of Cosmopolitan magazine and MTV (but she's still a virgin. Hw's that for a gripping plot twist?).Not only did they need to come up with a better script, this movie isn't even interesting to look at. We all know the culturally withered upper middle class American suburbs are well-groomed and boring. And the whole rose petal thing was cheezy.
Rating:
Summary: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!!!
Review: Why, oh why is this movie SO OVERRATED? I don't know why, but I do know that this movie is BAD. Good acting doesn't make a good movie, you need a good script, and they didn't have one. You can tell the story in 2 minutes, so they streched it 2 HOURS!!!
Is Spacey good? YES HE IS, but his character is a very simple one, a man that reaches that age where he finds himself insecure of his life, is a cliche, nothing more than that. The director does not give us a background for this, so why would you care for a character like this, and old man that really is a Cry-Baby?, well you wont care for him. And all the other characters are more cliches, but not as good acted as the one played by spacey.
Rating: 
Summary: Just remembered what a terrific film this is
Review: I sat down with my copy of American Beauty last night and watched the film again for the first time in almost a year. The older I get, the better this film gets and the more realistic it becomes. When the film was first released, critics raved about how unique the characters were, but I disagree. For every character in that film, I have known at least one person upon whom it could have been based. Because of that, I feel like I actually know the characters. Instead of being an outside observer, I feel almost like part of the action because the characters' behavior and emotional dysfunction is so very familiar to me. Anyone who grew up in middle class America will probably know what I'm talking about. The DVD itself is exquisite. I don't know how they managed to cram all of that onto a single disc, but my hat is off. The picture quality was vividly real, the sound was amazing, and the movie is as utterly engaging now as it was when I saw it the first time, about two years ago. If you don't own it already, what on earth are you waiting for?
Rating:
Summary: American Perfection!
Review: This film is very, very good. The story slowly strips away the layers that hides the dysfunction of this suburban American family. While they may look like the perfect family in a nice, big home with good jobs, we see that happiness is the one thing each member lacks. The complex relationships in this film are so interesting to watch and the mood, both dark and comic, is meshed perfectly. Kevin Spacey, most definitely, deserved the Oscar he received for this film and the award for "Best Picture" was cinematic justice. Alan Ball (who created the equally brilliant HBO series, "Six Feet Under) is a genius as far as I'm concerned. From now on, when his name is mentioned in conjunction with any project, I'm there!
Rating:
Summary: THE GRADUATE IS NOT DEAD
Review: This picture is a portrait of a suburban, disfunctional, family in America. Very well written, with dramatic and comic touches, evokes the ghosts of middle life crisis, and constitutes a fine but traumatic exploration into nothingness and what ensues when you believe that you have all programmed and covered, until real life pierces through the veil of stereotype and devoids what you took for granted of any meaningful purpose. Many self-destructive behavioural traits of modern suburban families are explored and exposed.
I can think of no visual (and musical) experience as similar, in many senses, to Mike Nichol's fundamental picture The Graduate. So if you can appreciate a funny tale, told with dark touches, about consumistic materialism, modernistically troubled kids with absentminded parents, that in a way reflects your neighbour's troubles (or perhaps your domestic menage)YOU SHOULD SEE THIS PICTURE........
Rating:
Summary: A Remarkeable Film.
Review: American Beauty:
Have you ever just gone through the motions of life? You get your degree, get married, have the requisite child, and then go on autopilot. Day after day you struggle out of bed'maybe kiss your wife hello'maybe not'.grunt at your child and struggle in to work. You manage to smile and slink your way through the day and then it is back home again. You struggle through a meal with your wife and child where neither pays the least bit of attention to you and then it is off to bed. This is where it really gets fun since your wife wants to have nothing to do with you at this point. How would this make your feel or act? Better yet how would you act if suddenly you woke up and saw what was happening to your once promising life? American Beauty, directed by Sam Mendes, and written by Alan Ball explores this scenario and the consequences that follow.
Lester Burnam has the life I described above. His wife, Carolyn, and his daughter, Jane, really have nothing to do with him. Carolyn has become the homemaker from hell with perfect meals accompanied by the sound track to South Pacific every night. She makes a living outside of the house as a real estate agent and seems to be having more success at it than Lester does in his job with a magazine, and she doesn't let Lester forget this. Lester's daughter Jane is going through all the typical high school angst trying to figure out where she fits in and she has no interest in having Dad as part of her life.
Everything changes the night Carolyn drags Lester out to see Jane and her dance team perform at the high school game. As Lester blearily observes the performance his eyes are slowly drawn towards Jane's friend, Angela. While he is watching her something in him begins to awaken and stir. She is a blond vision of sex drenched dreams.
Shortly thereafter Lester attends a work function with his wife. While Carolyn is making eyes with the top realtor in the area, Lester comes upon his new teenage neighbor working as a waiter. They end up out back in the alley talking about life and, well for lack of a better word, smoking dope. When the headwaiter appears to chastise his errant waiter Lester is amazed to see him tell his boss where he can stick his job. The creature that was stirred by Angela is now fully inspired.
Throughout the rest of the movie we see how Lester reacts to everyone that formerly had some means of control over him. The consultant at his job, his wife, and even his daughter are amazed but not necessarily pleased by the new Lester. The movie continues from this point showcasing how Lester, Carolyn, and Jane all react to the changes in life and how it effects each of them.
Kevin Spacey plays Lester as if he was born to this role. He starts off the movie barely able to move from room to room. The bathroom scene shows how is wife has affected him and his despair at going to work shows through as he is barely able to stay awake. His wife runs roughshod over him and he crumbles. When he begins to undertake his transformation Spacey takes us a little step each time showing the Lester that once was as he comes forward. Spacey's timing and dialogue skills are shown to great heights throughout. He turns a simple sentence, 'I rule!' into a battlecry for all downtrodden men. Very few actors could have handled this as well.
Annette Bening, as Carolyn, also does a fine job as his wife however many people could have handled this role as well. She runs the gambit from total controlling wife/mother to falling apart woman but something was missing in how she did it.
Thora Birch, Jane, handled her part better than Bening. She had the teenager embarrassed to be seen with the parents down to a t. At the same time she also had her own awakening to the fact that she didn't always have to play second fiddle to her star friend.
This was an exceptionally well written movie. It did have some 'artsy-fartsy' moments in it that slowed some of the scenes down but Spacey powered through them in one of his best performances yet. I highly recommend this film.
Rating:
Summary: Completely out of touch with reality
Review: "American Beauty" is yet another Hollywood "film" that hasn't the slightest respect for decency or verisimilitude. Outside of the demented imaginations of liberal pinko prevert screenwriters there is no allusion to contextual rectitude. (Thanks for the commentary guys.) Let's just take a look at the sordid view of our society that this movie propagates. They expect us to actually believe in: greedy, amoral, meglomaniacal real estate agents trouncing through suburbia like hyenas in heat; precociously neurotic high school kids swearing, selling drugs to each other and obsessing over forbidden sex; disillusioned, middle-aged men fantasizing about over-sexed, buffed out teenage girls; decent and intelligent gay men trying to get along with their neighbors; fascistic, closet-case marine corps officers abusing their wives and children; and finally, the offspring of decadent, pathologically materialistic, dysfunctional, middle class parents dreaming of a world without hypocrisy and social Darwinist oppression. I mean, ask yourself, honestly: IN WHAT KIND OF UNIVERSE DO THESE THINGS HAPPEN?!!!
On second thought, don't ask yourself. American film has been on the highway to hell ever since Orson Welles threw a fish in the face of wholesomeness in "Citizen Kane" when he uttered that infamous lewd and suggestive catch phrase, "Rosebud." Movies have been going downhill ever since.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing special here...
Review: In some way I can see the point of the movie but it's just incredibly slow and kind of boring.
From where I come from they call it "Elite" movies. Even though it sounds "hardcore", in reality it's just a long and boring movie where some "professional" critic found some hidden point and (possibly) compared it to his... life.
Even though I like different kind of movies, this movie did not impress me much. Watching a twisted life of strange people is not my idea of "Enjoying a friday night movie". Decide for yourself, but I would stay away from this movie.
Rating: 
Summary: On further review . . .
Review: I loved this movie when it came out. But when I saw it again on cable, I couldn't watch more than 30 minutes. It was just boring the second time around, and already seemed, as one reviewer wrote, too obvious. I think that one test of a movie should be whether you would enjoy seeing it again (maybe I'm wrong?). For example, I've watched Magnolia over and over, and each time I'm stunned by the performances. So, five stars on first watch, three on second, and four overall.
Rating:
Summary: American Tragedy
Review: It is a sad note for our country when this type of sordid tale wins multiple Oscars including Best Picture of the Year. This film is a depressing story about sick, dysfunctional people and their ways of coping. Is there anything uplifting about it? Not that I can see. Do we really need to see a movie featuring: The father (Lester) lusts and fantasizes over his daughter's teenage friend;
The friend (Angela) talks using the raunchiest language imaginable;
The neighbor is a drug dealer who is beaten by his own dad, sells to Lester and has a voyeuristic fetish with his video camera;
The wife has an affair with a rival business owner and ultimately murders her husband. These people and their real-life counterparts need the gospel message of Jesus Christ. He is the only answer. Stories like this are examples of what happens when people go in the opposite direction.
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