Rating: 
Summary: Nothing New, Here
Review: This is your typical cliched Hollywood attempt at demeaning "ordinary" Americans and traditional values in favor of Hollywood's perverse social agenda. Heads of nuclear families are, as usual, evil and disturbed while various sick "alternative lifestyle" types (wow, man) are portrayed as well-adjusted heroes. Ho-hum. Most decent people have enough sense to stay away from garbage like this (note the poor box office despite the heavy promotion by the media "elite"), but every once in a while something like this pops up on HBO or somewhere else and curiosity over what the big deal was might tempt you to try and sit through it (in my case, anyway). DON'T FALL FOR IT!!! If you are even a halfway decent person, you will regret wasting whatever time you put into this movie and feel like you need to shower afterwards. This is a movie by bitter, low-life, non-creative, unoriginal sleazeballs for bitter, low-life, non-creative, unoriginal sleazeballs--the sorts of people who actually have the nerve to look down on the vast majority of the country (rural, suburban, etc.) who are good, honest people. They ridicule decency because they have none of it and are jealous of those who do. Still, their attacks inevitably always fail and so does this movie, which is only admired by a very small, incestuous cabal of east and west coast perverts (and their few fans) who pat themselves on the back at their little award shows and are hopelessly out of touch with art in particular and the real world in general. I wish I could give it zero stars, but unfotunately, Amazon seems to have a policy of setting 1 as a minimum.
Rating: 
Summary: Brilliant performances; trite story
Review: Pitch-perfect dialogue, amazing performances, solid direction, glowing cinematography - American Beauty has all of these things. Yet the whole is less than the sum of its parts. It aspires to European complexity while paradoxically wallowing in American sensationalism. It tries to paint a subtle moral landscape with a gallon of latex semi-gloss and a roller, with lurid supporting characters that could have come from Ricki Lake's green room. By now everyone knows that the story centers on Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), whose life has become an empty, materialistic nightmare with his disrespectful daughter and frigid wife (Annette Benning). He changes things - a bit too drastically - and ends up becoming a blackmailer, a drug user, and a would-be pedophile. That he changes his mind at the last minute and doesn't have sex with the teenaged girl, that he ends up martyred because the next-door neighbor thinks (through a bizarre misunderstanding) that he's been taking sexual advantage of his son, that he has some New-Aged revelation about the Circle of Life as he's dying...well, all that's supposed to make him OK. If American Beauty had committed to making Lester either a villain or a hero, it might have worked better. Instead, it asks us to see him as a flawed, complex man - and forgive him. That might been possible, had this loopy, creaky, arbitrary series of plot devices not been employed in place of a real story. For every theme explored in American Beauty, better films exist. Either film version of Lolita, for example, develops the theme of middle-aged crisis coupled with pedophilia far more logically and empathetically, and without resorting to an unconvincing, last minute change of heart to "redeem" the main character.
Rating: 
Summary: A Must See Film
Review: American Beauty is incredible. Walking out of the theatre, the movie causes the viewer to be speechless. The ending of the movie is rather unexpected. At the end when Lester realizes and sees all this beauty in the world and has begun to appreciate it, he is killed. Though very disturbing, that scene causes one to think. Would I want to be 100 years old and live a life being ordinary and never appreciating beauty or live to be 50 years old and truly value beauty? Too many times, people go-go-go and never stop to see a blowing bag or leaves blowing in the wind. American Beauty forces the viewer to be grateful for all the beauty in the world and in ourselves. The movie makes you cherish every moment in life and to be grateful to God that he made you. American Beauty is a must see movie!
Rating: 
Summary: Yuppie whining...or Existential parable?
Review: The answer: AMERICAN BEAUTY is both and neither. Kevin Spacey's acting is excellent. He employs good humor; general good nature; self-aware (almost) baffoonery, and an occasional shot of arch, triple-entendre irony to control what might easily devolve into travesty of satire on White WASP American yuppies. John Updike's RABBIT novels have endlessly covered this territory with more artistry, verve and self-deception. So director Mendes is doing the viewer a service by not misleading him too much. Annette Bening is fine as the irredeemably pathetic MOTHER. She plays Carolyn as flotsam and jetsam relic of failed feminism. The scene where she spends herself slaving through "drudgery" of cleaning, scrubbing and "sanctifying" a house she is prepping to SHOW as a real estate agent is priceless. (No "liberated" woman would waste "anima" on her own Home!) The "teenagers": Jane, Rickey and American Beauty Mena are variously appealing; obnoxious, saddening and strong. To adults who don't know about AMERICAN KIDS (too busy; too Yuppified; or too scared), the film's portrait is TOO ACCURATE. (I've been an urban High School teacher 20 years: Students know they live in a CULTURE of DEATH that may "worship/envy" youth but often hates its children). Ironically, inevitable (physical) violence and homosexual (ontological) violence is relatively restrained. As is Drug Abuse. Technically this very black-"humored" essay into American (vanishing) middle-class experience occasionally hits honestly tragic notes. The obseration "living an ordinary life is unbearable" is itself unbearable because it is a LIE that so many "Who want's to be a Millionaires" have embraced. At what cost? What does it profit to drive the Mercedes SUV and be a BRAD DUPREE if........?" AMERICAN BEAUTY is hardly a beautiful movie. It is not about...in truest sense...a worthy theme. Like GLADIATOR...this year's winner...is "fantasy" based on an exaggerated view of reality. But GLADIATOR up-lifts. It does not whine for pity; nor play damaged lives of children for vicarious self-righteousness nor scorn. It is ...what kids call...a PLAYER-HATER Poser. Lester Burnham\Kevin Spacey's NEW AGE soliloquy of pseudo-redemption does not alter this truth nor redeem the film that made it from mediocrity so sadly, hilariously and viciously celebrated......as AMERICAN BEAUTY.
Rating: 
Summary: 'Faults' don't detract from what is a remarkable movie
Review: 'American Beauty' lacks the bite of a true satire, and the sense of tragedy that one might expect, whilst characters are undoubtedly stereotypes. The result is a film with people that are not entirely palpable, and which never really elicits strong emotions. Yet to level these criticisms is to miss the point. The characters should not be wholly believable, nor should the film be highly moving. Our reaction reflects nothing more, or less, than the sense of numbness felt by the characters. We do not care how the film ends; but nor, in reality, does anyone in the film. Mendes' masterpiece demonstrates more than anything his grounding in the theatre: he forces the audience to view the characters in exactly the same manner that other people in the film do. This is not a simple accomplishment; by so doing, he alters not just the concious but the subconcious. We end the film knowing only half of why we liked the film, only time enables the assertion of the subconscious's views of the work. It is this, more than anything, that ensures the film is worthy of repeated viewing.
Rating:
Summary: What exactly is your beauty, America?
Review: As always Kevin Spacey does a great job but in my opinion it doesn't deserve an Oscar! Oh yes after you see the movie, you know that such stories usually get Oscars. But no one can understand why! If you analyze the movie deeply you'll see that it has to do with Hollywood stereotype against a specific type of discrimination! This is becoming the "American Beauty" trend since the early 90s! I give one Star for good acting + one Star for a nice way of telling a bad story with a shocking tragical ending... that is all!
Rating:
Summary: The Ideal Beauty
Review: Beauty is a subjective thing, not objective. I know it's been said before, but it is truly in the eye of the beholder. That is what we find here. Spacey sees beauty in simplicity. His daughter sees it in the individuality of her neighbor. Bening's character finds it in success, and cloak-and-dagger affairs. The gay neighbor and distanced wife see it in the Leave it to Beaver ideal. But the most beautiful character of all is the artist, who pulls together the most coherent, stunning, socially critical film on a level with Fight Club. I would watch that bag float for hours; I can watch newspapers race across a cracked cement road, crumbling underfoot, for an eternity. People blasted this movie for it's "glorification of sex and drugs." No, I say. Not in the least. This is America we are living in, isn't it? Home of the brainless, land of the moral slaves? I am a painter, a writer, and a philosopher. I felt I could not even weep at the end, so beautiful was it. I walked out of that theater rethinking my grounds of the picturesque. My friend walked out and said: "I'm sick of these sex-crazed degenerate Jerry Springer films." I'm sick of people's intolerance. I'm sick of people's hate of life, treating it as though the mere beating of a heart were a sin that needs forgiving. Why execrate ourselves? Why execrate this movie, which is merely being true to every one of our "selves", and, in turn, execrating ourselves in this eternal chain of hate? Beauty is all around you. This film captures it in life and death.
Rating:
Summary: Good study of humanity
Review: The best thing about this film is Kevin Spacey's performance. I was excited to see his transformation from someone emotionally dead to someone who was a force to be reckoned with. I was equally saddened and somewhat shocked to see his tragic end. I don't necessarily agree with the methods he used to achieve his transformation, but all he wanted back was the sort of "white picket fence" life. He yearned again for a time when things at least seemed simpler. No one heard him! They only bullied him or degraded him! While I can appreciate each actor's incredible ability to capture the essence of their characters, I have to say I was very disturbed to see how terribly dysfunctional everyone was. I suppose in this day and age we've come to expect and even accept things in movies that challenge the norm and question traditional values: lifestyle choices, families torn apart, drug use, etc., and then we hail them as artistic wonders It seems to me these characters were played to the extreme. I can only hope that's the case, because if this is what Hollywood thinks goes on in "real life", it should think again. There are a lot of "traditional" people out there with stories to be told that can
Rating:
Summary: toobad
Review: This movie is awful. Beats me why so many people think it's great. In that case people are really down-grading their knowledge of what is a good movie. This movie makes you feel crappy and has no real good story or action. There are many movies better than this one like Dirty Harry or The Straight Story. But this movie is just a feel bad movie full profanity and b.s. and screwed up people.
Rating:
Summary: An uncomfortable reflection
Review: Lots has been said about this movie that I won't rehash here. I'll just say that I thought it was an interesting fable of materialism run amuck, and the consequences of such lives. This movie has some dumb parts (the plastic bag) and can be a bit heavy-handed at times(How many saw the Marine's secret from a mile away?) but overall it was enjoyable. There's something dark lurking behind the McMansions and the SUVs and the overprogrammed families that comprise so much of our middle class in the US. This film comes close to articulating that darkness.
|
