Rating: 
Summary: DVD may not work on all oder DVD players
Review: I've tried two copies of this DVD but it won't play on my Philips-Magnavox DVD-850. It's a Toshiba rebranded player, about 2 years old. This is the first DVD disc I've tried that does not work (watched over 100 DVDs).
Rating: 
Summary: A Beauty-ful film
Review: Among my collection of 43 Oscar-winning Best Picture films (from "All About Eve" to "West Side Story"), I have to say that "American Beauty" (which has been in my collection for two months before it comes out on VHS and DVD) is an excellent ode to fathers who are very unhappy. It takes a sort of satiric look at how our lives really are. We all can identify with most of the characters. We laugh and cry, we think and sympathize, we remember and never forget. In the cases of Lester and Carolyn Burnham (Kevin Spacey and Annette Bening), Robin Hood Trail's "unordinary" ordinary couple, we see their once happy union crumble before our eyes. Their daughter, Jane (Thora Birch), a sad, alienated girl with no happiness in her life. She takes comfort in her oversexed, but obviously ordinary friend Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari) and her voyeuristic, drug dealing boyfriend Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley, a very boring actor!). In the house next door is the Fitts family; Marine Colonel Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper) and Barbara Fitts (Alison Janney), along with son Ricky. When everyone's secrets, which is the climax of the film, is revealed, they are all affected by it. Which leads to Lester being shot dead by Colonel Fitts, who is really a latent homosexual; Carolyn's only chance at happiness with her lover, fellow real estater Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher) is destroyed when Lester discovers them fooling around, literally; Jane and Angela are no longer friends; Jane decides to run away with Ricky, who is thrown out of his house by his abusive father. This film obviously affected many critics and people as well; enough to garner five Oscars for Picture, Director, Actor, Screenplay, and Cinematography. This is definitely a film that is among the great tragicomedies such as "The Apartment," "Annie Hall," and "Terms of Endearment." To make us laugh and cry is an amazing accomplishment which, lucky for these four films, they have done with precision and taste.
Rating:
Summary: A movie that makes you think
Review: Life. That is what this movie is all about. It is about who we are, what we project ourselves as, and most importantly what we deny ourselves in order to appear a certain way to the outside world. This is a great movie. Its plot twist and turns. Its characters change and grow before our eyes. Its filming and direction by Sam Mendes is smart, witty, and beautiful. This film is worth seeing once, and then worth seeing again.This film and its characters will remind you of both people you know and yourself. This story is about a "typical" American family. Lester Burnham (played by Academy Award winning Kevin Spacey) and his wife Carolyn Burnham (played by Academy Award Nominee Annette Bening) are a so-called happily married couple. They live with their daughter in a nice house in American suburbia. Their lives are all normal...and then it all changes for them. I can't say much more because one of this movies best features is it twists in the plot and how each character changes throughout the movie. I must warn everyone thought that some of the issues this movie deals with aren't for the timid. Also, this movie deals with both images and topics that aren't really appropriate for the younger viewing audience. This is an adult movie--and a very good one at that. Both Spacey and Bening's preformances are wonderful. Spacey makes you feel what his character is all about. Bening's preformance as Carolyn is sometimes overstated and maybe a little overacted. The other charcters in the movie also do a fantastic job with their parts.
Rating:
Summary: More than American Beauty, true beauty lies within this movi
Review: American Beauty is not regular beauty, it is deceitful, it is simply a cover for the ugly truth, but in that, it does a beautiful job. Or at least this movie does. Kevin Spacey, Anette Bening and their daughter seem like a wonderful all american happy family who live in a wonderful neighbourhood with wonderful gay neighbours. Then however, comes Lester's (Spacey) inside look into their lives. The wife is is a working mom who has turned into a complete workaholic whose only passion seems to be to beat her oponent in real estate. Lester has a lousy job with a company he can't stand. The daughter, although not as shallow as she may seem, is the ugly girl with the beautiful popular (or is she?) friend. Suddenly, one day, when Lester is about to lose his job, he realizes: I have nothing, it doesn't matter what I do, things can only get better! He blackmails his boss, gets a job at a drive through fast food restaurant, and adopts a completely new lifestyle. Meanwhile, the wife goes crazy with her new found love, her real estate enemy. The "ugly" daughter, who is in fact quite goodlooking, has problems of her own. The "freak" who lives next door has become obsessed with her. He follows her around with his camera, simply stands there silently and films her. Instead of scaring her, she becomes more and more interested in him. She finds him to be a lot more than simply a "freak". He is an intelligent, individualistic person, interested in more than the shallow stuff teenagers are supposed to be interested in. He too has more dimensions than we initially see. Both are unique in the way they see beauty. It is not good looks, it is not popularity, it is everything. In a plastic bag, dancing on the wind... The mask is torn and the dysfunctional family becomes visible. But they don't care, they're living the lives they always wanted, no matter what people think. But will it last? Both Kevin Spacey and Anette Bening do some fabulous acting here. Bening plays her part very convincibly, and is extremely funny as the over-stressed workaholic working mom. Kevin Spacey is also perfect for the part, he plays his character in a very amusing way as well, especially when trying to hit on his teen daughter's best friend, who's a real American beauty as you find out later on. The characters are really charicatures of certain types of people, a good example being the boy next door's dad, an ex military man, hard on his son, hates homosexuals (or does he...?), makes his son do a urine test every couple months to make sure he's sober, amazingly written, very insightful. American Beauty is a very amusing movie, although very sad and a little depressing when you think abotu the characters a bit more, but absolutely an amazing movie. The fact that it was such a blockbuster movie made me a little weary of seeing it, considering the quality of many movies nowadays, but this came as quite a surprise to me. I actually saw it 3 more times after that and would gladly see it again. Almost everyone I know who has seen it, absolutely loved it, for various reason. Don't let the rating withhold you, if you're not into movies with nudity, strong language or drug use, because this movie contains very little, and is without a doubt worth it!!!
Rating: 
Summary: An Average Movie Challenging Deep Themes.
Review: It's a tragedy that this film won Best Picture (just as it was a tragedy that Shakespeare In Love one the year before, and even worse, Titanic the year before). It's also a tragedy that this film was incredibly overrated by its viewers. What does it say? That so many people can "relate" to the desperate and pathetic characters of this suburbian hell-reality? I thought some of the themes in this film were worthy of presentation. How ridiculous society (not just middle-America) has become with its over-indulgence of material goods, loss of immaterial and spiritual wealth and wholeness, lack of closeness within the family unit, complete voidness of morals of values...it certainly is a shame! But the danger of the message in the film is its existential ending, its answer being utter hopelessness and helplessness. Please. There are solutions to all of these problems, but unfortunately, neither the makers of the film nor the fans realize this even though they continually ask us to "look closer." There is some unrealism that should be pointed out in the characters. I didn't buy the whole "closeted-homophobic military man" character. I'm not denying that such contradictions in human character exist, however, the film portrayed the character as someone who was mainly concerned with his son, not personal egocentric struggles. I interpreted Cooper's character's final actions to be purely empathetic and wrathful. When he kissed Lester Burnham, it was to empathize with his son whom he thought was engaging in homosexual activities with Spacey's character. When he killed Burnham, it wasn't out of rejection of his homosexual pass, but out of anger for the prostitution of his son. Certainly, the movie deserves some praise for its content, although it is not as original as people claim. If I am not mistaken, "Ice Storm" incoporated similar themes, and in some ways, was a more successful film in representing society's moral grayness. I thoroughly enjoyed Kevin Spacey's sarcastic, hedonistic character, (though I do not think it was Spacey's best performance as some have stated. The deception he created in The Usual Suspects and mystery he upheld in Seven were, in my opinion, more oustanding, substantial, and challenging than his role in American Beauty will ever be) and did empathize with him in the end. It is not surprising that this was a directional debut, as the director overwhelms the audience with its directed narration, leaving no intuitive challenge for the deeper viewer. I personally desire movies that carry more subtle themes, challenging the audience to understand the meaning of the piece. With American Beauty, the messages are so naked and apparent that it only encourages brainlessness viewing. Overall, an average movie challenging deep themes. It deserves this heavy criticism in order to counterattack all the false acclaims it has been given.
Rating:
Summary: Great Film In Every Way
Review: American Beauty is about the marriage of a guy who is at best deep at the surface. His recollections of his past at the end are none too deep either..they're shot in black and white and reminded me of early 60's nostalgia pieces like To Kill A Mockingbird, utterly unconvincing. Annette Benning and Kevin Spacey as husband and wife(brillantly played by both) have entered the competitive world of America and it is shattering their marriage and their integrity. They make absurd choices that entrap them further, so that finally murder and death wishes(she wants to shoot him and he lusts for a Lolita looka like and deals with drugs with a teenager , which looks like gay sex to the teen's father..all of it crazy and risky) become suitable options for this couple who do anyhting but RULE. The children of American Beauty are anti- American Dream in every way; their vocabulary is cynical jargon designed to disarm and also to protect them from the crushing world of adult relationships in which they find themselves asked to model. They look better than the adults aS they see through the sexuaL and psychological messes in front of them. They have to survive and do so with some imagination, except for the blonde girl who is Spacey's object of desire; she's dull, unimaginative, and one of them puts it, sadly knows it. The Marine Major's wife with her catatonia is superb; she typifies the only stance one could take in this very real world of realtionships..silence and immobility, a willed retreat into madness as a seal on whatever humanity she has left. The end of the film shakes it all up, and the film turns into a who dunnit with the principal parties as potential suspects of murder. This throws the film into another genre..a sort of Agatha Christie plot, where Miss Marple will come and figure it all out. Kevinb Spacey leaves a puzzle behind, but it is a bland one, easy to decipher..there';s nothing worth the trouble in this world, and kids in it know it. American Beauty as a term and not a title, seen in part in the sexy use of rose petals, is a fading illusion, a cliche, and truth, as Spacey alludes to in the end, is nowhere to be found in this environment..as truth seems to be at the bottom of a bottomless well...like the dreams they all have, fractured by their own loneliness and sad belief that marriage is as good as it gets, or that independent living without depth is better. the gay guys too have unfortunately assimilated and they look bad, ignoring the reality of homophobia, not wrestling with any issues at all. Part of the issues not faced by the gay couple is the marine next door trying to forge a desperate realtionship with Kevin Spacey, that becomes ultimately deadly, unfulfilled, and a bit shocking in its conclusion, but maybe the only complete intercourse in the film..it gets a little beyond the Hitler plate that the Marine keeps under glass, and closer to the white bag in motion, not stagnant. But this is all framed in a world of absurdity. See this film and never mind the reviews of those who only saw it on video tape with pizza interruptions etc...It's for adults, and for people who have a background and a foreground.
Rating:
Summary: Only JUCHIPILA ZACATECAS MEXICO is cooler.
Review: This film is like the perfect woman, it is physically beautiful and it's inteligence absolutly shines through also. You can't keep your eyes off it and you want more and more but the film knows how to pace it's audience well. Most films have some cool moments, this one has brilliant genius ones and the rest film is cool all the time. The themes are serious and adult-like, infedility, a broken marriage, family disfunction, death, hatred, pot smoking etc. but there is an almost child-like charm about it that hipnotizes, the same way that it's uncanny music sundtrack also does. To tell you what the film's story is about would be defeating the same way it would be like telling you what "Star Wars" is about, both films transend their simple story lines and absolutly draw you into the character's universes. In a few words, it's cinema at it's best. Magical. Roberto Mena
Rating:
Summary: American Beauty
Review: American Beauty was a truly unusual film which demonstrated that gay couples can be the best-adjusted, most mellow people. The other characters showed family values of family friction and family violence which heteros cutely call "domestic" violence to avoid associating their sacred "family" with violence. Heteros should concentrate or being nice to other heteros and being tolerate of those not born hetero. FAMILY VIOLENCE is not a boon.
Rating: 
Summary: Overhyped and overrated
Review: Okay, so its not that bad, but if you expect a genuine classic in the vein of Schindler's List or Shawshank Redemption, then you'll be disappointed. The film includes some important adolescent issues, but then so does 'She's All That', and every other high school drama. It certainly glamorises drugs, as the characters never receive any ill effects in the film's duration. Even 'Trainspotting' managed to address the dangers of drugs. Worst of all is the ending - a tacked on who-dunnit that doesn't blend into the rest of the story. If American Beauty had not won Best Picture, I wouldn't be quite so critical about it, but the Academy really should have gone with The Insider or Being John Malkovich.
Rating:
Summary: Are you kidding?
Review: Without question, one of the worst movies I have ever seen. Very slow paced, and only occasionally funny. Want to waste two hours of your life? Watch this film.
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