In association with

American Beauty [2000]
from Dreamworks Home Entertainment
starring Kevin Spacey, Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Wes Bentley, Mena Suvari
directed by Sam Mendes

Features:

• Anamorphic
• PAL

Editorial Review:

From its first gliding aerial shot of a generic suburban street, American Beauty moves with a mesmerising confidence and acuity epitomised by Kevin Spacey's calm narration. Spacey is Lester Burnham, a harried Everyman whose midlife awakening is the spine of the story, and his very first lines hook us with their teasing fatalism--like Sunset Boulevard's Joe Gillis, Burnham tells us his story from beyond the grave. It's an audacious start for a film that justifies that audacity. Weaving social satire, domestic tragedy and whodunit into a single package, Alan Ball's first theatrical script dares to blur generic lines and keep us off balance, winking seamlessly from dark, scabrous comedy to deeply moving drama. The Burnham family joins the cinematic short-list of great dysfunctional American families, as Lester is pitted against his manic, materialistic realtor wife, Carolyn (Annette Bening, making the most of a mostly unsympathetic role) and his sullen, contemptuous teenaged daughter, Jane (Thora Birch, utterly convincing in her edgy balance of self-absorption and wistful longing). Into their lives come two catalytic outsiders. A young cheerleader (Mena Suvari) jolts Lester into a sexual epiphany that blooms into a second adolescence. And an eerily calm young neighbour (Wes Bentley) transforms both Lester and Jane with his canny influence. Credit another big-screen newcomer, English theatrical director Sam Mendes, with expertly juggling these potentially disjunctive elements into a superb ensemble piece that achieves a stylised pace without lapsing into transparent self-indulgence. Mendes has shrewdly insured his success with a solid crew of stage veterans, yet he has also made an inspired discovery in Bentley, whose Ricky Fitts becomes a fulcrum for both plot and theme. Cinematographer Conrad Hall's sumptuous visual design further elevates the film, infusing the beige interiors of the Burnhams' lives with vivid bursts of deep crimson, the colour of roses--and of blood. --Sam Sutherland

Customer Reviews:

• Avg. Customer Rating: 4.5 / 5.0

• shocking and different approach to drama
  Lester Burnham's (Spacey) life is reawaken when he meets Angela Hayes (Suvari).
  This 1999 Oscar winning picture is regarded as Mendes' finest and with a fine realistic styled direction it is easy to see why.
  Dramas can often be ruined when a can of clichés is opened but Mendes keeps a grounded direction all the way through and uses a variety of techniques to achieve the ultimate shocking effect. From a simple but effective sweeping shot of the suburban residency to the artistic and now... more info

• A Seriously Messed Up View On Life...
  ...But worryingly accurate at the same time. American Beauty is about Lester Burnham, a middle-ages man stuck in a marriage with a wife who he hates and a daughter who hates him. He feels ignored, under-appreciated,as if he is simply walking through life playing out the part, no emotions involved, never feeling anything. Then he meets his daughter's best friend, Angela Hayes, and the new kid next door, Ricky Fitts, and inspired by both decides to start living again. Within a month he winds up dead.more info

• An outstanding accomplishment
  Drama in which a middle-class suburban family begins to fall apart when husband and father Kevin Spacey starts going through a mid-life crisis, quitting his job as a magazine writer, befriending his teenage daughter Thora Birch's boyfriend Wes Bentley, starting to smoke marijuana and beginning an obsession with his daughter's best friend Mena Suvari, all in an attempt to dispel the deadness that he feels inside and regain the happiness that he feels that he has not had since he was a young man. Spacey's... more info

• Rosebud
  I was offered £185 for my ticket to the UK Premier of this film. I saw the film. No regrets there - great film and at under £5 for the DVD, a bargain.

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