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American Beauty (Widescreen Edition) Starring: Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Chris Cooper, Peter Gallagher, Sam Robards $8.99 Features:
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Editorial Review:
When youve got nothing to lose you might as well risk everything. Lester burnham is in a rut. Facing a midlife crisis lester reverts into a maddening rebirth of adolescence. His sudden irreverant rebellion enrages his wife and confuses his daughter when he turns a lustful gaze toward her friend. Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 01/17/2006 Starring: Kevin Spacey Thora Birch Run time: 122 minutes Rating: R
From its first gliding aerial shot of a generic suburban street, American Beauty moves with a mesmerizing confidence and acuity epitomized 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 neighbor (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 stylized pace without lapsing into transparent self-indulgence. Mendes has shrewdly insured his success with a solid crew of stage veterans, yet he's 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 color of roses--and of blood. --Sam Sutherland
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0 
Absolutely Amazing: 
This is one of my favorite movies and it gets better each time you watch it. You can identify with some of the characters in the movie and although it is dark and sad, it has a moral to the story and the ending was just amazingly done. Even though your sad for the main character, you still realize that his life had finished in a weirdly positive way. Hence the smile at the end. I highly recommend this movie. It should be in everyone's DVD collection and is one of those movies you can watch over and over...
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Loved this Movie!:
American Beauty reflects the beginnings of the "Impressionistic" stage of movie making. The scenes and characters are conglomerations of situations and "types" of people... The real estate agent, the bored commercial writer, the unhappy teenager, the uptight military officer, the Stepford wife, the abused son, etc. Each person plays his role according to his type.
The movie successfully reveals pent up emotions beautifully such as when the real estate agent ends her day of promoting a home she's...more info
Even though it's a bit old by now, still a great overall film:
My mom had this dvd lying around the living room so I decided to watch it today since I was bored with nothing else to do. I knew a little bit about it from watching the oscars back in 1999 and from word-of-mouth. It is a pretty good movie story wise, though a little predictable at times. All the characters can be relatable. Kevin Spacey delivers a dramatic and comendable performance and Anette Bening is great too. The acting in this movie was top notch. I would have give it 5 stars it if werent for the...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
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