American Beauty (1999)

Love the drive thru scene!

Bening's competition was:

Hillary Swank in Boys Don't Cry (the winner)

Janet McTeer in Tumbleweeds

Julianne Moore in The End of the Affair

Meryl Streep in Music of the Heart

This movie was peak bag being blown in the wind

He was very attractive when he was young.

Worse than Crash?

Feh!

R5 I love American Beauty! Why does it get a bad rep?

R4 bags

Such pretentious drivel.

It's one of those films you watch once, think "I quite liked that" then never watch again.

I thought with this and Ghost World, Thora Birch was set for a tremendous career in film or TV

R11 Thora could always go into porn like her parents.

R12 what a clever reply

Can’t watch Kevin Cracey in anything anymore. Skincrawling.

I'd bang the crap out of Kevin Spacey but I'm way too old for him by about 40 years

I usually love Sam Mendes, but with this movie and Six Feet Under I decided I just don't live in the same world as Alan Ball. Cannot relate to any of his characters, and I'm not unhappy about it.

Loved this movie. But I also one who has a hard time sitting though a Kevin Spacey movie now. It’s like watching old home movies with a creepy and annoying relative.

I'm glad Sam Mendes and Alan Ball both went on to do much more interesting things. I wonder how they feel about this movie 25 years later.

In my top 5 favorite movies

It was the film that gave us young naked Wes Bentley. I can forgive it a lot for that.

Mendes is like Nolan in that they are both extremely impressed with themselves.

You get this vibe … “pay attention audience, you’re about to watch an extremely important film.”

I thought Thora Birch went into fashion and did quite well for herself ,like the Olsen twins, but I see now that Tory Burch is a completely different person.

Fuck me, Your Majesty!

No they’re the same person, r22

Well, they certainly SHOULD be.

Famous people need to be more careful with their names.

How can we have a Speaker of the House named Michael Johnson? Might as well call him Mr. Nobody.

God chose that name, blasphemous R25.

[quote]It's one of those films you watch once, think "I quite liked that" then never watch again.

As if! I must've watched this masterpiece 100 times.

It has its moments: the firing/quitting, the drive-thru (as well as the fast food interview), Bening trying to sell a blah house.

I was in junior high with Wes Bentley. He was a drum major IIRC. He told everyone he was going to buy a Dodge Viper, and we all laughed.

The movie that asks the audience to root for Spacey to rape his daughter's friend.

The movie with the closeted psycho killer.

In 25 years this film has aged horribly. With subjects that had been done to death on tv and film in the 70s, yet marketed at the time as cutting edge fare. Fucking hate the Spacey character in this and his stupid one liners. Bening is the best part of the film, but that’s not saying much. It would never clean up at the Oscars now like it did then.

I will sell this house today.

The characters don’t seem like real people to me.

R34 Carolyn is not supposed to be real. She is manufactured. Everything she says and does in public is a performance.

He wrote it as an outlet to vent his frustrations about working on the Cybill show. I think Annette's character is supposed to be based on Cybill Shepherd.

I don't think he even bothered to thank her when he won the oscar.

Spoken like someone who just learned that Nolan and Mendes are from the same country, r21. They have nothing in common. Watch Empire of Light or Revolutionary Road and tell me how those movies are indistinguishable from Oppenheimer or Batman.

Bening's character has little to do with Shepherd. The overall situation of working in a soul destroying job was what came from Ball's experience with wring for Cybil.

"You don't get to tell me what to do ever again."

[Quote] Spoken like someone who just learned that Nolan and Mendes are from the same country, [R21].

And the rest of your analysis is as accurate as this. ^^^

Touchy touchy, rest your ultra-fragile ego and relax. Even better, watch one of Nolan’s comic book pictures and marvel at the GRAVITAS he pounds you over the head with. 😂

The characters don’t seem real even when they are not “in public” (whatever that means). Artificial. Melodramatic. Inauthentic.

R41 You are missing the point.... Carolyn is not authentic, she is dramatic. She has spent decades manufacturing the "perfect" personality.

"You like gettin' nailed by the King?"

"WHO'S THE KING?!"

R42: or at least trying. She's a caricature, but I've known plenty of people who had some elements of that caricature. She was both funny and tragic.

R44 Me too! I know several women like Carolyn. They ae caricatures.

Specific women I know like Carolyn have the same situation:

They are a realtor, lawyer, professor, CPA etc. while their husband has an "average" job. She married him because he was ambitious. But after decades of him coasting, she feels he is lazy and not the same man she married. Her kids did not meet her potential either. Maybe a gay son/thot daughter.

She doesn't have female friends. She might be a member of a book or wine club, but that's it. No one close.

She has wine with dinner every night. And a glass or two after. The dinner is homecooked and healthy. Of course, she has the "Lawrence Welk shit" in the background.

She goes to church, but it is mainly to be seen. Protestant traditional services. She's not that religious, but that is just "what you do."

She is still attractive at 50-60 and could easily get a man, but she thinks divorce is failure.

The “I will sell this house today” scenes, complete with tears when she fails. No audience (except the clients). Just fake. A real broker would not expect to sell that house in one day..

She sets unrealistic goals for herself....although two years later that house would have been gone with bids over asking on the first day.

I remember watching the movie and noting a couple of years later that every high end TV show seemed to have the same type of score in the background. For instance, Desperate Housewives' score sounded very similar to it (on top of showcasing a similar suburban life and lives around 40). I even thought at times that AB's and DH's score had been written by the same composer. It wasn't the case. But as I was hardly ever watching the TV back then, maybe American Beauty was just borrowing to a musical trend that had already started years earlier. I think the score worn a Grammy back then.

'Little Children' beats 'American Beauty' out of the water in the "dark suburban underbelly" genre.

I will sell this HOUSE todayyy.

Fun fact: The Burnhams' house was the Griswolds' house in Christmas Vacation. And Ricky Fitts lived in the house of Margo and TODD.

Carolyn is delusion

I don’t know why this movie seemed so cool at the time but pretentious now. Maybe because i was 11. And the scene where the violently homophobic dad is so pent sexually that he just storms over to Spacey’s garage for a blowjob. 😂. This was late 90s edginesss. Too funny. The drive thru scene is camp genius though.

R50: so does "The Ice Storm"

R36, you're thinking of Cathrine O'Hara in Six Feet Under.

I think it’s a great film- upper middle class striving torn apart. All were great.

I totally forgot Chris Cooper was in this. Terrific as always, a sad character. Of course Spacey had to put the moves on him lol

Hated this movie.

I could never watch this again because it has Kevin Spacey in it. Now that we know for certain - he repulses me as much as Michael Jackson, Harvey Weinstein, Mel Gibson, Michael Richards et al.

Oh get over it! And release this masterpiece in 4K HDR already. We're fucking waiting!

Who among us hasn't known some clown who expected to make it big in real estate, if not MLM or some other sales nonsense. She captured that perfectly and Peter Gallagher was great as "the Real Estate King", the oily champ of that game.

The problem is not with her wanting to succeed in real estate. It’s in how mechanically and inauthentically her aspirations are portrayed.

R62 Please explain.

I honestly Carolyn has worked so hard to be perfect over the years, she lost who she really is.

R60- proud Trump voter.

Should Annette have gone supporting?

It's very much a product of its time. A lot of it holds up, but an even greater amount does not.

The cinematography and use of bright colors (especially red) is amazing.

"Jane, honey, are you trying to look unattractive?"

"Yes!"

"Congratulations, you've succeeded admirably."

I saw this movie years before I heard anything about Spacey being gay. Even to my naive virgin self, his lust for Mena Suvari came off as completely insincere.

I fully believe that his character hates his job and his life in general but the sex stuff was unconvincing.

R62: You seem to be the authenticity troll. What would make her "more authentic"? She represents the kind of superficial bottled up life for which the Spacey character no longer wishes to inhabit.

Far From Heaven had some similar themes and was wonderful. This movie seems fortunae to be released in a less competitive year

Is Far From Heaven the best film in the middle class sadness genre?

I like it more than Ordinary People, The Ice Storm, American Beauty or The Safety of Objects.