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All-Reviews.com Movie/Video Review
American Beauty
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  out of 4
Review by Susan Granger
4 stars out of 4
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This surprisingly dramatic black comedy goes for the jugular as
it examines with bruising intensity two dysfunctional families in
American suburbia. Oscar winner Kevin Spacey ("The Usual Suspects")
stars as a cynical advertising exec who hates his job and resents his
controlling wife, played by Annette Bening. She's a fiercely
ambitious, high-strung perfectionist, intoxicated with success, as she
passionately devotes herself to selling real estate and tending her
rose garden. Thora Birch is their daughter - and she loathes them. In
fact, the film opens with videotape footage of the teenager
complaining about her father, wishing someone would kill him. Early
on, we discover someone does. Spacey will be dead within the year - at
least that's what he tells us. Who? How? When? Why? That's what's
eventually revealed on the screen. It's a classic suspense device -
and it works. Meanwhile, Spacey's lusting after his daughter's
flirtatious high school chum (Mena Suvari) and Bening's bedding a
realtor (Peter Gallagher), as Birch becomes involved with the "psycho
next door" (Wes Bentley), who is - in turn - terrorized by his stern,
abusive father (Chris Cooper). In this satiric, sophisticated social
commentary, first-time screenwriter Alan Ball and first-time film
director Sam Mendes (Broadway's "Cabaret," "The Blue Room")
cinematically capture the hilarious, hedonistic, and heartbreaking
desperation of a marital mid-life crisis and struggle in depth with
the ironic definition of beauty. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to
10, "American Beauty" is an amazing, powerfully disturbing 10, as it
skewers the '90s. Let's talk Oscar nominations - this is one of the
best pictures of the year!
Copyright © 2000 Susan Granger
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