American Beauty - I'm a fucking dumbass

xpost, I meant Starman.

-- scott seward (skotro...) (webmail), June 8th, 2004 8:30 PM. (scott seward) (later) (link)

stan lee presents charles foster kane vs. the fantastic four

I like Amelie though.

Then I saw other movies, and realized that the closing voiceover was the worst thing ever.

(one of the indie-film mags this month mentions that the grocery bag video was stolen from another filmmaker)

I saw American Beauty, and thought it was confused. Not confusing, just confused.

I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and thought it was an indie Love Actually, therefor bollox.

If anything, as I said at the time, AB is a sanitized version of 'Blue Velvet'. I can't remember why I said it then, but whatever. I think it has improved in my estimation, anyway, and Lynch has gone down the dumper.

What's so English about that? most films are made this way, surely. I do agree it's a bad thing though. i haven't been to the movies for about 4 months ( i used to go maybe twice a week at one point) and can't see the point anymore.

What I meant was, content != script. Content *is* visuals. In AB I think the visuals were an adornment to some good line-readings (as Pauline Kael pointed out). I think Gondry and Kaufmann found an amazing way of doing ESOTSM: I can't imagine what the script looked like, but the visuals *are* the story, the process of memory fading is up there on screen. I mean it's horses for courses, but as a marker I remember the weekend I saw it as being freezing cold. It wasn't at all, but the film was so bleak and wintry it got into my bones.

Oh yeah, when I first reviewed AB: 'sex, lies, and videotape' y'all!!! And yes, 'The Ice Storm', definitely (again, a big visual metaphor that works).

I don't see this as characteristically English. Agree it gives the film a certain old-fashioned quality but "essentially cinematic" > "essentially literary" is too lazy a critical cliche. You'd have to throw an awful lot of babies out with that bathwater (the whole of Wilder, for example, not to mention a host of obviously stagey masterpieces like "All About Eve").

ALTHOUGH I don't think 'The Apartment' is all that stagey, ie the great office scenes (pedants know that these were borrowed from Vidor and Lubitsch). But Wilder certainly did approach material with script paramount, yeah.

a HERO

i agree w/the person who says it's a "confused" movie. it's about a guy who gives it all up, this whole treadmill of material ambition, and we sneer at his wife's concern for her sofa yet cheer when he buys himself a snazzy convertible.

but the movie "works." the story, confused as it is, as politically nowhere as it is, is well-told. it's the kind of thing audiences used to take for granted in the forties and fifties: pedestrian tales told competently, with a few brilliant moments of performance.

People say this all the time, and maybe I'm just reading attitudes into him that aren't there, but... are you sure?

I know what you mean by this but I must note that I'm not actually a father. Just so Googlers don't get confused

whew how lucky Kevin Spacey is gay

This was also DreamWorks first solo 'Prestige Picture', and they threw a lotta money into promotion, keeping it on n theatres building on word of mouth after a disappointing opening etc.

that critic is probably right about other critics' identifications but lol @ weed dealing as more a cause for handwringing than voyeurism and the "homophobes are secretly gay" trope attacked for being *too* PC - 1999 really was another planet

I'm sorry to say that even the usually reliable David Denby of The New Yorker seems to have popped his cork, proclaiming it "by far the strongest American film of the year."

Oh New Yorker paws

keep looking at this thread like it's a band name and album title, and that's more entertaining to me than the movie ever was

xp is that for American Beauty or The Incredibles 2?

you know what's worse than American Beauty? Road to Perdition.

This asshole can't even make fun James Bond movies.

I'd also like to think that if American Beauty is remembered at all, it will be as the movie in which a potential future first lady performs vigorous, if simulated, sexual intercourse while shouting obscenities.

That potential future first lady is Bening. She is, of course, the real-life wife of Warren Beatty - a man who may or may not be serious about running for the presidency.

If he is, and if he should somehow win, then American Beauty, in which Bening and Gallagher appear to make love, could become a curious cultural artifact - the Bedtime for Bonzo of our wilder, crazier times.

That's the way I prefer to look at it, anyway.

dat critic delmar

I was trying to find David Denby's review and came across Jonathan Rosenbaum's:

https://jonathanrosenbaum.net/2020/03/getting-it-both-ways/

That's ... not one of his finer moments

Like that review a lot. One of the best things a critic can do is surprise you. Kael and Kauffmann used to surprise me all the time; Armond White, at least in his present guise, never surprises me.

Surprise the reader with a new perspective on a film. JRo's review on this one only indicates he was snowballed

I know you already know this, but I meant in terms of what a critic likes and doesn't like.

It isn’t surprising that this DreamWorks movie is the love child of Steven Spielberg, who bought the script and hired the director...

Don't think I knew that.

now that I'm old I realize it was more Midlife Crisis: The Movie where idolizing teenagers or attempting to live out your teenage dream leaves you dead or a murderer recognizing your own sexuality

(I kid, but wow the "teenagers are working through things but recognize true beauty/have true beauty" bit was overwrought by so many degrees)

American Beauty, Alan Ball
Being John Malkovich, Charlie Kaufman
Magnolia, Paul Thomas Anderson
The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan
Topsy-Turvy, Mike Leigh

I think the only one of these I could stomach watching these days is Topsy Turvy.

well he only ends up dead because the world has conspired against his cool rock n roll rebirth iirc

I haven’t seen a really good Sam Mendes film yet. Skyfall was the most superficially impressive just because of some screencap-worthy imagery but the guy can’t direct a dynamic action scene to save his life.

I think the only one of these I could stomach watching these days is Topsy Turvy.

I haven't your unyielding good taste

New Sam Mendes looks terrible.

The thread where we anticipate Sam Mendes' "Sweeney Todd" movie

Rule: if you want to jump all over this, you have to first pay money to actually see the film. (This will keep me safe.)

thought the #babylon finale needed a punchup. pic.twitter.com/S0CjeCH679

— alex gradet 🐀 (@menace2snacks) February 2, 2023