American Beauty - I'm a fucking dumbass

He’s a terrible writer I can never get past the first paragraph

Haven't read him in a while. He seems incapable of any kind of passionate or committed argument. The reviews feel like a string of pointless quips, and you're left with nothing.

yes he's amazingly and incredibly fucking awful i hate him

also he's married to noted english fascist allison pearson

Seems like a bit of a detail there!

I was unaware of that Incredibles 2 review too. Haha, wow. Great Deadspin headline:

“New Yorker Film Critic Has Reservations About Children's Movie Because His Boner Kept Blocking The Screen”

My favorite Magnolia scene (I haven’t seen the film in forever, so memory has holes) is probably the pharmacy scene. Second favorite, somehow, is the one where every main character is inexplicably singing whichever Aimee Mann song.

Soundtrack > film

And for all that, it’s still better than American Beauty

also he's married to noted english fascist allison pearson

Oh my good God!!!!!

(The Kael interview is by Francis Davidson (sp?), and recorded for San Francisco's City Arts and Lectures.)

Thanks...Francis Davis; he put out Afterglow: A Last Conversation with Pauline Kael. I'm saying I'd never heard the interview, now I'm wondering if that's the actual interview that he turned into the book (which I have read).

How did Lane respond to all the offense over his review? He never interested me as a critic because, based on some of his earlier reviews I'd read (or more accurately probably skimmed), he struck me a a bland, go along to get along-type writer. The thing with Kael is, if she'd gotten complaints about something she'd written--she always did, but today those complaints would be a much bigger issue--my guess is that she would have bristled and dug herself an even deeper hole. She didn't seem like the apologizing type. (She did respond to the outrage over her Shoah review, but from memory, it was more an explanation than an apology.)

Magnolia is one of the worst movies I've ever seen and it's still somehow better than American Beauty which leads me to conclude that American Beauty is not even a film but some other, worse thing

American Beauty is a toilet

Why are you talking about American Beauty on the American Beauty thread? Can we get back to Kael?

*peeks head in door*

i love this thread title

*scampering away sounds*

AB has the feel of a fourth tier cable channel’s stab at a watercooler show, one of those no one would stick around for past episode 1 or 2 but since it’s a movie most everyone saw it thru to the end. This was probably the peak of “Spacey is our greatest actor now” hysteria, which deflated pretty quickly after this.

Just popping in to say Magnolia is a gigantic pile of horseshit

When it's got the "American" adjective in the title, you know it's going to be profound.

Does American Beauty get any praise because the male lead ends up not acting on his desire for the teenaged girl?

American Graffiti? American Honey?

Does American Beauty get any praise because the male lead ends up not acting on his desire for the teenaged girl?

― Halfway there but for you, S

set to Annie Lennox's version of "Don't Let It Bring You Down."

American Pie is a more profound exploration of normative masculinity and suburban anomie than this bullshit

There was a kind of frenzied hoopla around this movie when it came out.. like it was so self-evidently “high quality”, people just tripping over their own dicks to praise it. Why was that?? Very hard to credit it now.

This badly written review trashing it from a local critic I'm glad retired is hilarious:

https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1999-09-24-9909230203-story.html

from = by

the easiest and most disturbing explanation is that a lot of critics saw themselves in the sp***y character but it was probably a bunch of stuff. it plays with a bunch of themes that probably seemed profound enough if you didn't care that it doesn't do anything new or interesting with them

it has the same fin de siecle angst and energy as fight club and the matrix which haven't aged perfectly either but are a lot easier to watch today than this and a lot of it comes down to the main character but also there's something about the smugness and self-importance of this one which makes it so cloying

It's Cheever's suburbia and Pet Shop Boys "Suburbia" in American sitcom frameworks.

now I'm remembering this was the year of britney's breakthrough and how repulsive the press was about her from the jump and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to connect this cultural sensibility to our hero's creeping in this film which afair is heavily romanticised and only really shown from his perspective

The sexual exploitation of teenagers was and remains popular. Thora Birch was 17 when she was topless in this!

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.