Thora Birch Movie:

				Salesrank: 175864
		Our Price: $18.99
		Used Price: $18.99
		MPAA Rating: R (Restricted) Media: DVD

Editorial Review:
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

American Beauty [Region 2] Reviews:
Simply amazing, a little gem of a film!
2009-12-09 - Amazing story, excellent direction and acting is all you will find out here. It's so well focussed on some people in America, their day to day life, the emotions, the feelings are all genuine and you actually feel you are meeting a family next door. Kevin Spacey is impeccable, makes it totally believable in the charecter of 'Lester Burnham', his wife played by Annette Benning was simply amazing, so was Thora Birch as his daughter. An excellent cast-chemistry and the flow of the film goes on pretty well. Almost everyone delivers a wonderful performence, its erotic, its hot, its fabulous, its decent and most of all genuine. Definately worth a watch!

Rose to the occasion
2009-11-21 - Triple entendre? Whatever. First of all, the DVD worked. Having got that out of the way, I have to say that seeing this film again at 42 (the protagonist's age) left me a little less engaged than I had hoped. By the second go-around I had accumulated enough existential (and real) pain under my belt to make Spacey's character's travails seem like a walk in the park, but that gave me little satisfaction. I found myself disappointed that it did not seem a more mature, nuanced film given my new lens. It's still very good; beautifully shot and cleverly contrived. But make no mistake, it belongs more squarely with the trivial middle-age breakout/revenge fantasy flicks of the world, rather than the fewer in number that seek to truly transcend the deathly mire that seems to be the lot of they typical American middle-aged male. So if you want a kick-ass movie, this one comes up roses. If you want to know the answer to life, the universe and everything, this one might not be the one. But still worth watching!

Beauty for All
2009-11-05 - American Beauty is a movie about the life of an average American family (however, in this case it absolutely does not make any sense: it could be an American family, or a British family, or a Russian family, or some other family). This film is about problems which every member of this family has. The plot of the movie is plain and certainly common. Speaking frankly, the beginning of the movie produces enough dreary feelings. You may think it is the regular tearful story about a stupid husband, a stinker wife, their daughter who suffers of solitude and incomprehension, and also about their neighbors: a slight crazy guy who sells drugs and peers through a his video camera, and about his father, an ex-colonel who so extremely hates homosexuals that you begin to suspect him in his latent homosexuality. Of course, the movie shows exactly that. But it is not made like other soupy stories. It does not want to make you cry. It only tells you about lives of simply miserable people; it tells you what they feel, what they dream about and finally what happens to them.
Do you know why the movie Straw Dogs with Dustin Hoffman is really scary? It is not the violence of the ending when bookworm Hoffman kills everyone. The movie is scary because there is no right or wrong. And all this blood bath happened not because some bad guy decided to commit evil, while some good would stop him. It just happened through a series of coincidences. That is scary because in real life it happens like that. BAD GUY comes rarely. More often MISERABLE comes who in return makes miserable out of you.
Similar to Straw Dogs, there is no right and wrong in American Beauty. And Lester (Kevin Spacy) is not a stupid perverted dolt, but middle class man who has not achieved a lot and who could not establish a proper family where he could find love, understanding and support. And his wife Caroline (Annete Benning) is not a bitch or whore. She is just a woman who is trying to crawl on to the surface but she cannot. Their daughter Jane (Thora Birch) is not an evil bestial who dreams to kill her parents. She is just a little girl who suffers from misunderstanding and who is very lonely.
What is a person life like if shower masturbation in the morning is the best thing that will happen to him during the day? If he wanted to be strong and cheerful, but became weak and miserable. The center of the movie is the moment that, no matter how strange it seems, corresponds American Beauty to Fight Club. That is when Lester is trying to break free from the gray reality that surrounds him. In Fight Club the main hero finds relief in communicating with terminally sick people and then gains pleasure from bloody street brawls. Lester did not go so far. He just left his well paid job and started working in McDonalds, began to exercise and use drugs. The idea is that Lester broke free. He ceased being afraid of his bitching wife. He realized that there is no point in straggling for a job you do not like. Because you can be the happiest fast-food worker or the unhappiest vice-director of some office. And when Lester broke free, he felt good. He even starts to look better.
But, unfortunately such a state is not permanent. It is like remission before the impeding end. And the end arrives. Basically, the movie starts from it. Lester dies. We do not know who killed him. It can be anyone. Daughter Jane who cannot stand him and who is ashamed that her father is trying to hit on her classmate. Wife Caroline who hates her husband and thinks of him as a slug and a loser. Jane's boyfriend (who is jealous that Lester did not hit on him), Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley), whom Jane is asking to kill her father. Ricky's father who is crazy about patriotism and fascism and thinks that Ricky has a sexual relationship with Lester. Everyone has reasons to kill Lester. Even Lester himself. Because all of a sudden he thinks it is too good for him to live. Why not die when you feel best? Why die when you suffer? But Ricky delivers more ideas to the movie: sex, lies, and video. He records a girl he likes, while other things get on to his line of sight. Ricky is the only one person who sees a beauty in an empty bag dancing in the wind. So, it is not considers that he becomes as the final hero of the movie.
The movie is made perfect in all means. From the point of plot (the writer Alan Ball won an Oscar for the original screenplay), and from the point of the director and actors. But first at all, this movie is great because it is about us. About all us, whoever we are -- Americans, Russians, children, adults, psychos. This movie breaks all stereotypes. The naughtiest girl in the school Angela shows up a virgin, the loving family is a joke; a homophobe hides his true orientation. It looks so usual, like routine. Fates of different people merge in one crazy ball and everyone is looking for his/her beauty.
p.s. sorry if I have mistakes(I am Russian))



A bit too much
2009-11-02 - I may have missed the point of the movie. It seemed to be a hopeless movie, i.e. no hope for anyone, almost depressing. I guess you have to be in the mood to see it. If you want to see a family disintegrate, then watch it.

My very favorite movie of all time
2009-11-01 - Great, great movie. It has a great story, is hilarious at times, and also a tear jerker. I've watched this I don't know how many times (but I don't watch the ending any more). However, if you are the old-fashioned catholic type, I would not watch it. My husband's parents are that type, and because of how much we loved the movie we wanted to share it with them and watch it with them. Just a half hour or so into the movie, they got up to leave. They were so disturbed, they would not even stay to visit with the movie off. For them, the stuff going on between the teenager and Kevin Spacey was disturbing and disgusting. But we LOVE it.