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American Beauty (Widescreen Edition) | 
| Director: Sam Mendes
Actors: Annette Bening, Thora Birch, Chris Cooper, Peter Gallagher, Sam Robards
Studio: Dreamworks Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $12.99
Buy New: $8.99
You Save: $4.00 (31%)
New (71) Used (156) Collectible (6) from $1.90
Rating:  1131 reviews
Sales Rank: 2598
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dts Surround Sound, Dvd-video, Special Edition, Widescreen, Ntsc
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 122 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.5 x 0.7
MPN: MCAD85382D
Model: 85382
ISBN: 0783241232
UPC: 667068538229
EAN: 9780783241234
ASIN: B00003CWL6
Theatrical Release Date: 1999
Release Date: October 24, 2000
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
When youve got nothing to lose you might as well risk everything. Lester burnham is in a rut. Facing a midlife crisis lester reverts into a maddening rebirth of adolescence. His sudden irreverant rebellion enrages his wife and confuses his daughter when he turns a lustful gaze toward her friend. Studio: Paramount Home Video Release Date: 01/17/2006 Starring: Kevin Spacey Thora Birch Run time: 122 minutes Rating: R
Amazon.com essential video
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
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1126 more reviews...
 artistic attack on middle class values November 29, 2008
Flabbadydoo
This is a good film and and I would like it except for two things: The title and the fact there was nothing to feel good about in watching this film--it was depressing. It is a not-so-subtle attack on middle class American values and institutions. Targets are the American Military, Marriage, gun ownership, corporate America/capitalism, consumerism, traditional morals and sexual mores etc....The only thing the writers left out was religion--none of the cast of dysfunctional people were church going christians. I am sure this was a oversight. The title was off putting because it suggests that Americans have empty, dysfunctional, meaningless lives. This film is a left-wing diatribe with a social agenda to bash american society using many liberal cliches and unlikable, one-dimensional characters. Maybe I read too much into it.
The only semi normal, healthy people were the two gay neighbors; everyone else is a mess. Of course, the worst writing came with the new family next door with the father being a Marine Colonel. He was portrayed as a domineering man incapable of expressing his feelings and love for his family. He imposed harsh discipline and physical abuse for even minor infractions. Of course he had a large gun collection and Nazi memorabilia. His disdain for his gay neighbors is on complete display and of course we find out that this disdain is only there to hide his own latent homosexuality. How tiresome! The realtor/wife of the main character builds confidence and feels "powerful" by learning to shoot a gun. The only semi-likable character is Kevin Spacey's who is a guy in a mid-life crises brought on by his own sexual frustration and infatuation with---the friend of his daughter. He quits his job, and tells off those corporate creeps. He black mails them into a year's salary. We are supposed to feel okay about that because they deserve it. Then he pursues and seduces his daughters best friend. In the process he buys the car he wanted as a teenager, starts smoking pot again and listens to rock music. The only redemption for him comes at the end when he doesn't go through with the little affair he had been planning--but he comes awful close. The message of this film is: don't be uptight-express your feelings, smoke pot and have sex. Sounds a bit like turn on, tune in and drop out. A classic film for 60's rejects.
The artistry in this film comes in the way it is told on the screen. It moves along at a nice pace and keeps you off-balance and guessing. There are a few poetic scenes when the neighbor boy and son of the marine talks about his desire to film and his contemplation of beauty, which gives the film its title. I don't care to see it again.
 Absolutely Amazing November 18, 2008
Heather (Illinois, USA)
This is one of my favorite movies and it gets better each time you watch it. You can identify with some of the characters in the movie and although it is dark and sad, it has a moral to the story and the ending was just amazingly done. Even though your sad for the main character, you still realize that his life had finished in a weirdly positive way. Hence the smile at the end. I highly recommend this movie. It should be in everyone's DVD collection and is one of those movies you can watch over and over again without getting bored. And it is not entirely always dark. There is comedy woven into the movie as well. Again, one of the best Kevin Spacey movies ever.
Loved this Movie! November 16, 2008
K. Manno (SF, CA)
American Beauty reflects the beginnings of the "Impressionistic" stage of movie making. The scenes and characters are conglomerations of situations and "types" of people... The real estate agent, the bored commercial writer, the unhappy teenager, the uptight military officer, the Stepford wife, the abused son, etc. Each person plays his role according to his type.
The movie successfully reveals pent up emotions beautifully such as when the real estate agent ends her day of promoting a home she's selling by bursting into tears after the last visitor leaves. I'd never really thought about how painful it is to be upbeat about selling so-so real estate.
Yes, this movie has shortcomings, but it succeeds in its ability to reveal emotions without filling in every detail. Be reminded that on one hand the story is depressing, yet on the other it is uplifting because the harmed party did it his way.
Not a first date type of flick. It is genuinely made for intense discussion.
Even though it's a bit old by now, still a great overall film September 28, 2008
Eric Smith (Pittsburgh, PA)
My mom had this dvd lying around the living room so I decided to watch it today since I was bored with nothing else to do. I knew a little bit about it from watching the oscars back in 1999 and from word-of-mouth. It is a pretty good movie story wise, though a little predictable at times. All the characters can be relatable. Kevin Spacey delivers a dramatic and comendable performance and Anette Bening is great too. The acting in this movie was top notch. I would have give it 5 stars it if werent for the predictibility in this movie. Overall, I would reccomend it to casual movie fans like myself.
An outstanding accomplishment September 14, 2008
Irikefe Okonedo (London, England)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Drama in which a middle-class suburban family begins to fall apart when husband and father Kevin Spacey starts going through a mid-life crisis, quitting his job as a magazine writer, befriending his teenage daughter Thora Birch's boyfriend Wes Bentley, starting to smoke marijuana and beginning an obsession with his daughter's best friend Mena Suvari, all in an attempt to dispel the deadness that he feels inside and regain the happiness that he feels that he has not had since he was a young man. Spacey's behaviour serves to further destabilise his already dysfunctional family in which his daughter despises him and his wife Annette Bening and him never have sex: now his wife runs into the arms of another man and his daughter progresses from despising him to being outright sickened by him because of his obvious sexual interest in her best friend. But Spacey doesn't care because he feels that his life was a sham anyway and the only way he can regain what he has lost is by letting go of all the lies and pretences and doing whatever will make him and him alone happy. This film is populated by largely tragic characters, all struggling to make sense of life and escape the despair and bleakness that seems to them to be all that there is. Spacey is reliable as the voice of the movie and the main protagonist going through the mid-life crisis who moves from sympathetic to unsympathetic to sympathetic through the course of the movie. Thora Birch is excellent as Spacey's teenage daughter who feels that she is a misfit and forms a relationship with troubled boy next door and drug dealer Wes Bentley, who has been inside a mental institution and has an unsettling habit of filming people on his camcorder when they don't know he is watching. Annette Bening is on form as Spacey's desperately unhappy estate agent wife whose primary concern is putting on a facade of marital and domestic bliss for the world to see to hide the fact that her family and marriage are falling apart. Mena Suvari puts in a favourable performance as Birch's insecure best friend who derives her self-esteem from the fact that men find her sexually attractive but is secretly afraid that she is nothing special and hence will never gain the adulation that she craves. Finally Chris Cooper is good in a supporting role as Birch's boyfriend Bentley's violent and homophobic father. This film, although largely bleak in tone and quite disturbing at times, is poignant and has a profound message about the importance of seeing beauty in life, which director Sam Mendes symbolises throughout the film with red petals from the American Beauty rose (from which the film takes its name). With a number of revelations and a shocking final twist, this is one of the best films I have ever seen, and easily deserves the Oscars that it won. An outstanding accomplishment.
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