Amazing.

Rating: 10/10 (22 November 2000)

After winning five Oscars, I was intrigued to see American Beauty. After I finally caught it, I was sitting in my seat for about 10 minutes after the film had finished. It was hard for me to recover from such a masterpiece overflowing with brains and beauty.
Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) finds rebirth after his daughter's jailbait buddy Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari) zings his long-buried sexual antennae. Immediately, he starts pumping iron, develops a range of taking-no-more-c**p retorts and drops out of his dronehead job to flip burgers at a local drive-through. Alongisde his frefall are his wife Carolyn (Annette Bening)'s more direct self-destruction and his estranged daughter Jane (Thora Birch)'s own sexual awakening.
The story is plain and simple, but Ball's script is one of the most intelligent, engaging pieces of screen-writing I have seen for an extremely long amount of time. The performances are all perfect, Spacey and Bening got lots of credit, which they rightfully deserve; their performances been strong and powerful, but my personal favourite performance came from Thora Birch. She pulled off a stunning and real performance as the uniquely beautiful daughter Jane. Other stand-outs where Mena Suvari's Angela and Wes Bentley's Ricky.
This movie is so brilliant, that, if you haven't actually seen it, you should be shot. American Beauty, easily the best film of the past decade, secures a place on my top 5 films of all time.
I rate American Beauty 10 out of 10.