A splice-of-life film for the American Culture

Rating: 10/10 (14 May 2000)

American Beauty serves as a supreme outing for freshmen filmmaker Sam Mendes and screenwriter Alan Ball. The film portrays true-life patterns through well-rounded characters that show life in American culture, as we know it today. The tagline to the film reads "...look closer." Mendes has allowed us to do so with a crafty and inventive film, one in which the audience will leave the theater with the privilege of looking closer, not just in the lives of the Burnham family, but also in our own lives.