Beauty with the standard Hollywood flaws:

Rating: 8/10 (24 June 1999)

This was a brilliantly filmed movie and deserved many of its awards. I was however disappointed by two or three scenes, specifically (1) the ridiculous spitting lessons, (2) the portrait scene, (3) and especially the sex-in-the-car scene. It's sad that so many of Hollywood's producers feel the need to force totally unnecessary scenes such as these (not to mention Rose's "finger" scene) into a movie just to try to "appease" the public with the sex and worldly innuendos they think we want to see - regardless of whether it distracts us completely from the story at hand.
With that said I must add that overall I really enjoyed the film as a whole. It's pluses easily outweigh the minuses.
The most notable points I appreciated were (1) the fabulous score! (2) the amazing special effects, (3) the beautiful costumes, (4) the editing, (5) the lighting and colors in general, and finally (6) the casting for the main roles: Leonardo has got incredible charisma, Winslet is just a fantastic actress (loved her in Hamlet) and Billy Zane is always cool!
I give it 8Â½ out of 10.