Poll: Do you like AMERICAN BEAUTY?
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ToastedCheese — 4 years ago(September 23, 2021 12:01 PM)
Donna Acacia said...
Why do you keep impersonating me????
You don't know me. You don't know what I look like either. Go away.
Why are you replying to yourself? Now that is creepier than Lester.
Norman! What did you put in my tea? -
I love hutch — 4 years ago(September 22, 2021 01:35 AM)
I voted no. I thought Kevin Spacey was very good in his part, but other than that the movie felt kind of pat to me. And I have to say that the plastic bag that kept showing up did nothing for me.
The movie felt like a middle-of-the-road melodrama to me.
"My life is over. I might as well dance with Johnny Slash!" -
I love hutch — 4 years ago(September 22, 2021 01:40 AM)
It's hard to say. Maybe something super banal life how like is always in motion. Or, just when you are least expecting it, look down at your feet and there's life.
"My life is over. I might as well dance with Johnny Slash!" -
ToastedCheese — 4 years ago(September 22, 2021 02:53 AM)
…the movie felt kind of pat to me. And I have to say that the plastic bag that kept showing up did nothing for me.
The movie felt like a middle-of-the-road melodrama…
Do you feel like it was sledgehammering a point, instead of allowing it to be born of a more natural and organic approach to its theme Mr. Hutch?
I don't see much pat about its presentation, just something that I thought was very original and aware and touched on many aspects of our controlled and cloistered lives that we take for granted.
We place so much meaning on material impermanence, when the scope of it all is contained in the tiniest details. Look closer, as the tag line says.
I think Spacey really nailed his little monologue at the end when he expressed this after his demise and the inflection he used was sublime.
I don't mean to condescend by my explaining the film, yet it is also very fascinating to me how this film affects many people differently. It does have a tendency to push buttons and it upsets many as well.
One old guy I worked with, his wife told him the film upset her, another lady I know dismissed it because she judged Spacey's creepy actions and I myself found it refreshing, inspiring and insightful overall.
People are so easily offended and I just don't think they get context.
Norman! What did you put in my tea? -
ToastedCheese — 4 years ago(September 22, 2021 03:21 AM)
I can get that too, because it was perhaps didactic in presentation, that it could also be considered insulting the intelligence of the viewer with a lack of subtlety.
Thing is, I got the plastic bag metaphor point, even before the movie. I liked how it made an effort to make a point here.
For many, its just a plastic bag caught up in the wind and it was perhaps a cheap-shot allegory, yet one that could be easily understood to make it into something more.
You have plenty of substance in you already Mr. H. It was a film that perhaps wasn't made or needed for you.
I guess it had a subversiveness about it that I liked as well, but for all the right reasons.
I haven't seen for yonks. Perhaps if I view again, I may take a different angle on it.
Norman! What did you put in my tea? -
jessica-shepard — 4 years ago(September 22, 2021 06:47 PM)
Wonderful review! I took the bag to be a "stop and smell the roses" which is what Carol does early on in the movie but is more concerned with "keepin up with the jones'"
Great monologue. I'm getting older and I wish I wasn't so fixated on money and wish I would have lived more. Unfortunately I don't have that oomph Spacey had, and he was terrific. Do you think he'll ever appear in a big movie again?
If there was one weird part it was when Ricky looked at Spacey's dead face and smiled like a lunatic.