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Re: Good flicks?

> > American Beauty - how can you say it was just okay?  I loved it.
>
> okay, that was an understatement. i thoroughly enjoyed it. this was just
> skewed by the fact that i expected so much from it. _american beauty_
> practically lived up to my expectations, which is rare.

I would say _American Beauty_ was "just okay", and in my case, that would
*not* be an understatement.  A lot of people hyped it up as if it were one
of the most original things around, but it felt pretty cliched to me.  
'Twas okay, but hardly best-movie-of-the-year material.

For some spot-on criticisms of the film's dated message(s), see the
article excerpted below (spoiler alert):

   http://www.robertfulford.com/AmericanBeauty.html

   [ snip ]

   But as the film develops it becomes clear that the people truly locked
   in patterned behaviour are the director, Sam Mendes, and the
   scriptwriter, Alan Ball. This is a first feature for both, but they
   operate like tired Hollywood hacks shuffling around some long-ago film
   factory, peeking into old filing cabinets for ideas. The result is more
   anthology than movie. At the beginning, Lester speaks to us from the
   dead, voice-over, just like William Holden in Billy Wilder's 1950 film,
   Sunset Boulevard. Soon we meet a nervous teenager who uses his
   camcorder to get close to people, just like the guy in Steven
   Soderbergh's sex, lies and videotape. And when Lester drools over
   Angela, we immediately think of Lolita.

   Sometimes the cliches are so venerable that there's no one source for
   them; time has rendered their creators anonymous, like the people who
   designed motel rooms or parking garages. What scriptwriter, for
   instance, first came up with the schoolgirl sexpot who smugly claims to
   be experienced but reveals at the crucial moment that -- surprise! --
   she's a virgin? And what fiction writer first gave the world a raging
   butch homophobe who turns out to be -- surprise! -- a closeted gay?

   [ snip ]

--- Peter T. Chattaway ------------------------ petert at interchg_ubc.ca ---
 No man is an Island, entire of it self... -- John Donne, Meditation XVII
    I am a little world made cunningly... -- John Donne, Holy Sonnet V

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