sometimes a film is so aggravatingly pretentious and mind-numbingly boring that i need to not start writing the review for at least an hour after i finish it just to calm down first
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i refused to see this when it came out because i was enamored with older lesbians who preferred art house cinema and they brushed it off as the intelligent idiot's excuse for misogyny redux and to this day i still haven't watched it nor shall i ever as a matter of stupid smitten commitment
a movie date i utterly flubbed with an impossibly cool, older leather jacket dyke at the castro theater in 1997 will haunt my dreams forever. long story short, the way she arched her eyebrow and exhaled about this film several years later really did me in on ever being able to watch it.
no it literally was until someone rage reported me after i gave the shining 1 star (like, literally next day) and letterboxd made me change it. not kidding
thank you, thank you. i don't expect everyone to always agree with me but if people can at least see how i came to my conclusion and get something out of that themselves, then i am happy 😊
absolutely wild to me to see people who still defend it even today
I never did see this. Spacey's reputation actually hit my corner of Arkansas, for reasons you might imagine, around the time it came out.
But Thomas Newman's score does communicate ambiguity well, and it's one of those that left a crater in soundtracks for at least 5 years' worth of copycats.
there is something cathartic in watching younger people tear apart the media which the worst people i had to tolerate for so many, many years venerated simply because that is precisely what they so often told me they feared most.
Thora Birch was 17 at time of filming. Quoting her wikipedia page, "Peter Travers of Rolling Stone writing that she "[glimmered] with grown-up radiance"' 🤢🤢🤢
I've watched Trees Lounge and Ghost World within the last year, and between those two and American Beauty it's really concerning how preoccupied American cinema was with this sort of thing in the late 90's
When I finally watched this flick, years after it was released, I couldn't shake the feeling that it was basically Lolita without the unreliable narrator. It's a deeply vicious and hateful story at its core.
I was a suburban teenager when it came out, and it definitely exposed the "suburbia never talks about its shit" issue better than most of pop culture did at the time, but that was really low-hanging fruit. Aged like milk indeed. It was a shared trauma for me and my friends, for both good and bad.
I've since seen so many great films (some of them available at the time, but not as well marketed) that address the issue that I imagine our standards would have been a lot higher if we had access to streaming services at the time.
This is my most hated movie ever. It was when I realized award shows were a bit trashy and I hated it. I still refuse to watch things with Kevin Spacey and when I found out he raped someone I liked a lot it was the least surprising thing ever. Then all the other guys came forward.
I was not much of a feminist when I saw it, and even then. It was just so shallow, and so focused on the male gaze and *only* the male gaze. No one else had a perspective worth worrying about according to that film, and I knew even as a young pickme that it was both normal and unacceptable.
oh idiocracy, easily. american beauty at least has some technical merits even if i think the content is repugnant, but idiocracy fails to engender even the most remote ability for praise. there's nothing in it that is any way artistic or cinematic
You know you seem to hate a lot of movies I like, I'm curious, what are some movies you do like? Like top 3 if you had to pick off the top of your head?
I was managing a video store when this went to video and of course I could not keep it in stock in the middle class suburb it was located in.
So, my curiosity was piqued and I checked it out. I managed to watch it all the way through before asking myself, "What's the big fucking deal?"
I remember vaguely enjoying this movie in 1999 when I was both A) conservative and B) a literal child, but have not thought about it since. Looks like my brain made the right call in forgetting about it lol
The thing that struck me about this film when I first watched it was how incredibly unlikeable everyone in it was.
I didn’t blame Lester for hating his job or his wife, or anyone else for that matter. What I did blame him for was being a complete arsehole about it.
That was one of the reasons I searched for his reviews, he’s usually better than that, but I’m not sure any of us cishet white dudes were better in the 90’s.
They're was a fake commercial for a Strong Bad CD (not to be confused with the real one that actually came out), and one of the song titles was "The Only Thing Wrong With You is Everything."
I hate the hell out of this movie. My gawd. HATE HATE HATE it.
I remember renting it from Blockbuster to see what all the Oscar buzz was about; the whole thing struck me as an elaborate prank where folks were giving props to a movie that in no way deserved them. /1
Your view of 2001 was my view of Akira. I hated it when I first saw it as a Teen. In 2021 or 2022, I saw it again and I saw why it was so revered. It was awesome!
one funny bit of trivia is the director of american beauty was married to kate winslet and cheated on her. biggest bag fumble since fisher stevens got dumped for trying to cheat on michelle pfieffer with a 17-year-old.
Jesus christ, these bag fumbles of equal strength makes me WISH I could see these two individual bags represented fight to the death over who fumbled it more
But you don't understand, Katie... this movie exists for one single purpose: so that every time I see a random plastic bag blowing across the world, I can turn to my wife and say, "Look... it's the most beautiful thing in the world...." (a gag that continues into Not Another Teen Movie)
This is the only sensible response to this film, I saw it in theaters when it was new and couldn't understand what was supposed to be so great about it. And as soon as I saw "hamfisted symbolism" I knew you were going to mention that fucking plastic bag, I hated that so much.
I remember seeing this just a few years after it came out. I was very young and my conclusions are yours. It was deeply awful, gross, pretentious. I didn't know why it was famous. The main character was deeply unlikable and uninteresting-- just the personality of a saltine cracker.
I'm not defending Falling Down or this but Fight Club in this category is ridiculous. The movie might as well look in the camera and say "you dorks are baby fascists and you all know it"
Falling Down is about a guy who thinks he's a hero but he mostly just throws fits about every stupid little thing until everyone hates him including kids like the daughter he thinks he loves and he ends up dead shortly after being told he's actually the bad guy in the story.
i thought the film was about how adolescent, ridiculous and inadvertently villainous some adult men are and if you tell me actually it's not self-aware I'm going to have to rewatch it through this lens
Even as a younger man I didn't get what was so great about this movie. I didn't dislike it as much as Katie in this review but also, the only scene I can remember is Spacey jerking off in the shower. It's one of the first scenes or did I remember even that wrong?
Yup, it's our introduction, which is hindsight, is symbolic of what a fucking masturbatory act the rest of the film is. Mendes and Ball sitting around thinking,"Fuck, this is ART."
a) sorry you finally watched that, seriously. b) even my absolutely shitty teenage self HATED the bag scene, its so fuckin bad it crosses from bad to funny, back to bad, past that to depressing
I haven't done a nightly review in two days because the last one was so bad I started writing the review before it even finished.
(You gave the same movie a 4 stars)
There was a reddit post or something years ago that argued the plot of the film is so off that the poster mused it had to have started life as a send up of mid-life crisis films.
I've somehow got this far in life without really knowing anything about this movie, but a few weeks back someone shared an unedited clip from it on TikTok and I was like "wtf am I watchin-OSCAR WINNING?"
thank you hahahaha. i wasn't sure if i had to make the joke more obvious or not but i'm glad i didn't.
absolutely dogshit movie. like, the fact that this was a box-office success let alone a multi-oscar winner is an indictment of both the americna film industry and the american people at large.
The one-two punch of shitbags that are Kevin Spacey and Bryan Singer has really ruined my desire to watch The Usual Suspects again and that sucks because McQuarrie wrote the hell out of the screenplay
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Then again, I largely only watch genre films (comedy, horror, sci-fi, fantasy), so I don't know how much back patting I can give myself for that.
I am begging you to (hey guys) check this out as a palate cleanser, you deserve to watch a film that is high quality.
It's beautiful, mysterious, has sapphic yearning, a gorgeous soundtrack and each shot is composed like a painting
(I also spent twenty minutes Tightpussying the poster)
I don't agree with all your film takes Katie, but I'm growing to trust you as reviewer for your consistency.
American Beauty was always garbage (both then and now.) The fact it won any awards, while not surprising, is still a stain.
absolutely wild to me to see people who still defend it even today
It was something I saw recently and weirdly thought about what your take would be on it.
I thought that it was a weirdly trans-adjacent movie (or at least a movie that seemingly was talking about bio essentialism)
But yeah. I thought it was neat.
anyways, i absolutely detested that film. https://letterboxd.com/katherinetea/film/men-2022/
I disagree with you, of course. But I appreciate your reviews all the same.
But Thomas Newman's score does communicate ambiguity well, and it's one of those that left a crater in soundtracks for at least 5 years' worth of copycats.
suffer your uncoolness, awful cis bullies.
Crash is really bad but this, this is just on another tier of suck that could've only came out in 1999.
So, my curiosity was piqued and I checked it out. I managed to watch it all the way through before asking myself, "What's the big fucking deal?"
I remember vaguely enjoying this movie in 1999 when I was both A) conservative and B) a literal child, but have not thought about it since. Looks like my brain made the right call in forgetting about it lol
I didn’t blame Lester for hating his job or his wife, or anyone else for that matter. What I did blame him for was being a complete arsehole about it.
gawd what a tedious, painfully suburban pile this film was
Truly, truly pretentious.
(Not sure why I called myself a young lad but I’m keeping it.)
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/american-beauty-1999
Okay. So.
I hate the hell out of this movie. My gawd. HATE HATE HATE it.
I remember renting it from Blockbuster to see what all the Oscar buzz was about; the whole thing struck me as an elaborate prank where folks were giving props to a movie that in no way deserved them. /1
And oh my GAWD, don't start me on that plastic bag garbage.
1999 was a BALLER year for film. I can't understand why folks championed *that* as the year's best. I can't.
I watched 2001: A Space Odyssey on TV as a kid, and I really didn't like it. I revisited it much later & LOVED IT. It became one of my faves.
There is ***no freaking way*** I would try AB again. Once was too many times.
Smh guys don't appreciate it when they got it good
Also
Run over one while driving and it’s like, “I’ve destroyed something beautiful!”
That movie was fuckin weird
It was never a movie to walk out of and say, say “wow, I feel so much better now. So light, so free!”
I think the whole point was to walk out and say “what the fuck did I just watch?”
At least the movie ended on a happy note.
And the Academy agreed!
That house was definitely in Land Park or the Pocket.
also, for your sacramento native pleasure, please enjoy: https://bsky.app/profile/juicysteak117.gay/post/3jzgpqlijqj2a
#BringBagGlobalHyperColour
(Damn, I enjoyed that film. Like 20+ years ago? Thank you for that perspective!)
(You gave the same movie a 4 stars)
I've always kinda agreed with it.
absolutely dogshit movie. like, the fact that this was a box-office success let alone a multi-oscar winner is an indictment of both the americna film industry and the american people at large.
"Katie must really have hated it so much it's hard to put it into words."
xD
Spacey's.
Method.
Acting.
🧨💥