Synopsis
American Beauty (1999) is Sam Mendes's Academy Award-winning drama you can watch online on iFILM. Kevin Spacey plays Lester Burnham — a forty-something ad executive who has the house, the car and the career, and feels completely hollow inside.
His wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) is chasing real-estate commissions and has long since stopped seeing him. His teenage daughter Jane (Thora Birch) finds him embarrassing. Then Lester sees Angela (Mena Suvari), Jane's classmate, at a school performance, and something in him resets. He quits his job. Starts lifting weights in the garage. Buys the car he wanted at nineteen. Next door, retired colonel Frank Fitts (Chris Cooper) runs his house like a base, while his son Ricky (Wes Bentley) films everything — trash bags tumbling in the wind, strangers through windows. Ricky's footage isn't strange. It's the only honest record of what's happening on the street.
Screenwriter Alan Ball and Mendes built the film around a suburb that looks perfect from the outside and is rotting through. Cinematographer Conrad Hall won an Oscar for the way it looks. Five Academy Awards total, including Best Picture and Best Director. Stream American Beauty (1999) online on iFILM.
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