Word: behind
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...story the likes of which no one had ever dreamed of putting on film. But The Phantom Menace has nothing new to show us. Indeed, most of it consists of filling in the details on what was already implied in the first three movies. There's no passion behind The Phantom Menace, or if there is, it isn't for storytelling. I imagine the passion is for something far more material than that...
...think the creative team behind the Austin Powers sequel had a script. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing--it just means that the movie needs to be awfully funny to counteract the lack of structure, story, meaning, logic, etc. And somehow, The Spy Who Shagged Me manages to be charming--even though making Elizabeth Hurley a fembot was idiotic, even though Heather Graham should have never opened her mouth, and even though the movie should have been called Dr. Evil 2: Austin Powers Has a Cameo. Myers has a knack for improvisation--and for taking a joke...
...Gere plays her male alter ego the cynical, emotionally distant, and self-assured journalist Ike Graham. Had director Gary Marshall simply let these two archetypes battle it out on the farm fields of Maryland, all might have been well. But inevitably, Maggie and Ike leave their fairy tale roots behind and fall in love, at which point any energy the movie had to begin with is lost. There is a painful lack of chemistry between Roberts and Gere as lovers, though they spar well as antagonists. They look bored with one another. And why shouldn't they be? They know...
Needless to say, this is film about many things. Mostly, it is about a year in the life of Lester Burnham--father, neighbor, self-hater. Because Lester is played by Kevin Spacey, we can see embers glowing behind his eyes even in the darkly comic early stages of the film when he has hit rock bottom: disdained by his harpy wife (Annette Bening), despised by his daughter (lovely, sad-faced Thora Birch) and distant from his own passions. The highlight of his day, Spacey tells us, is a quiet masturbation session in the shower. "It's all downhill from there...
...should, by all accounts, be remarkably subtle. For a time as I watched (from somewhat farther away), I agreed -- snowed by the film's acting prowess, its wit and its elegance. American Beauty seems to be full of big, revolutionary ideas: that beauty is a whole other world behind images, that we create the rules we live by, that we have caged ourselves and can set ourselves free. But, at heart, these ideas are too obvious and too broad to make the film truly extraordinary, or truly necessary. Do we really need to be told that our suburban utopia...