AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999)

The Oscar-winning AMERICAN BEAUTY, deliberately attempts to play on cliches, never fully progresses past them for the characters to be fleshed out as actual humans...Especially Annette Bening in what could be the WORST performance in an Oscar winning feature, screaming her lines as a shallow, work-motivated suburban real estate agent yuppie-from-hell as if she were in another movie altogether, or auditioning for an overboard parody of upper middle class families, and she seems created just to make our central hero look cooler and become more sympathetic, but he didn't need help since Spacey is actually quite good, charming, the suburb dad version of the usual "lovable loser" herein lusting for his bratty-deep, morbid daughter's sexy blonde friend... And how would his borderline Goth daughter be a cheerleader in the first place? 

But she has her own admirer, crushed on by the next door neighbor's even more morbid son... And his dad's a Marine who represents what Hollywood hates: An extreme right winger, homophobic, in the military, cold to his wife, abusive to his son, and get this... he's a homosexual and... well let's not spoil the ending... Overall, one of the aspects that inspired other films is the ghostly piano score, mellow, haunting, overly-moving, which you now hear the likes of in every "important" film's trailer (it used to be the more upbeat piano theme for Terms of Endearment)... Other than that, AMERICAN BEAUTY stole more from past films (or rather, cliches from past films) than it actually created yet, still, you can't say it isn't entertaining being a fun ride when not trying to be too deep, or too obviously trying to prove a point or agenda... Maybe if it were a more straight-line comedy instead of telling us to Look Closely the audience could judge for themselves what to get out of the story, because, for the most part, the themes are as forced to the viewer as Spacey's character's life was forcing him into the kind of submission he eventually dug his way out of... Or perhaps... that was the intention all along. Rates: ***

SUPERMAN RETURNS (2007)

You got to give credit to X-MEN director Bryan Singer for, in 2007, trying to make his SUPERMAN RETURNS literally that: returning from the 1978 original (with the same opening credit look) and starting out after the fantastic sequel SUPERMAN II, basically Brandon Routh is really, literally supposed to be Christopher Reeve and not just Superman who's Clark Kent up front...

If there's any one thing Reeve did best in the title role is playing Kent in an endearing underdog manner. Something Routh just can't pull off: Instead of clumsy for the part he seems awkward in the role, and while on paper Kevin Spacey's the dream Lex Luther, he seems like he doesn't want to be there, and with the same exact world-damning land-deal goal as Gene Hackman's Luthor, it makes the arch villain feel even more bland, unoriginal, familiar and basically a frustrating afterthought...

Meanwhile, an otherwise witty (in Christopher Guest movies) Parker Posey is perhaps the weakest moll in film history... But worse yet is Lois Lane... Played by a much too young Kate Bosworth, not only is she too inexperienced an actress but the character lacks Margot Kidder's charm, screen presence and, in having been in her thirties, and while looking older than Reeve, Margot really did seem like what she played: a reporter who's been in the game and knows more in the area of reporting and taking risks: The latter giving Kent turned Superman a reason to protect her, constantly...

But the biggest shame here is James Marsden's throwaway role as Lois's seemingly too-perfect boyfriend, trying too hard to be "dad" to a horrible child actor who's really Kent's Superboy. And come to think of it, Marsden, under Singer's direction as Cyclops in X-MEN, would have made a much better Superman: Being the right age he seemed more in tune with the natural fit Reeve had in the part, and he's great looking, has a properly muscular build, and to play the clumsy Kent, he's a good actor... How could Singer not know what/who was staring him in the face? GRADE: F+