I just saw American Beauty. We were driving back from Vegas and I watched the first half of the movie on the iBook. I got so car sick that I was dry heaving in the gas station bathroom in St. George. Mike took away the iBook and gave me a Dramamine. The rest of the drive home was a murky desire to watch the end of the movie. I had just gotten to the point where Kevin Spacey throws the plate of asparagus on the wall. “That asparagus looked really yummy,” I thought in a drugged haze.

The movie was amazing. I was really worried about whether I would like it because Kevin Spacey’s character said that he would be dead within a year. I already didn’t want to see him dead and I was only a couple of minutes into the movie. I was so happy to see Thora Birch in that movie. It took me about thirty minutes to realize that she was the same girl that played Enid in Ghost World. After all the attention that Scarlett Johansson has been getting, I thought that Thora was getting left out. I didn’t realize that she got to be in an Oscar Winning movie.

At first, I didn’t like any of the characters all that much. Kevin Spacey was a pedophile. Annette Bening played a little too close to home for me as a real estate agent. Wes Bentley was a creepy voyeur. I didn’t like any of them very much. I thought that the only reason that I would love the movie was the visual symbolism and the beautiful cinematography.

By the end of the movie, I loved them all, even the Nazi next door.