American Beauty
American Beauty depicts the story of Lester Burnham, a gainfully employed suburban husband and father. Tired of his boring, stagnant existence, he lets go of his job and decides to reinvent himself as a pot-smoking, responsibility-shirking teenager. What follows is at once cynical, hysterical, and, eventually, tragically uplifting.
After a recent watch I started to think about movies like American Beauty and believe it or not – they’re out there. Here’s hoping you add a few to your bucket list.
1. Shame (2011)
Shame follows Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender), a put-together New York exec whose secret sex addiction is slowly gutting him from the inside, until his messy, needy sister Sissy (Carey Mulligan) crashes on his couch and blows up the careful isolation he’s built his whole life around.
As Brandon fails at real intimacy and spirals into darker, more desperate encounters, Sissy hits her own breaking point with a suicide attempt that briefly shocks Brandon into confronting himself. Director Steve McQueen ends things as vague as he possibly can so expect a film that’s less plot-driven drama and more an unflinching character study of addiction with zero interest in being comfortable to watch.
The sordid debauchery in American Beauty will captivate viewers of Shame. From the early, blistering argument between Brandon and Sissy after he throws her out mid-hook-up to the disastrous restaurant-then-hotel date with his co-worker. Brandon’s dysfunction culminates when he discovers Sissy after her suicide attempt, and its where he mind finally snaps!
2. Girl, Interrupted (1999)
Girl, Interrupted, based on Susanna Kaysen’s memoir, drops Winona Ryder’s Susanna into Claymoore, a late-60s psychiatric hospital, after an overdose that may or may not have been a suicide attempt. She’s then slapped with a borderline personality disorder diagnosis and thrown into a ward of vividly drawn fellow patients — specifically Angelina Jolie’s magnetic, manipulative sociopath Lisa, who becomes Susanna’s chaotic best friend and worst influence. She keeps pushing her towards rebellion and away from anything resembling close-to recovery.
Their friendship goes belly-up when Lisa’s cruelty helps push the fragile Daisy to suicide. This forces Susanna to finally see Lisa for what she truly is and is the much needed dose of reality she’s looking for. Girl, Interrupted ends with Susanna released, older and clearer-eyed, but she has no pretense that she’s been “fixed”. If anything, this machine is more of a commentary on identity, diagnosis, and just how thin the line is between “troubled” and “institutionalised.”
Addiction is forever present in American Beauty just as it is in Girl, Interrupted. Lisa and Susanna’s cruel, gleeful reading aloud of Daisy’s private diary is cruel and results in Daisy eventually taking her own life. There’s the confrontation Susanna has with head nurse Valerie where she forces her to confront her diagnosis instead of performing victimhood is triggering. Just like the final climactic break between Susanna and Lisa, where Susanna finally turns on her directly, naming exactly what Lisa is and rejecting the toxic bond that’s formed between them.
3. The Virgin Suicides (1999)
The Virgin Suicides iis Sofia Coppola’s hazy directorial debut and is narrated collectively by a group of neighbourhood boys years later, still obsessed with the five Lisbon sisters — Cecilia, Lux, Bonnie, Mary, and Therese — whose lives in a strict, religious suburban household end in tragedy one by one.
When the youngest, Cecilia, dies by suicide early on, her parents’ response is to clamp down even harder, pulling the remaining sisters out of school and locking them inside the house, with golden-boy Trip Fontaine briefly breaking through to take Lux to homecoming, a night that ends in humiliation and even tighter restrictions.
The Virgin Suicides spirals through a suffocating, dreamlike summer of isolation until the sisters, in a final act the boys never see coming, orchestrate their own deaths together. The movie closes not with answers but with the boys, now grown, still turning the mystery over, having mythologised five girls they never actually knew. It’s a film with an atmosphere of suburban repression, projected male fantasy, and grief dressed up as nostalgia.
Just like American Beauty, so many of the scenes in The Virgin Suicides are extremely confrontational. There’s the tense standoff between Cecilia and the family doctor after her first suicide attempt which is casually dismissed. The explosive fallout between Lux and her mother after the homecoming humiliation. And who could forget the devastating climax, where the boys, discovering the aftermath of the sisters’ coordinated deaths. It’s a final confrontation. Not of words but of stunned, permanent incomprehension.
4. Requiem for a Dream (2000)
Requiem for a Dream is Darren Aronofsky’s relentless spiral into addiction. It follows four interconnected lives in Coney Island collapsing in parallel: Sara Goldfarb (Ellen Burstyn), a lonely widow who gets hooked on diet pills chasing a fantasy of appearing on TV, and her son Harry (Jared Leto), along with his girlfriend Marion (Jennifer Connelly) and best friend Tyrone (Marlon Wayans). All of whom start the summer dealing heroin to fund their own use and a shared dream of opening a legitimate business.
But their plan backflips and the drugs take over. Harry’s arm turns gangrenous from repeated injections, Tyrone lands in a brutal prison system, Marion sinks into sex work to fund her habit, and Sara’s pill addiction unravels into full psychosis, complete with a nightmarish talking refrigerator. Yes, you read that right.
Requiem for a Dream segways across all four unraveling lives, culminating in a final climax as each of them hits rock bottom on the same evening: Harry loses his arm to amputation, Tyrone is bashed in jail, Marion’s degraded beyond anything she imagined, and Sara’s institutionalised and given electroshock therapy. The film ends with all four character curled into fetal position, having lost everything the dream was ever about. It’s a barely controlled descent into the reality of an inescapable addiction. An addiction that is felt by you, the viewer, through clever use of editing and the music score to create this intense physically inescapable feeling which is extremely tragic.
American Beauty is no stranger to sordid drug scenes and Requiem for a Dream delivers sequences like that – in abundance. There’s an early, painful blow-up between Harry and Sara at her apartment, where he begs her to stop taking the diet pills and she turns even more manic than before. There’s Marion’s coerced sex-club performance to secure drug money, which is framed as a direct confrontation between her remaining dignity and her addiction.
But just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, Sara’s forced electroshock treatment intercut with her son’s amputation and Marion’s degradation. Three staged as simultaneous, wordless confrontations between each character and the total collapse of the lives they were chasing.
5. Closer (2004)
Adapted from Patrick Marber’s play, Closer tangles four Londoners into a brutal daisy chain of infidelity. Writer Dan (Jude Law) meets and falls for stripper Alice (Natalie Portman) after a street accident. Then years later cheats on her with photographer Anna (Julia Roberts) — whom he meets while posing as Anna online in a chatroom prank aimed at Doctor Larry (Clive Owen), who ends up meeting Anna for real and marrying her anyway.
The two couples orbit and collide with one another in the years that follow. Dan and Anna have an affair, Larry finds out out and retaliates by sleeping with Alice. Then every character takes turns interrogating each other with merciless honesty about who slept with whom and how it felt. By the end, the relationships completely canabalise each other — Anna goes back to Larry, Dan and Alice’s relationship implodes for good once Dan learns even her name was a lie, and the film closes on Alice, alone, walking through New York exactly as she was introduced.
Closer is the type of medicine you hardcore American Beauty fans ordered. Although, a bit full-on. Take Larry’s icy, forensic interrogation of Anna, for example. After discovering her affair, he demands graphic detail about what she did to torture himself and her. There’s Dan and Larry’s vicious confrontation at the aquarium, of all places. Trading insults and confessions as Dan tries to manipulate Larry into divorcing Anna.
Then there’s Larry’s cold, transactional proposition to Alice at the strip club. Treating her like a piece of meat, he uses his knowledge of the affairs as leverage to get what he wants from her. But the most devastating scene concerns Dan and Alice’s final breakup, where his demand to know the truth about her past collides with her demand for an honest answer about whether or not – he loves her.
Closer is a merciless dismantling of each character. A dismantling that none of them walks away from completely intact.
6. Prozac Nation (2001)
Based on Elizabeth Wurtzel’s memoir, Prozac Nation follows Lizzie (Christina Ricci), a promising Harvard freshman who goes from gifted writer whose depression evolves into self-destruction. She sleeps with strangers, alienates her best friend Ruby, spirals into drug use, and treating everyone around her, including boyfriend Rafe (Jason Biggs), as targets for her rage.
When her whole world unravels and she hits rock bottom, she starts seeing psychiatrist Dr. Sterling (Anne Heche), who eventually puts her on Prozac, leading to a fragile, unresolved stabilization rather than any clean cure.
American Beauty fans will love Prozac Nation for its memorable scenes. There’s the one where Lizzie has a screaming, plate-throwing blowout with her mother over money. She publicly and cruelly humiliates Ruby in front of others after Ruby tries to help her, torching their friendship. And then there’s this raw, ugly confrontation with Rafe after she cheats on him, where he finally calls out the pattern of her using people and discarding them.
There’s more meltdowns in Prozac Nation than a nuclear reactor!
7. Lady Bird (2017)
Greta Gerwig’s semi-autobiographical debut, Lady Bird follows Christine “Lady Bird” McPherson (Saoirse Ronan) through her senior year in Sacramento, as she navigates her working-class upbringing and strict Catholic school life. But that doesn’t nearly compare to the relationship with her mother Marion (Laurie Metcalf), whose dishes out nonstop criticism.
Lady Bird chases reinvention from her theater-kid boyfriend who turns out to be gay. Then via her musician friend Kyle. She ditches her loyal best friend Julie along the way to impress rich girl Jenna, all-the-while quietly applying to East Coast colleges behind her parents’ backs because she knows her mother will say they can’t afford it. The friendships and romances all manage to disappoint her – one by one.
Kyle turns out to be hollow, the popular crowd doesn’t fulfill her, and she eventually crawls back to Julie in genuine, unglamorous reconciliation. The real emotional pull of Lady Bird is the relationship she has with her mother. Which softens towards the end when she finally leaves for college and, in a final voicemail, calls home simply as “Christine.” Seeing gratitude in her mother and her hometown instead of resentment.
Lady Bird has some truly iconic scenes. There’s the screaming match between Lady Bird and Marion over college which results in Lady Bird throwing herself out of a moving car. There’s the shopping trip where Marion’s running commentary on Lady Bird’s body and choices reduces her to tears in the fitting room. Then there’s the devastating silent-treatment after Marion discovers Lady Bird’s secret college applications, leading up to Marion dropping her off at the airport without so much as a goodbye.
If you’re looking for American Beauty-stylised family drama accompanied with escalating tension then you’ll love what Lady Bird has in-store for you.
8. Cruel Intentions (1999)
Cruel Intentions drops manipulative Manhattan stepsiblings Kathryn (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and Sebastian (Ryan Phillippe) into a cruel bet: Kathryn wagers her body against Sebastian’s prized car if he can seduce and destroy the reputation of freshman Cecile (Selma Blair) before the end of summer. But Sebastian sets his sights on a tougher target — Annette (Reese Witherspoon), the headmaster’s daughter and a self-professed believer in saving herself for love.
Sebastian manipulates Cecile’s music teacher into a secret affair to humiliate her further at Kathryn’s request, but his pursuit of Annette backfires when he falls in love with her. This jeopardises the bet and infuriates Kathryn, who’s been quietly pulling strings and destroying lives behind her brilliantly constructed fascade of sweetness. When Sebastian ultimately chooses Annette over cruelty, Kathryn retaliates by giving Annette his private journal, which lays out every manipulation in writing and shatters the relationship.
This sends a grief-stricken Sebastian into oncoming traffic to save Annette, dying in the process — and his journal, made public at the funeral, finally exposes Kathryn’s own viciousness to the entire school, ending her reign of terror.
If you’ve recently watched American Beauty and you enjoyed those moments of manipulation then Cruel Intentions is your jam. Scenes like the negotiation between Kathryn and Sebastian comes to mind. As Kathryn is all silk-smooth threats and sexual manipulation disguised as banter. It’s also what sets things in motion. Her icy dressing-down of Sebastian after he starts falling for Annette, is where she devolves into venomous snake.
Then there’s the scene where Annette confronts Sebastian after reading his journal, devastated and furious, and the funeral finale, where Sebastian’s journal is read aloud publicly. Every moment, every line of dialogue, sets up a very satisfying pay-off at the end.
9. Fargo (1996)
Fargo kicks off with car salesman Jerry Lundegaard (William H. Macy) hiring two criminals, Carl Showalter (Steve Buscemi) and Gaear Grimsrud (Peter Stormare), to kidnap his own wife Jean, planning to split a ransom paid by his wealthy, controlling father-in-law Wade while secretly pocketing most of it himself to bail out his own financial mess.
Unfortunately for Jerry, the plan detonates almost immediately when a state trooper pulls the kidnappers over and Gaear kills him. He then chases down and kills two passing witnesses which turns this quiet con into a multiple-homicide case. A case picked up by very pregnant, brainiac police chief Marge Gunderson (Frances McDormand), who begins to close in on the whole operation. Meanwhile Wade, refusing to let Jerry handle the handoff, insists on delivering the ransom himself and gets shot dead by Carl where Carl also takes a bullet to the face.
Fleeing with the cash and burying most of it in the snow, Carl and Gaear’s split turns lethal, ending with Gaear burying an axe in Carl and feeding him into a wood chipper. Meanwhile Marge, tracing a license plate, arrives at the cabin just in time to witness Gaear calmly feeding the chipper and arrests him on the spot. This leaves Jerry, unravelling, as he tries to flee and is finally caught cowering in a motel. Fargo closes on Marge back at home with her quietly supportive husband Norm, sitting with the knowledge of the horror she’s just faced alongside the mundane warmth of ordinary domestic life.
If the bizarre strangeness of American Beauty is what kept you watching then Fargo is your next best stop. There are so many scenes that juxtapose the bizarre crimes of Jerry and co. The traffic-stop murder is an abrupt eruption of violence from Gaear’s near-silent menace. Then there’s the scene where Wade’s contemptuous dressing-down of Jerry at his own workplace completely emasculates him and makes him feel worthless.
Then there’s Carl and Gaear’s blow-up over who gets the car which escalates from bickering to an axe murder in seconds. That ultimately feels silly when Marge’s almost gentle confrontation with Gaear at the cabin, delivers Fargo’s moral gut-punch. It’s a movie that reflects harsh violence against a sea of bizarre small town domesticity.
10. The Piano Teacher (2001)
The Piano Teacher is Michael Haneke‘s adaptation of Elfriede Jelinek‘s novel. It follows Erika Kohut (Isabelle Huppert), a repressed piano professor at a Vienna conservatory who still lives with her domineering, controlling mother. Erika’s private life is a locked-off world of voyeurism and self-harm that she keeps entirely separate from her polished public persona. Until a talented young student, Walter (Benoît Magimel), becomes obsessed with her and pursues her romantically.
When she finally lets him in, she doesn’t offer romance instead she gives him a detailed letter laying out degrading and violent acts she wants him to perform on her. This horrifies him at first but he later submits to her request as he starts inflicting real violence on her. Eventually taking her control-seeking submission and turning it into genuine abuse.
If you enjoyed the confrontational scenes in American Beauty then The Piano Teacher will test your limits. The scene where Erika and her mother fight over a dress is intensely physical and goes to show just how toxic their relationsgip really is. Then there’s Erika’s self-harm scene which is quiet and clinical rather than dramatic. It goes to show just how much pain she’s bottling up. Then the brutal final confrontation with Walter, where he beats and assaults her without any of the consent or control she’d requested. It exposes the gap between what she wanted and what domination actually does to a person when consent is taken out of the equation.
11. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Eyes Wide Shut was Stanley Kubrick’s final film and it follows Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) and his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman) as their marriage cracks after a drug-fueled confession: Alice admits that a year earlier she’d been so consumed by fantasy about a stranger she would have given up everything, including their daughter, to sleep with him.
Despite that nothing actually happened, this revelation sends Bill spiraling through one night of surreal temptation and danger. He’s propositioned by a grieving patient’s daughter, nearly picked up by a prostitute named Domino, and ultimately using a password to talk his way into an exclusive, ritualistic masked orgy at a secluded mansion. An orgy where he’s exposed as an outsider and only saved from serious consequences when an unknown masked woman appears to offer herself in his place.
The next day Bill learns that woman may have been a former beauty queen who’s since turned up dead of a possible overdose. He’s then unable to confirm whether she sacrificed herself for him or if it’s simply coincidence. One thing is for sure, he’s warned off pursuing the truth any further by a figure connected to the secret society. Bill chooses to admit everything to Alice and in doing so they choose to remain together.
The sex scenes in American Beauty will prepare you mentally for the sexually charged surrealism in Eyes Wide Shut. The bedroom fight where Alice mocks Bill’s assumption that women aren’t as sexually driven as men and delivers her confession about the naval officer which eliminates his sense of security. His confrontation with Victor Ziegler near the end, where Ziegler dismisses the entire orgy as staged theatre and warns him to stop asking so many questions. Then the final scene between Bill and Alice, which feels less like a fight and more like a nerve which is finally exposed.
More Movie Recommendations
15 Movies Like Resident Evil (Because Apparently You Want More of This)
15 Movies like Superbad Where Things Go Hilariously Wrong
35 Best High School Movies: From Teen Sex Comedies to Coming-of-Age Gut-Punches
28 Movies like American Assassin to Get in Your Cross Hairs
15 Movies About Revenge: From Bloody Vendettas to Comedic Paybacks
