American Beauty -- 1999 -- R

This film won 5 Oscars in 1999 including best picture. It's a bizarre dramatic tale about what is supposed to be typical suburbia. If this is typical suburbia, then I want to move to Canada. Basically, you follow two people in their screwed up marriage and their screwed up daughter (who is probably more normal than the parents are). Dad is quite the pervert going for his daughter's little friend (and nearly having sex with her), and mom is quite the adulteress. Now, I understand their marriage is down the tubes, but they are still married. The daughter follows the parents' leads and hooks up with the weird camera-toting drug dealer next door flashing him and then sleeping with him. 

Despite the weirdness of the storyline, the writing was actually good, the characters were well rounded, and the actions the characters took (no matter how strange they are in my world) made sense within their characters. It progressed nicely throughout with a good pace, and overall, it's easy to see why this was a good movie. The plot, though, is just messed up...