Sam Mendes: Ranking His Films - From Worst To Best
2. American Beauty
Not many directors win an Oscar for their first film, but thats exactly what Sam Mendes did with his 1998 debut American Beauty, becoming only the sixth* person in history to do so. The film was nominated for eight academy awards overall, winning in five categories (Picture, Actor, Director, Original Screenplay, and Cinematography) to put Sam Mendes on the map as a filmmaker. Starring a biting, blackly comic Kevin Spacey, Beauty is Mendes original foray into the façade of middle-class suburban Americas supposedly idyllist dream, as satirical and farcical as it is sad and sensual. The sight of Mena Suvari doused in lightly falling rose petals is one of the more memorable moments of 90s cinema, and its images like this which helped distinguish American Beauty from so many other first time features. Bolstered by a never-better Spacey; a fraught, promiscuous Annette Bening; lush, simple camera work from DP Conrad L. Hall; and a tight, sharp script from Alan Ball, American Beauty is, for many, still the film to beat in Mendes filmography. *The other five are: Delbert Mann for Marty; Jerome Robbins for West Side Story; Robert Redford for Ordinary People; James L. Brooks for Terms of Endearment; and Kevin Costner for Dances With Wolves.
