Sam Mendes’ timeless and thought-provoking debut film American Beauty provides a mesmerising exploration into the longing of the American Dream.

American Beauty was released back in 1999, and not even Sam Mendes could have thought that his directorial debut on the big screen would be so successful. Taking home five academy awards and raking in over $356,000,000 worldwide, just how did American Beauty become so successful and revered?

Set in suburban California, American Beauty follows the story of Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey), an advertising writer and father who has grown weary and hateful to his “stupid little life”. He narrates the opening, and states that “In less than a year, I’ll be dead. And in a way, I’m dead already”. He hates his job, his daughter Jane (Thora Birch) and wife Carolyn (Annette Bening) detest him, he’s sexually frustrated, and he feels as if he has no purpose in such a world. This is until he becomes besotted with his daughter’s friend Angela Hayes (Mena Suvari). He embarks on a mission to impress and sleep with her, as a catalyst for change. Lester forms a bond with his new neighbour, Ricky Fitts (Wes Bentley), who inspires Lester to view the beauty in the world. In a hilarious manner, Lester encounters a mid-life crisis, choosing to set aside all responsibilities and live his life how desires. He quits his job to work at a fast food restaurant, works out, and smokes drugs amongst many new aspects of his lifestyle.

Conrad Hall’s clever cinematography and Naomi Shohan’s superb production design takes us to a world of temptations and fantasies. The symbolism of the colour red throughout the film is used to portray lust and desires that lie within all of the characters. We see that the Burnham’s are living in the only house with a red door, the rose petals when Lester fantasises about Angela amongst other times throughout. As for the others, Jane and Ricky lie on a red set of sheets, Angela applying red lipstick, Carolyn wearing a red dress whilst holding a gun, and Colonel Fitts (Chris Cooper) covered in blood as Lester is shot. The tracking shots, and then close ups held together the intimate moments with Angela in Lester’s fantasies, allows the audience to be transfixed by the flirting and movement taking place within the each of the scenes. Alongside 360 degree shots and dolly shots, the camera movement in Lester’s fantasies are particularly memorable and crucial to an insight into Lester’s mind.

Alan Ball’s tremendous screenplay and characterisation allows the audience to relate to any of the characters to whom they are most applicable to, and to recognise the familiarity of the rest as this could potentially be any old suburban family. This is matched with stellar performances from the cast, particularly that of Bening and Spacey. Bening’s portrayal of the neurotic Carolyn shows true raw emotion of a failing and desperate wannabe that we empathise with yet are infuriated by. Spacey is outstanding as the lead, and provides warmth, authenticity, laughter and pity as Lester. The pair both proceeded to earn two Oscars for their respective roles.

The greatest achievement within this classic, is that American Beauty is both a comedy and a tragedy. We relate to and pity Lester’s failures, as a lot of us live it. We laugh at Lester’s new found happy-go-lucky attitude. We hold both admiration and envy towards Lester, for having the guts to be free of responsibilities, appreciative to be living his life, and ultimately happy to be free from any social pressures. A Lester Burnham exists inside all of us, wanting to break free from the shackles of society and to embrace every moment. It inspires even the most cynical, to “look closer”. Lester’s downfall, although known from the outset, supports this by leaving a bittersweet taste in the mouth of the audience. His tragedy, being that he didn’t sleep with Angela and ultimately died, yet he obtained some of life’s purest moments in his final moments. He had admiration and love for his time with his family, and satisfaction and gratitude, for “every moment of his stupid little life”

Combined with a captivating score, laughter, superb direction and a thought-provoking ending, Mendes’ feature-film debut has to go down as one of the most original films of its time, and as one of the most successful directorial debuts of all time.

Dunkirk is a tense and spectacular survival epic with edge-of-your-seat action, breathtaking visuals and phenomenal sound.

The film tells the story of the Dunkirk evacuation in three parts: From land, from sea and from air, intertwining to create a non-linear narrative (A normality in Nolan films) On land, Fionn Whitehead plays Tommy, a young British private who, just like everyone else, wants to go home. He arrives on the beach where British troops are lined up for the evacuation, except that there is no one there to take them home. Hundreds of thousands of men stand, hopelessly, on the beach where German bombers start to attack. In the sea we find Mr. Dawson (Mark Rylance) who begins to take his small boat to Dunkirk, occupied by his son Peter and their teenage hand George they pick up a shell-shocked soiled on their way that begs them to turn back, not wanting to go back to Dunkirk, they begin to see the horrors ahead. In the air we find three pilots, one of whom is played by Tom Hardy, on their way to Dunkirk they come across constant fire from the Germans, as they also attempt to help save the troops on the sea and land.

The film opens up on the streets of Dunkirk where a group of soldiers walk through floating leaflets, warning them that Germans surround them on all sides. We know that there is only one way for them to go, this starts up the tension for the film together with the ticking noise that is constantly building and building, we are rarely ever drawn away from tension. Hans Zimmer’s haunting music makes you hold you breath in anticipation however it is the sound design and editing in the film that makes it for me. You are thrown into the unknown along with these characters; you feel every explosion, every gunshot, every breath; the sound of the planes, the waves and even the silence make it a truly astounding and riveting experience. Although I was impressed with the score I felt at times that the film could have just had the sound design and not had the music mix in with it.

What Nolan does best in this film I feel is show the scale and depth of the event. When we see the beach and troops for the first time it is never ending, it stretches far beyond the frame, it seems the amount of troops are endless and as they stare at the horizon in search for help there is nothing there, just home itself. When the beach is attacked and bodies lie dead, the troops carry on as normal, they know there is nothing they can do, no where else to go, all they can do is wait, it does make for a harrowing sight. The cinematography is striking as well, especially the scenes in the air; Hoyte Van Hoytema captures the dogfight tremendously well between the spitfires and the Luftwaffe. The struggle of having to film with heavy IMAX cameras for nearly every sequence in the film really paid off.

The main criticism I hear about this film is that it offers no character backstory and limited character development and this takes away any emotional core. This is slightly true, this film isn’t very long and telling the story from 3 perspectives means you don’t have time to dive deep into every character we see. This is why I failed to connect with some of the characters; I just wasn’t able to care for them, although it left me shocked while watching I wasn’t emotionally hit. Nolan wanted the film to be as tense and suspenseful as possible meaning he didn’t want to drag the film out to be too long and for you to care about the characters because of the situation they are in. For the most part this works, the suspense is good and you understand the situation they are in but unfortunately it doesn’t work for every character.

Overall, Dunkirk is a good survival film, Nolan opts to tell his story visually with limited dialogue, offering up exceptional sound to immerse you in the fight and striking visuals to show the horror. While the film does lacks some emotional sense towards its characters it only offers as a small adverser.