Today’s post on the Debuts Blogathon, hosted by myself and Three Rows Back, comes from Nika at The Running Reel with a superb look At Sam Mendes’s excellent American Beauty. I urge everyone to head over and give Nika’s blog a read; there’s some great reviews and features well worth checking out. Take it away Nika…

SAM MENDES

American Beauty (1999)

I cannot imagine any talk about directing debuts without even mentioning Sam Mendes’s 5 Oscar winner picture American Beauty. Considering everything I am going to discuss in my post, none of the directors have ever had such a high standard debut as Mendes had.

American Beauty looks at average life of average American family, their aspiration to happiness, their failure to actually be happy and the way how it ends.

Lester Burnham (Kevin Spacey) is a father to a troubled teenage daughter Jane (Thora Birch) and a…