Summer Cinema — American Beauty

Lester Burn­ham (Kevin Spacey) is a gain­ful­ly employed sub­ur­ban hus­band and father. Fed up with his bor­ing, stag­nant exis­tence, he quits his job and decides to rein­vent him­self as a pot-smok­ing, respon­si­bil­i­ty-shirk­ing teenag­er. What fol­lows is at once cyn­i­cal, hys­ter­i­cal, and ulti­mate­ly trag­i­cal­ly uplifting.