On what level exactly should I compare these two films? Ah yeah, they have a word 'American' in the title. Oh well...American Beauty never did much for me. I always felt it was flat and shallow in its core, covering this by insisting on that flatness as a style and a theme. Hey look, I found a level on which to compare this to American Psycho. They share some themes: shallowness, emptiness, flatness. But, American Psycho evokes all that with such ease that it never feels the movie itself is shallow, quite on the contrary. It has that satirical approach that is served so straightforwardly and coldly that it makes this emptiness of modern man funny and disturbing at the same time. American Beauty is too self-aware and self-serious to achieve more than what's already obvious, although it hides that seriousness behind cynicism. The problem for me is that I see through that and I don't like it. I guess it's pretty obvious where my vote goes: American Psycho, hands down.
American Beauty 3
American Psycho 3
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