American Beauty (Dreamworks, 1999, R)

Winner of five Oscars, this film portrays Lester and Carolyn Burnham who are on the outside a perfect husband and wife, in a perfect house, in a perfect neighborhood. But inside, Lester is slipping deeper and deeper into a hopeless depression. He finally snaps when he becomes infatuated with one of his daughter's friends. Meanwhile, his daughter Jane is developing a happy friendship with a shy boy-next-door named Ricky, who lives with a homophobic father. Everyone's troubled and noone's successful in hiding it.