american beauty
there’s a reason american beauty is rated by imdb.com users as the 31st top film; it is a world classic. it also happens to have several of my favorite actors, in top notch performances:
kevin spacey
mena suvari
chris cooper
peter gallagher
re chris cooper’s reaction to being offered the difficult part he eventually took into movie history:
When he first read the script, he found the character infuriating, thinking: “God, do I want to spend so much time in this character’s head?” He remembers, “Then I started making excuses… I said, this is such a negative script, I don’t like this and that.” His wife finally told him he was “frightened of this script and chances are because you’re frightened you should do this part”; his response was that he “knew, really immediately, that she was right.”
though its hardly erotic, the sex scene between peter gallagher and annette bening is 
one i’m sure to always turn up and watch if i happen to be doing something else when it arrives. movies were invented for such treats. quotable as it gets.
as often noted by geeks, the photo above is not of the deadly gorgeous mena suvari, but rather the dangerously gorgeous chloe hunter. (a switch made for viewer safety, i’m sure.)