American Beauty was among other things a murder mystery. Keeping the mystery til the end is the reason for soem of those devices.

The corpse of Spacey's character is narrating the picture. Everything in the picture and each character is seen from his point of view.

I loved a lot of things about fight club. The plot wasn't one of them. But I don't see any other way they could have told the story. The novel writer in his commentary on the dvd explains the genesis of some of the characters and their actions.

Movies are a business, the market must be served. Every year there are three or four movies which are works of art and worth watching. Last year,"The Shipping News",and "A Beautiful mind" were two of them.