Kevin Spacey

After a disappointing summer where the only real standouts were "The Perfect Storm," which made a star of the weather, and Clint Eastwood's "Space Cowboys," about four geriatric astronauts, movie audiences are left with only one hope: That Hollywood was holding back its best stuff for after Labor Day. At least in recent years, that's been the pattern, as major studios wait until the last three months of the year to release any film with a remote chance...

The big revelation of "The Big Kahuna" is that we're all salesmen, whether we're selling our products or ourselves. Forgive me for being underwhelmed. Unimaginatively directed and too stagebound for the big screen, "The Big Kahuna" features Kevin Spacey and Danny DeVito as industrial-lubricant salesmen determined to land a big client. They'd also like to break in their new partner, who has the peculiar notion there are more important things in life than the hard sell. Spacey is Larry, a smooth talker who, when he's not pitching a product, is being brutally honest with anyone unfortunate enough to be within earshot.

Best Actor: Kevin Spacey, "American Beauty" Best Actress: Hilary Swank, "Boys Don't Cry" Best Supporting Actor: Michael Caine, "The Cider House Rules" Best Supporting Actress: Angelina Jolie, "Girl, Interrupted" Best Picture: "American Beauty" Best Director: Sam Mendes, "American Beauty"

Best Actor: Kevin Spacey, "American Beauty" Best Actress: Hilary Swank, "Boys Don't Cry" Best Supporting Actor: Michael Caine, "The Cider House Rules" Best Supporting Actress: Angelina Jolie, "Girl, Interrupted" Best Picture: "American Beauty" Best Director: Sam Mendes, "American Beauty"

The Oscar race had no clear favorites, but in the end it belonged to "American Beauty." A darkly satiric look at suburbia, sex and self-discovery, "American Beauty" won five Oscars at last night's 72nd annual Academy Awards telecast, including best picture, best director and cinematography. Kevin Spacey, who played a man going through a mid-life catharsis in the film, won the Oscar for best actor. It was the second Academy Award for Spacey, who won in 1996 for his supporting role in "The Usual Suspects."

In the course of what always seems like an endless Oscars ceremony, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has never seen fit to recognize or reward what most filmgoers remember from the preceding year: the Best Moment at the Movies. But this year, the Academy has at least nominated most of the films that provided those moments. Who can forget Kevin Spacey's first toke in "American Beauty"? Or the opening strains of "Chan-Chan" in "Buena Vista Social Club"? Or Matthew Broderick's sly updating of Ferris Bueller in "Election"?

It isn't true that life begins at 40, at least not for Kevin Spacey. Professionally speaking, Spacey, who turned 40 in July, has been surfing a jet stream since 1995, when he imprinted himself on our collective consciousness as the most unusual of "The Usual Suspects."He gave Hollywood its archetypal crazed movie exec in "Swimming With Sharks," turned slightly more lethal as the manipulative serial killer in the Stygian "Seven," and seemed to surprise even himself as a smooth cop working both sides of the street, then rediscovering his idealism, in "L.A.

"Hurlyburly" is a mean, inconsequential trifle, a sort of malign parlor drama where cocaine and booze have taken the parts of tea and crumpets.Based on David Rabe's play of the same name, it has a dated feel, as if it's discovering misogyny, ritualized aggression and the meaninglessness of popular culture for the first time.Coming on the heels of a year with its share of abusive behavior on screen -- from the malevolently shallow "Your Friends and Neighbors" to the more acute but no less depressing "Happiness" -- "Hurlyburly" is about as much fun as holding a bag of screaming weasels.

"The Negotiator" is proof that good acting -- make that terrific acting -- can make even the flimsiest story work.No matter that events move too quickly, characters snap too easily, police work is too shoddy, plot points are grasped too quickly. All is forgiven when you've got actors the caliber of Samuel L. Jackson and Kevin Spacey up on screen, working at the top of their game. They're both great, and their performances -- combined with the sure-handed, tautly paced direction of F. Gary Gray ("Set It Off")

"Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil," Clint Eastwood's adaptation of John Berendt's best-selling book, is a failure, but it isn't easy to pin down why.Perhaps it's because the movie is at least a half-hour too long. Maybe it's because its few adequate performances are outweighed by the shockingly inadequate ones.It could be that the book's eccentrics and reprobates were so vivid that a screen version can only disappoint. Or that the rarefied universe of Berendt's Savannah can never be re-created within the confines of a feature film.