"American Beauty" won so many awards because it took two sources that were edgy and dangerous (Todd Solondz's "happiness" and Joseph Heller's "Something Happenned") and reworked them into palatable pablum that didn't push too many buttons, just like most of what wins awards these days...a REALLY good example is "Forrest Gump", which was based on a cruelly satiric novel, and became the feel-good movie of the year in the hands of Robert Zemechis (or as I like to call him, the American Leni Riefensthal).

But as I said earlier, there have been MANY great films coming from america lately, and I think it'd be a shame to gloss over them...as I said earlier, "Magnolia" has my vote as THE best movie from the 90's...and there are other greats such as "Cider House Rules", "Happiness", "Rushmore", "Fight Club", "Ghost Dog", "Fargo", "Men In Black", and many many more that I can totally see being the definitive films from the last decade...and to skip over them just because they were american would be a shame.