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100A tart, funny and tremendously sobering movie about the deepest recesses of personal unhappiness.
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100A flat-out masterpiece, surely the best movie of the year; indeed, an all-time classic.
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100A wonder of a film -- a luminous, beautifully executed drama that gathers the best cast of the year -- the best American film of the year.
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100A singular accomplishment so specifically keyed to Spacey's talents that it mandates going out on a limb to say it contains the performance that will ultimately be regarded as "the one."
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100Spacey is diamond-brilliant in a role that plays as if custom-made for him.
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100A movie that will endure.
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100Spacey, an actor who embodies intelligence in his eyes and voice, is the right choice for Lester Burnham.
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100A dynamite comedy-drama that, unless it stiffs big-time at the box office, should be up for multi-Oscar nominations come February.
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100A triumph of acting, writing and directing that defies glib description...the kind of artful defiance that Hollywood is usually too timid to deliver: a jolting comedy that makes you laugh till it hurts.
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100It gracefully defies the usual categories, gets under your skin in ways you cannot anticipate, then works its way straight toward the heart. It's far and away the bravest and best movie of the year.
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100A dark comical masterpiece that single-handedly announces the collapse of the American family infrastructure as it exists on the brink of Y2K.
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90Hilarious, slightly sick, and super-edgy ...the acting of its two principals, Annette Bening and Kevin Spacey, is so sublime that it's worth seeing on that grounds alone.
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90A blood-chilling dark comedy with unexpected moments of both fury and warmth, a strange, brooding and very accomplished film that sets us back on our heels from its opening frames.
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If you don't share the film's piercing vision of what really matters, someday you will.
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90A script as fresh and distinctive as any produced in the States in recent memory.
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90Hilarious, painful and brutally frank.
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90A brilliant satirical diagnosis of what's most screwed up about life in this country, especially when it comes to sexual frustration and kiddie porn.
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89A brilliant, exhilarating piece of filmmaking. It may even be the best mainstream film of the year thus far.
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88I've got to admit it's a stunner.
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88Remarkably astute and devastatingly funny.
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88(Mendes') film debut shows he can shock not only with noise and nakedness but with subtle observations.
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83You know you're in the hands of a true filmmaker when you feel invited, at every turn, to share his sense of entrancement. I got that feeling in just about every frame of American Beauty.
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83Though excellent in many ways, American Beauty is, finally, an uneasy mix of assured technique and simplistic satire.
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80Black comedy of the deepest, richest darkness laid over an aching meditation on the atrophy of dreams.
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80Surprises you with a kind of hardheaded romanticism.
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80Kevin Spacey (gives) a truly great performance.
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75A ruthless dissection of suburban malaise.
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75Mendes nonetheless works this screenplay like a jazz virtuoso plays with a familiar theme such as "Mary Had a Little Lamb."
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70If it is never really as profound as it seems to think it is, American Beauty is consistently entertaining, and it earns points simply for acknowledging that all may not be perfect in the current boom years.
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63A satire whose dead aim stops wounding - and starts making - stereotypes of white middle-classness.
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60It remains a puzzling dream, vivid in detail and overly obvious in symbolism, fueled by half-digested lumps of malice and wonder.
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40Bland and nasty, American Beauty has the slightly stale feel of a family sitcom conceived under the spell of "Married . . . With Children."
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40In the end, the film lacks the skill of its actors and ends up feeling disjointed and confused about its own message.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 81 out of 93
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Mixed: 2 out of 93
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Negative: 10 out of 93
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"American Beauty" is a masterful film. Kevin Spacey is at it's best and the film is filled with allegories and symbolism. A must watch.
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10
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10