| 100 |
Chicago Sun-Times
Spacey, an actor who embodies intelligence in his eyes and voice, is the right choice for Lester Burnham.
|
| 100 |
TNT RoughCut
A dark comical masterpiece that single-handedly announces the collapse of the American family infrastructure as it exists on the brink of Y2K.
|
| 100 |
Dallas Observer
It 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.
|
| 100 |
New York Daily News
A tart, funny and tremendously sobering movie about the deepest recesses of personal unhappiness.
|
| 100 |
Boston Globe
Spacey is diamond-brilliant in a role that plays as if custom-made for him.
|
| 100 |
San Francisco Chronicle
A wonder of a film -- a luminous, beautifully executed drama that gathers the best cast of the year -- the best American film of the year.
|
| 100 |
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
A dynamite comedy-drama that, unless it stiffs big-time at the box office, should be up for multi-Oscar nominations come February.
|
| 100 |
USA Today
A 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."
|
| 100 |
New York Post
Rod Dreher
A flat-out masterpiece, surely the best movie of the year; indeed, an all-time classic.
|
| 100 |
Rolling Stone
A 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.
|
| 100 |
Baltimore Sun
A movie that will endure.
|
| 90 |
The New York Times
Janet Maslin
If you don't share the film's piercing vision of what really matters, someday you will.
|
| 90 |
Chicago Reader
A brilliant satirical diagnosis of what's most screwed up about life in this country, especially when it comes to sexual frustration and kiddie porn.
|
| 90 |
Los Angeles Times
A 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.
|
| 90 |
Film.com
Hilarious, 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.
|
| 90 |
Washington Post
Hilarious, painful and brutally frank.
|
| 90 |
Variety
A script as fresh and distinctive as any produced in the States in recent memory.
|
| 89 |
Austin Chronicle
A brilliant, exhilarating piece of filmmaking. It may even be the best mainstream film of the year thus far.
|
| 88 |
Charlotte Observer
(Mendes') film debut shows he can shock not only with noise and nakedness but with subtle observations.
|
| 88 |
Chicago Tribune
I've got to admit it's a stunner.
|
| 88 |
Miami Herald
Remarkably astute and devastatingly funny.
|
| 83 |
Portland Oregonian
Though excellent in many ways, American Beauty is, finally, an uneasy mix of assured technique and simplistic satire.
|
| 83 |
Entertainment Weekly
You 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.
|
| 80 |
TV Guide
Black comedy of the deepest, richest darkness laid over an aching meditation on the atrophy of dreams.
|
| 80 |
Time
Kevin Spacey (gives) a truly great performance.
|
| 80 |
LA Weekly
Surprises you with a kind of hardheaded romanticism.
|
| 75 |
Christian Science Monitor
A ruthless dissection of suburban malaise.
|
| 75 |
Philadelphia Inquirer
Mendes nonetheless works this screenplay like a jazz virtuoso plays with a familiar theme such as "Mary Had a Little Lamb."
|
| 70 |
Film.com
If 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.
|
| 63 |
San Francisco Examiner
A satire whose dead aim stops wounding - and starts making - stereotypes of white middle-classness.
|
| 60 |
Salon.com
It remains a puzzling dream, vivid in detail and overly obvious in symbolism, fueled by half-digested lumps of malice and wonder.
|
| 40 |
Village Voice
Bland and nasty, American Beauty has the slightly stale feel of a family sitcom conceived under the spell of "Married . . . With Children."
|
| 40 |
Newsweek
Ann-Rebecca Laschever
In 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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