American Beauty Reviews
Total Film
American Beauty is a profoundly satisfying piece of cinema which works its way inside you, grabs hold of your heart and simply refuses to let go.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Top CriticThis amazing and impassioned fantasia about American loneliness begins as satire and ends with a vision of the sublime.
2UE That Movie Show
American Beauty was a deserving best picture and Lester's rich existential journey and social commentary of modern America peels away the inauthentic and superficial to reveal the epic allure in a bleak suburbia.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
Common Sense Media
Powerful acting, great story, but far too mature for kids.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
AskMen.com
The flaws that exist in American Beauty are effortlessly overcome by a cast that blossoms. Spacey in particular exhibits a rare wit and gravitas with Lester's weary frowns and cutting smirks, proving his mettle in this career peak performance.
Full Review
| Original Score: 92/100
Film4
One of the most startling, brilliant pictures to come out of a major studio in many years.
eFilmCritic.com
An elusive and allusive work of art that won't be pinned down easily.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/5
Big Picture Big Sound
Recently, Happiness and Election have taken pot shots at suburban morals and ethics, but none has hit so close to the bone and so on-target as American Beauty.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3.5/4
As the latest mainstream movie symptom of our premillennial malaise, American Beauty is so brilliantly acted, written, directed and visualized that for all its despondency and despair, it is a lot of fun.
Cinema Sight
An incisive if over-the-top take on familial dysfunction.
| Original Score: 3.5/4
Arizona Daily Star
Above all, "American Beauty" is about finding peace and a sense of wonder in the least likely of places, such as your inner torment or, failing that, perhaps a floating plastic bag.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
EmanuelLevy.Com
Brit Sam Mendes makes an impressive directorial debut with a glossy, well-acted satire of the American burbs, a theatrically stylized meditation that combines the zeitgeist of 1950s Eisnehower with that of 1990s Clinton.
Full Review
| Original Score: B+
Combustible Celluloid
Dark, intelligent, scandalous, emotional, and truthful -- one of the year's best.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Director Mendes guides an artful path between desire and self-disgust, playing youth against experience, male against female.
Reeling Reviews
This is what movies are all about.
Full Review
| Original Score: A
Draxblog Movie Reviews
As the world changed in the past five years, so did the relevance of American Beauty.
Full Review | Original Score: 5/10
Courier-Journal (Louisville, KY)
Like Network in the 1970s and Ordinary People in the '80s, American Beauty is a scathing reflection of contemporary American life.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/4
Film Quips Online
Spacey's style and delivery save the film time after time.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4/5
Entertainment Today
Filled with moments of uncommon intelligence, sensitivity, truth and wit, American Beauty is an instant American classic.
Full Review
| Original Score: A
Film Threat
It is a great film and will definitely be regarded as one of the best films of the 90's ... right next to Titanic.
Full Review
| Original Score: 4.5/5
