American Beauty 1999

Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune: It's a picture with a great cool shiny surface, and it boasts superb actors, witty and iconoclastic writing, vigorous and imaginative direction and brilliantly stylized cinematography. Read more

Kenneth Turan, Los Angeles Times: Beauty is 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. Read more

Jay Boyar, Orlando Sentinel: [The filmmakers'] attacks on real-estate agents, corporate America and suburbia aren't so much shooting fish in a barrel as they are shooting fish in a shallow dish. Read more

Carrie Rickey, Philadelphia Inquirer: Because the film's visual conception and most of its performances have such disturbing power, in dreamlike fragments American Beauty is able to burrow inside the cliche to understand how it came to be. Read more

John Hartl, Seattle Times: Alan Ball's script is a terrific piece of material, and Mendes responds directly to its subversive, provocative vision of a curdled American Dream. Read more

Richard Schickel, TIME Magazine: Boldly challenging our sympathies, [Lester] somehow wins them because, to borrow a phrase, he's a man in full. Read more

Susan Stark, Detroit News: American Beauty brings a bracing blend of cunning, insight and compassion to the drama of a suburban family coming apart. Read more

Philip Wuntch, Dallas Morning News: Startling, brilliantly assembled. Read more

Paul Clinton (CNN.com), CNN.com: American Beauty is deeply disturbing, acerbically funny, brilliantly acted, breathtakingly original and highly sophisticated. Read more

Janet Maslin, New York Times: As it detects increasingly vital signs of life behind the absurd surfaces that Mr. Mendes presents so beautifully, the film takes on a gravity to match its evil zest. Read more

Andrew Sarris, New York Observer: 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. Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer: Kevin Spacey gives the performance of his life. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal: Why, then, did I enjoy it so little? Because of its unrelenting self-importance: American Beauty wants us to know, in every shot at every turn, just how clever and mercilessly cutting it is. Read more

Mike Clark, USA Today: American Beauty is 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'. Read more

Eleanor Ringel Gillespie, Atlanta Journal-Constitution: At this point in the year, I'd readily call American Beauty one of the best movies of 1999. It is certainly the best-acted, with Kevin Spacey a standout among a stellar ensemble cast. Read more

Ted Anthony, Associated Press: American Beauty takes its place among the best family dramas of recent decades. Read more

Scott Tobias, AV Club: Mendes and screenwriter Alan Ball, both making their feature debuts, resort to a few heavy-handed tactics to get their points across, but their sheer audacity is so exhilarating it hardly matters. Read more

Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: [Beauty] is certainly adept at showing how awful life in the United States is at the moment -- and that's what gives it some bite. But it's no less adept at taking that awfulness and making it pleasurable to watch -- and that's what makes it entertaining. Read more

Jeff Millar, Houston Chronicle: I can't remember the last time I've seen a mainstream, big-studio release this well-acted. Read more

Owen Gleiberman, 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. Read more

Rick Groen, Globe and Mail: This is definitely a knife-to-the-heart movie -- the kind whose potent effect is easy to feel yet hard to describe. Read more

Ella Taylor, L.A. Weekly: An astonishingly assured first feature from transatlantic theater whiz kid Sam Mendes. Read more

David Ansen, Newsweek: American Beauty is a very funny film that packs an unexpected emotional wallop. Read more

David Denby, New Yorker: This amazing and impassioned fantasia about American loneliness begins as satire and ends with a vision of the sublime. Read more

Peter Rainer, New York Magazine/Vulture: Moviemakers who feel betrayed by the cheery sitcoms of their adolescence can now take it out on all the rest of us and, as a bonus, get points for profundity too. Read more

Jami Bernard, New York Daily News: American Beauty approaches a manic, almost cartoonish edge without falling over. Both Spacey and Bening use extraordinary comic timing to bring these very sad, lost characters to life. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews: Mendes can stake a claim alongside the likes of Kubrick and Egoyan as one whose cinematic vision both challenges and entertains. Read more

Roger Ebert, RogerEbert.com: American Beauty is a comedy because we laugh at the absurdity of the hero's problems. And a tragedy because we can identify with his failure. Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: The kind of artful defiance that Hollywood is usually too timid to deliver: a jolting comedy that makes you laugh till it hurts. Read more

Andrew O'Hehir, Salon.com: American Beauty offers one of the best ensemble casts you'll see in any American movie this year. Read more

Edward Guthmann, San Francisco Chronicle: A great, tremendously entertaining experience. I only wish there were more films this satisfying. Read more

David Edelstein, Slate: The hairpin turns from farce to melodrama, from satire to bathos, are fresh and deftly navigated, but almost every one of the underlying attitudes is smug and easy. Read more

Jeff Strickler, Minneapolis Star Tribune: This is Spacey's best performance since he took home an Oscar for The Usual Suspects. Read more

Tom Charity, Time Out: Director Mendes guides an artful path between desire and self-disgust, playing youth against experience, male against female. Read more

Todd McCarthy, Variety: An acerbic, darkly comic critique of how social conventions can lead people into false, sterile and emotionally stunted lives, American Beauty is a real American original. Read more

J. Hoberman, Village Voice: There's too much dead air around the dialogue and the comic pacing is nonexistent. Read more

Desson Thomson, Washington Post: Hilarious, painful and brutally frank. Read more