American Beauty is deeply disturbing, acerbically funny, brilliantly acted, breathtakingly original and highly sophisticated.

| Feb 22, 2015

A tightly coiled rage seethes beneath the pretty surface of American Beauty, a wickedly funny black comedy directed by newcomer Sam Mendes.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Feb 22, 2015

This is Spacey's best performance since he took home an Oscar for The Usual Suspects.

| Feb 22, 2015

This engrossing centrepiece meshes with subplots involving Burnham's dysfunctional family and unbalanced neighbours, in a virtuoso study of isolation, repression and fulfilment. Mendes infuses the lush visuals and lyrical script with dramatic panache.

| Feb 22, 2015

With its parade of neurotics, psychotics, bigots and deceivers, American Beauty is an endlessly rewatchable black comedy.

| Original Score: 5/5 | Feb 22, 2015

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.

| May 8, 2014

Kevin Spacey gives the performance of his life.

| May 8, 2014

Alan Ball's script is a terrific piece of material, and Mendes responds directly to its subversive, provocative vision of a curdled American Dream.

| Original Score: 4/4 | Jan 28, 2014

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.

| Jan 28, 2014

[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.

| Jan 28, 2014

Flaws and all, this is intelligent, exhilarating, effervescent film-making, and a remarkable debut from Sam Mendes.

| Jan 28, 2014

Boldly challenging our sympathies, [Lester] somehow wins them because, to borrow a phrase, he's a man in full.

| Jan 28, 2014

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.

| Jan 28, 2014

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.

| Jan 28, 2014

This amazing and impassioned fantasia about American loneliness begins as satire and ends with a vision of the sublime.

Full Review | Feb 24, 2013

Powerful acting, great story, but far too mature for kids.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 14, 2010

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.

| Original Score: 92/100 | Jun 7, 2010

It's daring in that it sympathizes with a protagonist who's a pederast though its portrait of an American family on the brink of collapse is essentially a cartoon

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Jun 5, 2008

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.

| Apr 27, 2007

Director Mendes guides an artful path between desire and self-disgust, playing youth against experience, male against female.

| Feb 9, 2006