Also in theaters, 3/27.

By David Hudson on 03/27/2009

Once you've seen "Monsters vs Aliens," "Guest of Cindy Sherman" and "Goodbye Solo," then what?

"Shall We Kiss?"

"If they're French, even dweebs get to lounge around tastefully beige Paris interiors, clutching long-stemmed glasses of Merlot while discussing the potential collateral damage of an exploratory kiss on the lips," sighs Ella Taylor in the Voice. "In Emmanuel Mouret's comedie d'amour, the writer-director plays a skinny, cow-eyed math teacher who asks his best friend, a skinny, sloe-eyed, and very married scientist, played by Virginie Ledoyen, to kick-start his dormant libido. She agrees with misgivings, the two rationalists fall helplessly in love, and from that moment on, in this more masturbatory than carnal folie, they never shut up."

"Confining his action to a few thinly defined settings, using almost exclusively neutral backgrounds (at least in the central narrative), Mouret ensures that his film has no connection with any recognizable reality, instead creating an abstracted space in which his pretty leads can play out their matters of the heart, unimpeded by any complicating social considerations." Andrew Schenker in Slant: "While there's nothing necessarily wrong with such an insular, apolitical approach, in this context it only reinforces the feeling that, for all the film's musings on the nature of love, what we're dealing with here is a hopelessly makeweight affair, a finely-crafted, but ultimately dispensable bit of entertainment."

"Mouret has also been compared to Eric Rohmer, and, as is the case with most filmmakers who get compared with Eric Rohmer, it's more to do with people not really getting Rohmer than any real affinity," notes IFC guest critic Glenn Kenny.

More from David Fear (Time Out New York), Charley McLean (Critic's Notebook), Noel Murray (AV Club), Andrew Sarris (New York Observer), Sarah Silver (Reverse Shot), Henry Stewart (L) and James van Maanen.

"American Swing"

"As portrayed in the cheerfully nostalgic 'American Swing,' [Larry] Levenson's brainchild, a heterosexual swing club, was the product of its era, the natural if tacky spawn of both 1960s sexual upheavals and 1970s consumerism," writes Eric Henderson in Slant. "A staunch advocate of the female body, Levenson snatched the hedonism of New York's gay clubs, while steadfastly refusing to tolerate any male-male contact within his shrine, and maintained an atmosphere where adventurous women felt they weren't being objectified, but celebrated... and if a few of them wanted to trace their french-manicured fingers along each other's sugarwalls, all the better. Which is to say 'American Swing' is to the likely true story of Plato's Retreat what Vivid Video is to real sex: an antiperspirant, fartless fantasy."

The doc "unwittingly reminds us that homos were getting it on to much better music back then," notes Melissa Anderson in the Voice.

"If a tragic hero can also be a sweet schlub from the outer boroughs, then 'American Swing' makes a pretty good case for Levenson as a tragic hero," finds Phil Nugent in Screengrab.

More from Leah Churner (Reverse Shot), David Fear (Time Out New York), Stephen Holden (New York Times), Robert Levin (Critic's Notebook), Nick McCarthy (L) and Scott Tobias (AV Club).

Interviews with directors Matthew Kaufman and Jon Hart: James van Maanen and Lauren Wissot (SpoutBlog).

"The Country Teacher"

"If great movies resulted purely from wizardly technical displays, then Czech writer-director Bohdan Sláma's 'The Country Teacher' would be a masterpiece to give Béla Tarr pause," writes Keith Uhlich in Time Out New York. "Save for an occasional insert, Sláma and cinematographer Divis Marek shoot each of the film's sequences in elaborately choreographed single takes.... But the strikingly introspective mood dissipates when Sláma offers a reason for his character's visible anxiety - he's a repressed homosexual on the metaphorical run. Contrived melodrama and facile symbolism take over from there..."

"Given the baby steps currently being taken into gay-themed cinema in Central and Eastern Europe, one wants to look kindly on any movie that won Best Queer Film at the Reykjavík Film Festival last year," writes Ella Taylor in the Voice. "But this sweetly ingenuous film... is a lot less sentimental about cows and flowers than it is about its human protagonists, who fall domino-like in love with churls who won't love them back."

"'The Country Teacher' suggests a gay-straight variation on Somerset Maugham's 'Rain,' with the melodrama tempered, the story given a soft landing," finds Stephen Holden in the NYT.

More from Benjamin Mercer (L) and Nick Schager (Slant); James Van Maanen talks with Sláma.

"The Education of Charlie Banks"

"As the singer for 90's nu metal band Limp Bizkit, Fred Durst claimed he did it 'all for the nookie,'" recalls Jürgen Fauth. "But to hear him tell it now, all he ever really wanted was to direct. Given Durst's volatile and controversy-rich public persona, his first feature film 'The Education of Charlie Banks' is a surprisingly amiable coming-of-age tale that is especially remarkable for its honesty about class."

"I'm not against the crossover urge, but what makes an old hand at quick, short blasts of sonic energy think material like this has to drip with meaning rather than be enjoyably nail-biting and nasty?" asks Robert Abele in the LAT.

"If it's a failure, at least it's a laudable one instead of cynically by-the-numbers," argues Vadim Rizov in the Voice.

More from Jeannette Catsoulis (NYT), Stephen Garrett (Time Out New York) and Stephanie Zacharek (Salon).

Michael Ordoña talks with Jason Ritter for the LAT; Tribeca Film's Elisabeth Donnelly talks with Durst.

"The Haunting in Connecticut"

"'Why do bad things happen to good people?' durable Christian matriarch Sarah Campbell asks during the baffling, pointless and ultimately shelved faux-documentary framing device of 'The Haunting in Connecticut.'" Josef Braun: "A better question might have been why good actors wind up in bad movies. Why, for the love of god, is Virginia Madsen playing Sarah, a one-note protagonist required above all to cough up countless variations on hysterical worry? Why is Martin Donovan, so deft with deadpan comedy in Hal Hartley films, playing Peter Donovan, a dopey workin' dad in baggy plaid shirts whose one big, very silly scene finds him smashing his guitar in melodramatic despair? Above all, why the hell is the woefully underused Elias Koteas playing an overly reverential reverend in this mostly limpid, paralyzingly generic haunted house horror (see 'Amityville,' 'Poltergeist' et al)? Perhaps the scariest thing in 'The Haunting in Connecticut' is the implications it poses to any non-megastar yet talented actor over the age of 40."

At Screengrab, Phil Nugent offers a brief history of the "Bullshit 'True' Horror Movie."

More on this one from Jeannette Catsoulis (NYT), Alonso Duralde (MSNBC), Scott Foundas (Voice), William Goss (Cinematical), Joe Leydon (Variety), Mark Olsen (LAT), Keith Phipps (AV Club) and Nick Schager (Slant).

And...

"A college dean at an elite Vermont university confronts her own racist leanings in 'Spinning Into Butter,' a drama that will work or not largely depending if you thought 'Crash' was revelatory or risible," writes Glenn Whipp in the LAT. "This film adaptation of Rebecca Gilman's play has taken a circuitous route to the screen, despite Sarah Jessica Parker's headlining presence. Completed in 2006, the film finally arrives months after Americans have elected their first black president." More from Jason Clark (Slant), Aaron Hillis (Voice), Stephen Holden (NYT) and Glenn Kenny (IFC).

"Easy on the eyes but brutal on the ears, 'The Perfect Sleep' fuses Shakespearean tragedy and noir iconography into a strange, lovely, leaden ball of confusion," writes Jeannette Catsoulis in the NYT. "Attempting a mythic tale of warring dynasties and ancient grudges, the director, Jeremy Alter, wavers between homage and parody." More from Lance Goldenberg (Voice) and Henry Stewart (Slant).

"Beginning in 1968, the evangelical minister Arthur Blessitt took it upon himself to carry a large wooden crucifix around the world," writes Nathan Lee in the NYT. "One man's higher calling is another man's monumentally pointless waste of time, but you won't find much reflection in 'The Cross.' If Mr Blessit's calling appears, from certain perspectives, a fairly demented way to spend one's life, the point of view taken in this fawning documentary portrait is restricted to that of an awestruck acolyte." More from Tim Grierson in the Voice.

In the UK: The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw reviews Afghan Star, the doc about Afghanistan's version of "American Idol"; and: "Viewing Michael Winterbottom's supernatural family drama 'Genova' for a second time... is an intriguing but frustrating re-encounter. It is impossible not to admire the fluency and intelligence of Winterbottom's filmmaking, and his prolific output. Yet 'Genova' is a disappointment, more like a tentative sketch for a movie than the actual finished product."

[Photos: "Shall We Kiss?," Music Box Films, 2007; "Spinning Into Butter," Screen Media Films, 2007]

Tags: Bohdan Sláma, Emmanuel Mouret, Fred Durst, Virginie Ledoyen