Also in theaters, 5/1.

By David Hudson on 05/01/2009

With the exceptions of "The Limits of Control" and "Revanche" and probably a good two or three more titles below, this looks like a quantity-over-quality sort of week.

"Three Monkeys"

"What is it about 'Three Monkeys' that pulls you out of yourself?" asks Stuart Klawans in the Nation. "The answer, which marks this film as pure cinema, is 'Everything at once.' Where other directors might set the scene with an establishing shot, [Nuri Bilge] Ceylan uses sound. Where others would use sound to fill out the emotional volume of a sequence, Ceylan uses editing. And where others would introduce a car crash, Ceylan holds the camera steady on Hatice Aslan's face and lets her show you the light going out of her eyes. There isn't an element, a gesture, a moment of 'Three Monkeys' that doesn't lock in with the others and feel true."

"The mood of 'Distant' is pretty well summed up in the title, and while 'Climates' begins in warm sunshine, it feels most at home in the wintry landscape of its final scenes," writes AO Scott in the New York Times. "Mr Ceylan's latest movie, 'Three Monkeys,' which earned him an award for directing at Cannes last year, is in some ways a departure. The long takes and exquisite compositions are still there, but this time Mr Ceylan trains his cool, detached sensibility on a ripe and pulpy melodrama that might have originated in a James M Cain novel.... Good pulp depends, above all, on a ruthless sense of economy, and 'Three Monkeys' is just a bit too profligate, too fancy, to be entirely convincing."

More from Benjamin Mercer (L), Nicolas Rapold (Voice), Jeff Reichert (Reverse Shot), Joshua Rothkopf (Time Out New York), Michael Tully (Hammer to Nail) and Bill Weber (Slant).

"The Merry Gentlemen"

"Michael Keaton gives an intriguingly subdued performance in 'The Merry Gentleman,' his glacially paced, almost perversely understated directorial debut," writes Nathan Rabin at the AV Club. "It's a film that never shouts when it can whisper cryptically. Its somber, wintery tone is one of its greatest strengths and biggest weaknesses. If ever a film needed a double shot of espresso and a swift kick in the caboose, it's this one. At best, the film is hypnotic; at worst, it challenges - no, dares - audiences not to fall asleep."

But the NYT's Manohla Dargis admires this "austere, nearly pitch-perfect character study of two mismatched yet ideally matched souls" so much she's hoping there'll be a sequel.

More from Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), Nicolas Rapold (Voice), Hank Sartin (L), Andrew Schenker (Slant), IFC guest critic Gene Seymour, Betsy Sharkey (LAT)

Choire Sicha talks with Keaton for the Los Angeles Times.

"Eldorado"

"In 'Eldorado,' a road movie that poignantly juggles absurdism and melancholy, the summertime landscape of the Wallonia region of Belgium is filmed to resemble a miniaturized American West," writes Stephen Holden in the NYT. "The soundtrack for this story of two mutually suspicious strangers who establish a tentative bond on a highway to nowhere echoes the twang of Ennio Morricone with a hint of parody."

"Writer, director and star [Bouli] Lanners, whose forthcoming, entrancingly weird 'Louise-Michel' recently premiered at the Museum of Modern Art/Film Society of Lincoln Center's New Directors/New Films series, exhibits a sturdy command of tone in his follow-up to 2005's 'Ultranova,'" writes Nick Schager in Screengrab.

"Despite occasional stabs at humor, 'Eldorado' is a tragedy; most poignantly because in spite of the film's malodorous editorial flaws, it works as a visceral experience, taunting us with potential that a better script could have seized and actualized." Joseph Jon Lanthier in Slant.

"When the traveling companions reveal their backstories, the monologues avoid mawkishness, further upending all low expectations of this frequently trite genre," writes Melissa Anderson in the Voice. "In its final act, Lanners's film is smart and confident enough to acknowledge that certain lives are dead ends, while others get tired of just spinning their wheels."

More from David Fear (TONY), Benjamin H Sutton (L) and James Van Maanen.

"X-Men Origins: Wolverine"

"I had the privilege of interviewing Gavin Hood shortly before he won the Oscar for directing 'Tsotsi,'" begins Canfield at Twitch. "It was a well-deserved win. And based on that interview I thought that it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.... Later when I heard that Hood had snared the 'Wolverine' gig I thought it was a trifle odd. Here was a guy, coming straight off a Best Foreign Film win, basically coming in for hire, and he's going to be working at a studio with a big reputation for screwing over major talent and ruining franchises." Perhaps you can see where this is going. To cut to the chase: "Congratulations Fox, you've made a movie that will anger the hardcore fans and bore everyone else."

More from Jeffrey M Anderson (Cinematical), John Anderson (Washington Post), Richard Corliss (Time), Alonso Duralde (MSNBC), Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), Robert Horton (Herald), Jonathan Kiefer, Derek Malcolm (Evening Standard), Keith Phipps (AV Club), Andrew Pulver (Guardian), James Rocchi (MSN), Sukhdev Sandhu (Telegraph), Nick Schager (Slant), AO Scott (NYT), Dana Stevens (Slate), Kenneth Turan (Los Angeles Times), Robert Wilonsky (Voice) and Stephanie Zacharek (Salon).

In Slate, Grady Hendrix traces the history of the character.

Fred Topel talks with Hood for Suicide Girls.

Emma Rosenblum meets Ryan Reynolds for New York.

Time Out London's got a compact special.

"Ghosts of Girlfriends Past"

"Comfort zones don't come much plusher than the one habitually occupied by Matthew McConaughey, who must read the words 'arrogant, torso-flaunting alpha male' in script synopses and think: 'That'll do.'" Tim Robey in the Telegraph: "This bed-hopping playboy has been there, done J Lo in 'The Wedding Planner,' Sarah Jessica Parker in 'Failure to Launch' and Kate Hudson - twice. All this stands him in perfect stead for the knowingly silly 'Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.'"

But Alonso Duralde, writing for MSNBC, finds his "self-satisfied and oleaginous performance scrapes away the trace amounts of charm the film has to offer."

Which isn't much, to hear Manohla Dargis tell it in the NYT. This is "a junky-looking romantic comedy that's neither remotely romantic nor passably comic."

More from Melissa Anderson (Voice), Peter Bradshaw (Guardian), Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), David Fear (TONY), Robert Horton (Herald), James Rocchi (Redbox), Betsy Sharkey (LAT), Lydia Storie (Critic's Notebook), Jan Stuart (Washington Post) and Scott Tobias (AV Club).

And...

"War action, environmental dangers and a message of inter-species harmony combine with spirited results in the 3-D CG-animated feature 'Battle for Terra,' an atmospheric sci-fi saga that may lack major studio marketing heft, but deserves a chance to win over toon-tested audiences," writes Robert Abele in the LAT. More from Alonso Duralde (MSNBC), Roger Ebert (Chicago Sun-Times), Neil Genzlinger (NYT), Robert Horton (Herald), Shawn Levy (Oregonian), Vadim Rizov (Voice), James Rocchi (Redbox), Nick Schager (Slant), Scott Tobias (AV Club), Keith Uhlich (TONY) and Sam Weisberg (L).

Nathan Lee in the New York Times on "I Can See You": "The multitasking filmmaker Graham Reznick (who wrote, directed, co-produced, edited and partly scored the movie) calls his debut 'a psychedelic campfire tale,' which is as good a description as any for this elusive, experimental scare flick." More from Nicholas Rapold in the Voice: "[T]his surprising horror debut hits us where it hurts by turning vision itself into a mind-frying source of anxiety." And more, too, from Michael Tully at Hammer to Nail.

"A TV-grade suspenser from the director of 'Dorian Blues,' 'The Skeptic' channels the spirit of 'Murder, She Wrote' and '3-2-1 Contact's' Bloodhound Gang, following the star of 'Wings' and 'Private Practice' into an ostensibly haunted Victorian manse in order to watch him go through the obligatory motions of shedding his doubting-Thomas skin," writes Ed Gonzalez in the Voice. It's a "tepid horror-comedy," finds Fernando F Croce in Slant. In the New York Times, Stephen Holden notes that it "turns into a cut-and-dried Freudian melodrama that gives repressed memory a supernatural dimension. I'll take a bunch of teenagers terrorized by chain-saw-wielding zombies any day."

"Anne Aghion's 'Ice People' suffers from being released on the heels of Werner Herzog's lunatic 'Encounters at the End of the World,' but to be fair, the two docs have nothing in common aside from the Antarctica setting," writes Vadim Rizov in the Voice. "While Herzog set up base camp at McMurdo Station, Aghion squats with the scientists in the wilderness." More from Andrew Grant in TONY: "With its lack of narration and subjective distance, the film is a uniquely meditative, psychological portrait of individuals who approach scientific exploration with the passion and fervor of artists." And from Andrew Schenker (Slant).

In "Home," "Marcia Gay Harden elevates an otherwise modest picture as poet and recovering breast-cancer patient Inga, a doting mother who, by day, flies kites and points out cloud pareidolia with her spirited young daughter, Indigo (Eulala Scheel, Harden's real-life kid)." Aaron Hillis in the Voice; more from Stephen Holden (NYT).

"'A Wink and a Smile' combines a survey of the underground burlesque resurgence, in which the traditional striptease style is often subverted to ironic effect, with a look at the gradual mainstreaming of that fringe revival, and the decidedly above-ground women who are attracted to the form for the least ironic reason imaginable: self-empowerment." Michelle Orange in the Voice. More from Linnea Covington (New York Press), James Van Maanen, Chris Wisniewski (indieWIRE) and Lauren Wissot (SpoutBlog).

"'Jazz in the Diamond District' appears designed to invite the abject scorn of critics, but forces itself toward center stage anyhow - much as the film's protagonist strikes us as a hothead who possesses the talent, but not the conviction for artistic communication," writes Joseph Jon Lanthier in Slant. In the Voice, Aaron Hillis finds it "funky, in a bad way."

In the UK

"Helen" looks to be by far the most interesting release in the UK today and, as it turns out, Ben Slater, who edited the screenplay, has already gathered - and commented on - any and all noteworthy linkage. At the very least, I can offer a digest of his digest: See Peter Bradshaw (Guardian), Ryan Gilbey (New Statesman) and Jon Fortgang (Channel 4).

Helen Pidd talks with Nicola and Teena Collins, twin daughters of an East End gangster, about their doc, "The End." Peter Bradshaw finds the film "has some interest as a set of case-studies in sociopathic conceit."

[Photos: "Three Monkeys," Zeitgeist Films, 2008; "Eldorado," Film Movement, 2008; "X-Men Origins: Wolverine," 20th Century Fox, 2009; "Battle for Terra," Lionsgate, 2009; "Helen," New Wave Films, 2008]

Tags: Bouli Lanners, Gavin Hood, Matthew McConaughey, Michael Keaton, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, Three Monkeys, Wolverine