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Swingers Doug Liman (15) Unforgettable John Dahl (15) Someone Else's America Goran Paskaljevic (15) Bang Ash (18) Murder at 1600 Dwight Little (15) Thinner Tom Holland (18) By Ryan Gilbey

Enjoy Swingers while you can. If this warm and witty American comedy turns out to be a popular success, as it fully deserves to, then you will spend the approaching summer running for cover from pub bores intent on adapting its characters' sparkling idiom as their own. Wherever you go, there will be men trumpeting their desire to seek out "the beautiful babies", while "money" - as in "you're so money" - is destined to become the adjective of the year. Sounds grisly, doesn't it? And it could have been. After all, the film's heroes are pitiful no-hopers, video-game junkies and narcissistic wide boys. Some of them are even struggling actors.

They spend their lives drifting from one Hollywood party to the next, collecting the telephone numbers of women they have wasted the evening plucking up the nerve to talk to, before bickering with each other about the number of days which should elapse between getting that number and actually dialling it. One character, the lovesick Mike (played by the film's writer Jon Favreau), is so pathetic that even his answerphone starts consoling him about his recent break-up. By this point, you might have realised that the picture's title has an ironic lilt to it.

But the wonderful thing about Swingers is that it gracefully straddles the line between self-deprecation and celebration. The film-makers clearly adore their often vain and nerdy characters and, thanks to some delicious performances, so do we. It's an ensemble piece, though you can't help warming to Trent, played with piercing confidence by the dazzling Vince Vaughn. Doug Liman shot the picture quickly and cheaply, and it has a kinetic feel without seeming ragged. There's just one major flaw, when the friends discuss Goodfellas and Reservoir Dogs, and Liman reciprocates by throwing in some heavy-handed homages to Scorsese and Tarantino.

Everything else here is painfully authentic, right down to the minor character who scoffs at the idea of playing Goofy at Disneyland until a paucity of alternative opportunities makes him hunger for the part as though it were Hamlet.

Writing to your folks to tell them you're playing an oversized mutt in a theme-park would be embarrassing. But I would have loved to have witnessed the moment when those actors chosen to portray "Male Nude Corpse" and "Female Nude Corpse" in the new film Unforgettable broke the news to their nearest and dearest. What could have cushioned the blow? "It's a start"? "You've got to get your foot in the door somehow, dear"?

Let me assure the parents of "Male Nude Corpse" and "Female Nude Corpse" that they should be proud of their offspring - they are the most understated things in this ludicrous (and ludicrously enjoyable) film. Its director, John Dahl, is best known for breathing new life into modern noir with sly thrillers like The Last Seduction and Red Rock West. But there is not a high-heeled shoe or a splash of chiaroscuro lighting to be seen. Ray Liotta plays Dr David Krane, a widowed pathologist who stumbles upon the work of Dr Martha Briggs (Linda Fiorentino), a neurobiologist whose experiments with cerebral spinal fluid suggest that memories can be transferred between brains. Krane recognises this as the only way to discover the identity of his spouse's killer, and manages to squeeze in a fix of his late wife's CSF before tea-time.

The translation of sensual experience is an idea borrowed from Brainstorm via Strange Days. And while it's disappointing that Dahl couldn't find a more distinctive visual setting for Krane's trips down other people's memory lanes than a raging storm, the role of the picture's hero remains intriguing. Krane is a passive observer throughout, a witness to events and emotions with which he is powerless to interfere - something like the position of the cinema audience, as demonstrated most fluently in Rear Window. Although Dahl lacks Hitchcock's chilling articulacy, the two directors share a sense of mischief, and it's this that keeps Unforgettable ticking over even after Dahl has tied the plot into knots that he can't hope to unpick.

Every film which claims to investigate the ambitions of immigrants living in the US must doff its cap, fondly or ironically, to the Statue of Liberty. Someone Else's America obliges with a few haunting, misty shots of the landmark memorably referred to by a character in the recent comedy Jungle 2 Jungle as "woman who puts fire up sky's butt". But this dour, predictable film doesn't get far in its attempts to elucidate the spiritual confusion of immigrants living on borrowed turf, and the bursts of magic realism smack of sheer desperation. See Paul Mazursky's Moscow on the Hudson for an altogether more perceptive insight into the same subject.

Bang is a slice of guerrilla film-making which takes off from the same point as the disturbing Canadian drama I Love a Man in Uniform - citizen steals cop's outfit and takes to the streets to exploit the new-found power which it brings. This is a lighter work, though, which carries most impact when the director, Ash, isn't imposing weighty rhetoric on a scenario already overburdened with ethical complexities. As a string of sketches on the theme of power and identity, however, it displays energy and intelligence.

Those qualities are conspicuous by their absence from the week's remaining releases. Murder at 1600 is yet another thriller which proves, like Absolute Power, that the White House is really the place to be for lashings of murder, sordid sexual exploits and general skulduggery. Wesley Snipes is the cop investigating a killing in the President's bathroom, while Alan Alda and Daniel Benzali are wasted as the advisers who are always on hand with a veiled threat or a sinister sneer. Try also to avoid Thinner, an uninspired adaptation of the Stephen King novel about an obese lawyer who accidentally runs over and kills a gypsy woman, and is then subject to a curse which gradually strips him down to the bone until he looks fit for the catwalk. Impressionable viewers should note, before taking to their cars, that this weight-loss method is no substitute for the good old-fashioned F-Plann

All films go on release tomorrow

Arts reviews and Listings, pages 19-24

`Andrei Yakovlev's bullfighter Espada dances with his cape in an ecstasy of pride and passion and his pussy-cat toes pick a spot on the stage and pounce upon it with predatory precision' Louise Levene on the Kirov's `Don Quixote' at the London Coliseum