Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 17, 2011

The film treats Levenson's rapid descent as if someone had turned on the lights at a sex party: scurrying away with pity and irritation that the good times had to end.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 3, 2009

American Swing doesn't have a particularly well-defined point of view, but it is a succinct, entertaining and valuable record of a time that in some ways now seems as remote as the Roaring '20s.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 27, 2009

Although American Swing pointedly goes out of its way to include positive testimonials from several women who patronized the club, it leaves you feeling queasy.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Mar 27, 2009

Directors Jon Hart and Matthew Kaufman don't delve deeply enough into the psyche of club founder Larry Levenson or the culture he exploited. But they do present an entertaining snapshot of his brief reign as New York's self-appointed King of Swing.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Mar 26, 2009

American Swing could use the flair of similar portraits of disco-era debauchery like Boogie Nights or Inside Deep Throat, but it's even-handed in capturing the operation's ambition and hubris. Just don't bring an appetite.

| Original Score: B | Mar 26, 2009

A shrewdly made documentary about the rise and fall of Plato's Retreat, the infamous Manhattan sex club of the '70s and '80s.

| Original Score: A- | Mar 25, 2009

Though sweetly reminding us that some outer-borough suburbanites did find liberation at Plato's, the film tries -- and fails -- to swing both ways, nostalgically glorifying its subject only to smugly revel in Levenson's ignominious demise.

| Mar 24, 2009

And what of New York's disco-era gays? They're written out of the story here just as decisively as they were written out of Levenson's version of utopia.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Mar 23, 2009