The first and only piece of advice needed on one’s way to the fishing pond is this: Bring your patience. Not surprisingly, the same could be said to a viewer of this slow-building but riveting experimental collage.

Spring Breakers is either an inspired satire of the youth movie or the most irresponsible comedy mainstream Hollywood will never make. The bros in your crowd will call it rad — and radical it is.

Expressively (Berger knows his grammar), a white communion dress is dipped in black dye as her custodial grandmother passes away and an evil castle beckons.

Room 237 asks that you bring your own noodles; as docs go, it leaves you with questions, some worry and rib-sticking satiation.

To the Wonder is arty for sure, but for the first time, its maker is working with anxieties we all feel. Let’s hope this Malick sticks around for a while.

The style of the film, lush and traditional, is nothing special, but the takeaway, a daily struggle for dignity, is impossibly moving.

Directors Joachim Rønning and Espen Sandberg are unusually committed to maritime mechanics, and the excitement grows as steadily as the sailors’ beards.

Assayas evokes the atmosphere so vividly, you begin to breathe in his tale, rather than watch it.

The film isn’t exactly rousing in its conclusion, but it’s always respectful: a serious ethical inquiry into matters of women’s choice, both imposed and seized upon. Check it out.

The movie isn’t particularly scary--not a crime when your goal is laughs. More egregious is the niggling fact that this simply isn’t as witty as "Shaun of the Dead," forever the yuks-meet-yucks standard.

Shutter Island is slumming: minor but enjoyably nuts.

Too many digital effects ruin the spell of a tactile world of evil objects scheming your demise. But even a mediocre FD is better than more Jigsaw.

Though wildly uneven, the film sometimes comes within screaming distance of the sick ironies of "Heathers." That's how loudly Goldthwait still knows how to yell.

The movie has a centerfold sheen to it--and some lesbianic soft-core flirtation to match--as its plot dives deeply into "Twilight"-esque heavy-melo meltdown in the last act. Cody throws one too many losses at Needy; the screenwriter loses her satiric way about halfway through. But for a while, this has real fangs.

There’s still too much flashback material here about apprentices and evil cops. But if you’ve ever raged at nameless, insensitive service people, you won’t mind seeing them strapped into a rotating turret, the shotgun cocking.

Extract, for all its surface reminders of Judge’s 1999 cult hit, "Office Space" (it’s set around a suburban bottling plant), shows its maker taking the smallest step toward lesser comic matters of infidelity and bong abuse. It feels slightly beneath him. That’s not to say you should skip it.

It’s a movie that tips toward overkill--even Ronan’s voice is amplified into a weird whisper. More quiet would have helped.

Berlinger is fully invested here, but a little distance might have helped.

Forgive the film its "Napoleon Dynamite" overquirk; a loving god is watching all, genuflected to on bedroom-wall posters and seen in the film's final five minutes--and if you're not a Rush fan, this is not your movie

You sense the Demme-esque working-class comedy that might have been.

The new film sometimes feels too snazzy in its jittery cinematography, but the stunts make it through the budget upgrade intact.

Giggles, not belly laughs, come frequently, and it’ll help if viewers love U.K. comics.

Watching the new film is like getting upsettingly full on insubstantial tapas: You would never say no to just one more, but there’s better.

The movie isn’t adventurous, but I’m sure glad it exists.

Moodysson hasn’t exactly descended to "Babel"-level pabulum with Mammoth, his first foray into English; these characters are too fascinatingly thorny, and he still has a supple way with a pulse-throbbing dance tune.

For all his brilliance with choreography, Woo is flummoxed by the thousands of actual human extras, though there’s no denying his commitment to the finer points of battle tactics (yawn).

Maybe this is a good time to mention that the director is Richard Linklater, usually a lot more versatile. Try to imagine a version of Linklater’s "School of Rock" that didn’t pivot on the manic music teacher played by Jack Black but instead, perhaps, on his boring roommate.

The problem here, though, is that the movie often feels fat instead of lean. A terribly purple folk score by Kate and Anna McGarrigle hypes the spiritual aspects of the Inuit way of life; you’ll die laughing on the tundra.