Task: Sentiment Analysis
Input (English): Hollywood Apocalypse... Sorta . It's a truism that great novels make lousy movies. For evidence of that fact, you need look no further.    As the great Hollywood novel (at least there's no convincing competitor), it was inevitable that "Day of the Locust" would hit the screen eventually. And when the time came, some effort was made to ensure the job was done right, beginning with the selection of the director, John Schlesinger, a literate British expatriate with a superb track record. But the 70s was the epoch of good intentions gone awry, in film as in everything else.    "Locust" was made during the period when many people considered William Atherton to be an actor. You can see him in a number of major films, his expression never changing, with all the emotional impact of a log. It's one of those things that lends conviction to the claim that the industry runs on herd instinct.    But it's not all Atherton's fault, because nobody comes to life in this flick. Not even Karen Black, one of the most idiosyncratic actresses ever, for all that she's playing a hooker (Karen must have gotten very tired of that kind of role). Not even old pro Burgess Meredith, as her deadbeat old man. Donald Sutherland reveals a flicker or two, for all that he's supposed to be playing a lump. The sole exception is Jackie Earle Haley, who portrays the evil-minded child actor Adore with truly demonic intensity. Maybe they should have let him direct.    It would seem difficult to make scenes like the collapse of a huge Napoleonic war set or an illegal cockfight look dull, but Sclesinger brings it off. I don't know how -- this is, after all, the guy who made the selection of a new wardrobe for Cold War traitor Guy Burgess look enlightening and entertaining in "An Englishman Abroad". Maybe the milieu overwhelmed him. It's happened to other people.    It all comes to a head at the climax, which is supposed to illuminate an apocalyptic painting of the destruction of LA by Atherton's Todd. In a single truly effective scene, the distraught Homer Simpson murders the noxious child actor Adore. And then...    Well, if you want to see the dullest riot scene in film history, here you are. It's as if Schlesinger said, "Okay, this the 30s, and there were Nazis around during the 30s -- so let's make the rioters Nazis!" Thus we get a lengthy sequence in which people wearing very silly masks (they look like a chorus of Leatherfaces from "Texas Chainsaw Massacre") stand in one spot goose-stepping. Every now and then the camera shifts to a masked woman staring through a car windshield. And that's your riot.     To top things off, Schlesinger then gives us a "symbolic" coda that succeeds only in casting into doubt everything we've seen for the past two hours.     Nathanael West had an unbelievably tough career as an author. His publisher went bankrupt a week before "Miss Lonelyhearts" was due to be published. He died in a car crash only a short time after "Locust" appeared. Then they went and made this movie. Remember that next time you start thinking that life is unfair.
Output (English): NEG