In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.

[Q]: star wars : ?
episode i -- the phantom menace ( 1999 ) director : george lucas cast : liam neeson , ewan mcgregor , natalie portman , jake lloyd , ian mcdiarmid , samuel l. jackson , oliver ford davies , terence stamp , pernilla august , frank oz , ahmed best , kenny baker , anthony daniels screenplay : george lucas producers :
rick mccallum runtime :
131 min .
us distribution :
20th century fox rated pg :
mild violence , thematic elements copyright
1999 nathaniel r. atcheson a fellow critic once stated his belief that a reviewer should not speak of himself in his own review .
i 've attempted to obey this rule in recent months , but to do so would be impossible in this case .
the fact is , nearly every person who goes to see the phantom menace brings baggage in with them .
the original star wars trilogy means so much to so many people .
for me , they calibrated my creativity as a child ; they are masterful , original works of art that mix moving stories with what were astonishing special effects at the time ( and they still hold up pretty darn well ) .
i am too young to have seen star wars in the theater during its original release , but that does n't make me any less dedicated to it .
on the contrary , the star wars trilogy -- and the empire strikes back in particular -- are three items on a very short list of why i love movies .
when i heard that george lucas would be making the first trilogy in the nine - film series , i got exited .
when i first saw screenshots from the film , well over a year ago , i embarked on a year - long drool of anticipation .
and when the first previews were released last thanksgiving , i was ready to see the film .
but then there was the hype , the insane marketing campaign , and lucasfilm 's secretive snobbery over the picture .
in the last weeks before the picture opened , while multitudes of fans waited outside of theaters and stood in the boiling sun days in advance just to be the first ones in the theater , i was tired of hearing about it .
i was tired of seeing cardboard cut - outs of the characters whenever i went to kfc or taco bell .
i just wanted to see the movie .
reader , do not misunderstand .
i did not have an anti - hype reaction .
the hype was unavoidable .
i understand and accept the hype -- it 's just what happens when the prequel to the most widely beloved films of all time get released .
five minutes into the phantom menace , i knew there was a problem .
" who are these jedi knights ?
"
i asked .
"
why are they churning out stale dialogue with machine - gun rapidity ?
" " why are n't these characters being developed before their adventures ?
" " why is there a special effects shot in nearly every frame of the entire film ?
" these were just some of my questions early on .
later , i asked ,
" where 's the magic of the first three films ? " and
" why am i looking at my watch every fifteen minutes ? '
by the end of the film , i was tired , maddened , and depressed .
george lucas has funneled his own wonderful movies into a pointless , mindless , summer blockbuster .
the phantom menace is no star wars film .
take away the title and the jedi talk and the force , and you 're left with what is easily one of the most vacuous special effects movies of all time .
it 's an embarrassment .
i looked desperately for a scene in which a character is explored , or a new theme is examined , or a special effects shot is n't used .
there are a few of each , but they 're all token attempts .
the fact is , george lucas has created what is simultaneously an abysmally bad excuse for a movie and a pretty good showcase for digital effects .
this is not what i wanted to see .
i did n't want to leave the phantom menace with a headache and a bitter taste in my mouth , but i did .
the story centers mostly around qui - gon jinn ( liam neeson , looking lost and confused ) and his apprentice , obi - wan kenobi ( ewan mcgregor , who scarcely has a line in the film ) and their attempts to liberate the people of the planet naboo .
naboo is the victim of a bureaucratic war with the trade federation ; their contact on naboo is queen amidala ( natalie portman ) , the teenage ruler who truly cares for her people .
after picking up jar jar binks ( a completely cgi character , voiced by ahmed best ) , they head to tatooine , where they meet young anakin skywalker ( jake lloyd ) and his mother ( pernilla august ) .
qui - gon knows that the force is strong with young anakin , and so the jedi knights take the boy with them on their journeys .
the bad guys are darth maul and darth sidious , neither of whom have enough lines to register as characters .
there is n't anything particularly wrong with this story when looking at it in synopsis form .
the way lucas has handled it , however , it unsatisfactory .
first of all , we do n't learn one single thing about qui - gon jinn .
not one thing .
what was his life like before this film ?
well , i imagine he did n't have one .
that 's why he feels like a plot device .
this probably explains why neeson looks so hopeless in the role , and why he 's recently retired from film ( i do n't blame him , honestly ) .
obi - wan , a character i was really looking forward to learning more about , is even less interesting .
mcgregor has just a few lines , so
anyone hoping to see the engaging young actor in a great performance is urged to look elsewhere .
since these two men are the focus of the phantom menace , lucas has served us a big emotional void as the centerpiece of his movie .
things start to pick up when our characters reach tatooine ; young anakin is perhaps the only truly fleshed - out character in the film , and lloyd does a thoughtful job with the role .
i was also hugely impressed with the sand speeder scene ; rarely is an action sequence so fast and so exciting .
and when anakin says goodbye to his mother , i found it moving .
also fairly good is portman , and she manages to give a little depth to a character where no depth has been written .
jar jar binks is one of the most annoying characters i 've ever had to endure , but he 's more interesting than most of the humans .
as soon as the relatively - brief segment on tatooine is over , it 's back to the mind - numbing special effects and depthless action scenes .
i 've seen many movies that qualify as " special effects extravaganzas , " but the phantom menace is the first one i 've seen that had me sick of the special effects fifteen minutes into the movie .
the reason is obvious : george lucas has no restraint .
i ca n't say that i did n't find the effects original , because i did -- the final battle between darth maul , obi - wan , and qui - gon is visually exceptional , as is most of the film .
but i also found the effects deadening and tiresome .
my breaking point was near the end of the picture , as anakin is getting questioned by yoda and the other jedi masters ; in the background , we see hundreds of digital spaceships flying around through a digital sky ,
and i wanted that to go away .
ca n't we have one stinking scene that is n't bursting at the seems with a special effects shot ?
i got so sick of looking at the cgi characters and spaceships and planets and backgrounds
that i really just wanted to go outside and look at a physical landscape for a few hours .
and then there 's the question of magic .
what was lost in the sixteen years between the phantom menace and return of the jedi ?
i have a feeling that lucas was so focused on how his movie looked
that he forgot entirely the way it should feel .
john williams ' familiar score is no help , nor is lucas ' direction .
i think it comes right down to characters
: there are none here .
i longed for the magnetic presence of han , luke , and leia , but i got no such thing .
and what about the ridiculous expectations ?
mine were n't that high ; i simply wanted a film that showed me the roots of the films that i grew up loving , a story that had a few characters and a few great special effects .
instead , i got two hours and fifteen minutes of a lifeless and imaginative computer graphics show .
i do n't hate the phantom menace as much as i resent it : i 'd like to forget that it exists , and yet i ca n't .
it 's here to stay .
i can only hope that episodes ii
and iii have something of substance in them , because if they do n't , then lucas will have pulled off the impossible task of destroying his own indestructible series .
[A]: N


[Q]: synopsis : a mentally unstable man undergoing psychotherapy saves a boy from a potentially fatal accident and then falls in love with the boy 's mother , a fledgling restauranteur .
unsuccessfully attempting to gain the woman 's favor , he takes pictures of her and kills a number of people in his way .
comments : stalked is yet another in a seemingly endless string of spurned - psychos - getting - their - revenge type movies which are a stable category in the 1990s film industry , both theatrical and direct - to - video .
their proliferation may be due in part to the fact that they 're typically inexpensive to produce ( no special effects , no big name stars ) and serve as vehicles to flash nudity ( allowing them to frequent late - night cable television ) .
stalked wavers slightly from the norm in one respect : the psycho never actually has an affair ; on the contrary , he 's rejected rather quickly ( the psycho typically is an ex - lover , ex - wife , or ex - husband ) .
other than that , stalked is just another redundant entry doomed to collect dust on video shelves and viewed after midnight on cable .
stalked does not provide much suspense , though that is what it sets out to do .
interspersed throughout the opening credits , for instance , a serious - sounding narrator spouts statistics about stalkers and ponders what may cause a man to stalk ( it 's implicitly implied that all stalkers are men ) while pictures of a boy are shown on the screen .
after these credits , a snapshot of actor jay underwood appears .
the narrator states that " this is the story of daryl gleason " and tells the audience that he is the stalker .
of course , really , this is the story of restauranteur brooke daniels .
if the movie was meant to be about daryl , then it should have been called stalker not stalked .
okay .
so we know who the stalker is even before the movie starts ; no guesswork required .
stalked proceeds , then , as it begins : obvious , obvious , obvious .
the opening sequence , contrived quite a bit , brings daryl and brooke ( the victim ) together .
daryl obsesses over brooke , follows her around , and tries to woo her .
ultimately rejected by her , his plans become more and more desperate and elaborate .
these plans include the all - time , psycho - in - love , cliche : the murdered pet .
for some reason , this genre 's films require a dead pet to be found by the victim stalked .
stalked is no exception ( it 's a cat this time -- found in the shower ) .
events like these lead to the inevitable showdown between stalker and stalked , where only one survives ( guess who it invariably always is and you 'll guess the conclusion to this turkey ) .
stalked 's cast is uniformly adequate : not anything to write home about but also not all that bad either .
jay underwood , as the stalker , turns toward melodrama a bit too much .
he overdoes it , in other words , but he still manages to be creepy enough to pass as the type of stalker the story demands .
maryam d'abo , about the only actor close to being a star here
( she played the bond chick in the living daylights ) , is equally adequate as the " stalked " of the title , even though she seems too ditzy at times to be a strong , independent business - owner .
brooke ( d'abo ) needs to be ditzy , however , for the plot to proceed .
toward the end , for example , brooke has her suspicions about daryl .
to ensure he wo n't use it as another excuse to see her , brooke decides to return a toolbox he had left at her place to his house .
does she just leave the toolbox at the door when no one answers ?
of course not .
she tries the door , opens it , and wanders around the house .
when daryl returns , he enters the house , of course , so our heroine is in danger .
somehow , even though her car is parked at the front of the house , right by the front door , daryl is oblivious to her presence inside .
the whole episode places an incredible strain on the audience 's suspension of disbelief and questions the validity of either character 's intelligence .
stalked receives two stars because , even though
it is highly derivative and somewhat boring
, it is not so bad that it can not be watched .
rated r mostly for several murder scenes and brief nudity in a strip bar , it is not as offensive as many other thrillers in this genre are .
if you 're in the mood for a good suspense film , though , stake out something else .
[A]: N


[Q]: i have never been so confused after watching a movie .
" meet joe black " is probably one of the most visually satisfying films of this year , with a cinematography , music and cast that will dazzle most of us .
at the same time it is probably the most boring and ridiculous experience
hat you will have this season .
at first you marvel at the elegant direction , graceful cinematography and sensual musical score .
then you 'll wait for something to happen for half an hour , but when you finally understand what 's going on , you 'll wonder what are actors such as anthony hopkins , brad pitt and claire forlani are doing in a film like this ?
the script is simply a silly and unresolved story , which is artificially stretched into a three hour long motion picture .
it feels like an eternity .
most of the time it is a pompous soap opera , filled with empty dialogue that the actors deliver in a high pitched voice and " meaningful " winks .
the film is based on alberto caesella 's play " death takes a holiday " .
the story concentrates around bill ( anthony hopkins ) who lives a fulfilled life as a successful business man , but sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and hears a voice that is saying " yes " .
soon he meets a young elegant gentlemen ( brad pitt ) who introduces himself as " death " .
it is bill 's time .
but death has other plans .
it has come down to us simple mortals to find out what it means to be alive .
our bill is chosen to be death 's guide and in exchange he gets time .
bill introduces death as joe black , who immediately becomes the center of everyone 's attention .
bill 's business partners speculate about why joe is constantly at bill 's side , lives in his house and resides at his office .
that is not all , however .
bill 's youngest daughter susan ( claire forlani ) falls in love with the mysterious stranger and joe falls in love with her .
this relationship is bound to have some serious consequences .
it would n't be fair to say that this film did n't have some interesting moments , such as the scene where joe is invited to join bill 's family for dinner .
when joe starts enjoying peanut butter and later falls in love , the experience is somewhat different .
it is obvious that a story like this story is very difficult to structure .
it 's one thing to say : " would n't it be fun to have death take human form and come down to earth . .
" to create a motion picture out of this is another .
four screenwriters have worked on a script that lacks drive and logic .
it is overlong and too primitive to pass as a serious film .
on the other hand it demonstrates incredible performances and a very decent direction by martin brest ( " scent of a woman " ) .
hopkins looks great in any role , and no matter how shallow or hollow it is , he will complete it .
his talent and charisma are needed here more than any where else , since
it actually saves the film from a complete embarrassment .
but pitt is the one that got one of the most difficult roles of recent time .
how can you play death in human form ?
to me it seems that death and life are not something that can be associated with earthly matters .
they are not creatures , but phenomenas .
saying that death takes human form would be the same as to suggest that eternity would take human form .
handling such a ridiculous task is incredibly difficult and pitt deserves some credit for his work .
speaking in a calm , soft voice , portraying death as a lonely , distant and powerful guy that is unfamiliar with practical earthly matters .
he looks and acts more like an angel of death , rather than a demon or a red - eyed executioner .
claire forlani and others are also fine , stretching their stereotypical characters to their limits .
unfortunately their performances are not enough to rescue this film from its self inflicted misery .
in other words this is not what i expected from the director of " scent of a woman " .
it could ( and should ) be better with such cast and crew .
in the end it seems as if they have all been intensively working on a ravishingly looking soap opera .
[A]:
N