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

Q: it 's probably inevitable that the popular virtual reality genre ( " the matrix , " " existenz " ) would collide with the even more popular serial - killer genre ( " kiss the girls , " " se7en " ) .
the result should have been more interesting than " the cell .
"
as the movie opens , therapist catharine deane ( jennifer lopez ) treats a catatonic boy ( colton james ) by entering his mind through some sort of virtual reality technique that 's never fully explained .
after months of therapy sessions in a surreal desert , catharine has no success to report .
meanwhile , killer carl stargher ( vincent d'onofrio ) has claimed another victim .
his particular hobby is to kidnap young women , keep them in a glass cell overnight , and drown them .
he takes the corpse and soaks it in bleach , then suspends himself over the body and jerks off while watching a video tape of the drowning .
although carl 's been doing this for awhile , he 's recently become sloppy , and fbi agent peter novak ( vince vaughn ) is closing in fast .
not fast enough , though , to keep carl from sticking another woman ( tara subkoff ) in the cell or to catch him before he suffers a schizophrenic attack that leaves him in a coma .
from the videos in carl 's house , peter can see that the drowning cell is automated and will fill with water forty hours after the abduction .
to save the kidnapped girl , peter has to find the cell before the end of the day , and comatose carl 's not talking .
so off they go to catharine in the hope that she can go inside carl 's mind and find out where the cell is in time .
the focus of " the cell " in on the ornate interior of carl 's mind , but the universe director tarsem singh creates seems more an exercise in computer - generated spectacle than an exploration of the psychotic personality .
for the most part , it 's style without substance .
in his own mind , carl is a decadent emperor in flowing robes , ming the merciless , as well as a frightened boy ( jake thomas ) abused by his father .
all in all , the mind of a psycho killer turns out to be a strangely dull place , and i kept wishing i could fast - forward to the next development .
singh is best known for directing music videos , particularly rem 's " losing my religion , " and " the cell " seems very much like a really long , really slow mtv video with the sound deleted .
singer lopez seems to think she 's in a video as well ; she devotes more time to posing in elaborate costumes than she does to acting .
the premise had great promise .
the computer - generated world within carl 's mind could have been a bizarre , surreal universe governed by insanity and symbolism rather than logic .
the first room catharine enters in carl 's head shows this promise .
she finds a horse standing in center of the room ; suddenly , sheets of sharp - edged glass fall into the horse , dividing it into segments .
the panes of glass separate , pulling apart the pieces of the still - living horse .
this scene is twisted , disturbing , and thought - provoking , because the psychological importance of the horse and its fate is left to the viewer to ponder .
another element that should have been developed is the effect on catharine of merging with the mind of a psychopath .
their minds begin to bleed together at one point in the movie , and this should have provided an opportunity to discover the dark corners of catharine 's own psyche .
like sidney lumet 's " the offence " or michael mann 's " manhunter , " " the cell " could have explored how the madness of the killer brings out a repressed darkness in the investigator .
however , catharine 's character is hardly developed at all , and lopez has no depth to offer the role .
bottom line : do n't get trapped in this one .

A: N
****
Q: much ballyhoo has been made over this new version of " lolita , " made in a time when one would think that a faithful adaptation of the infamous novel could be made , over its use of pedophilia , and as such , it 's important to address it straight - forwardly , before any other ideals such as goodness and themes can be discussed , as this film has been in film limbo for a number of years , lying around in vaults san a distributor , and having critics waiting to either hail it
a masterpiece or call it anticlimactic horseshit .
when seeing this film , after all the hoopla , keeping in mind that there are people , namely me , who are fans of the novel , who have been eagerly awaiting this flick since its creation . . .
well , you just have to wonder why no one really picked it up for distribution .
what 's even worse is that seeing this " lolita , " especially the first time and if you 're familiar with anything " lolita , " is admittingly very anticlimactic .
this is a real pity because when you really sit down to watch this film , ignoring all the crap that has preceeded it , it 's really quite a film , perhaps the best film by director adrian lyne ( although , really , look at its competition : " flashdance , " " fatal attraction , " and " indecent proposal " ) , at least besides " jacob 's ladder .
"
i 've seen this " lolita " twice : the first time , i was n't so blown away .
it seemed overly dramatic and surprisingly unaffecting .
the second time , not really thinking about how i 've waited for what seems like forever to see it and how i 'm seeing it on a tv set on a premium cable channel and not a giant movie theatre ,
it really affected me emotionally .
the story itself is a surprisingly heartbreaking one , which is why it 's such a good novel , and why this is such a good film .
the story of a pedophile obsessed with a young 14-year old girl named dolores a .
k .
a . lolita is great because it 's not trash for the perverted
but because it 's about human obsession with things that are out of one 's reach .
its protagonist , the comically - named humbert humbert , is not your average pedophile , but a seriously wounded human being who embodies how we are all destroyed by our sick obsessions and idosyncrasies .
the character of lolita is almost a symbol of the forbidden apple in christian mythology , something that will destroy us but that we ca n't live without .
these ideas are all worked into this film nicely , but done in a way that is not heavy - handed at all , but instead lyrical and emotionally devastating .
the focus of this film , and the reason for making it , it seems , was to really penetrate the emotional depths of the novel and bring them to life on the screen in beautifully dramatic images , and scenes which are blatantly over - stylized .
the tone of the book is a comical one , but it 's also a tragic one , and humbert , telling the story from his perspective , blows every single thing out of perspective .
humbert exists in a fantsy world of his obsessions and desires , and this reflects the way the entire film has been designed .
we get a sense that perhaps it 's by doing this that humbert has really trapped himself into a fate that will ultimately leave him haggard and destroyed .
he weeps uncontrollably and never lets himself get over his original 14-year - old love , and allows himself to embody her as lolita .
he lets his feelings for her navigate all his decisions , and by the end , he has nothing but overly - dramatic feelings for her .
the story recognizes the extreme of this , almost out of a test , seeing if the readers will really sympathize with someone who is socially deemed a pervert , and one almost wonders while reading the book if the author , vladimir nabokov , wrote the book as a means to bring into focus his own sick obsessions , and perhaps bring them to peace .
the weirdest thing about this film is that by the end , when humbert has reached the finale of his obsessional journey , we can easily sympathize and even identify with him .
the opening and final images of the film are the same , and who has n't done a similar action , that is wandering about without any sense of reality or anything else but a deep sadness in us ?
this is the second time the novel has been adapted for the screen , the first time being filmed in - shock - 1962 , by stanley kubrick , who could n't possibly have brought the novel to the screen with as much faithfulness as lyne has been able to do , but did the next best thing : he economized for everything and came up with a droll black comedy about obsession in general .
in that film , he used the traps of society as benefits .
the studio demanded the final scene , that of a heinous murder , come first in the film so to portray humbert first as a murderer and second as a pedophile . . .
and when you see it , it gives the film depth of a man trapped by obsession .
the censors would n't allow anymore than a couple glances and subtle dialogue to show the , um , relationship between humbert and lolita , so kubrick decided to play it as comedy , but still allow the tragedy to seep through . looking at these two versions , especially after reading the novel ( and we all know that when we 've read a novel and see a film adaptation , we are bound to be angered by any size differences ) , it 's really impossible to compare them .
they both go for different things , and one has a lot more room to be as sexually frank as the novel was .
and although it 's true that several scenes are similar , and are thus up for comparison , overall it 's unfair to say which one is better and which one is worse .
i have never been one for saying the level of greatness of a film adaptation of a novel is deemed by how faithful it is , and i wo n't say that here . however ,
this film is pretty amazing , mostly because hey , i loved the book , and this film nearly reminded me of it .
it does n't have nearly as much wit ( a couple comical scenes , and even a lot of good chuckles , but just not totally witty ) , but it does have the same emotional toll that the novel had .
some of that is in the casting of the two leads .
jeremy irons , with his deep , soft british voice and gentle look , is an amazing humbert .
he 's droll in a very unique way , and , well , no one can look distraught the way he does .
he brings a wonderful sympathy to the role that goes beyond pathos and really comes up as being easy to identify with the audience .
and when he looks at lolita with love , and she looks at him with lust , you know that he 's her prisoner for as long as he lives .
and dominique swain , who plays the title character , is rather incredible .
she pulls off the tough role even better than sue lyon did in the original , wonderfully balancing the qualities of seduction , bratiness , and self - centeredness that marks the character .
it 's easy to see why she surrenders to humbert : she loves the attention , and knows that she can have her way with him at any time .
when he denies her something , she blackmails him effortlessly ( a scene involving a rocking chair and a little foot action is damn near classic ) , and when he stands up to her , she weeps and runs away , leaving humbert to follow her .
there are two other minor characters in the film , one who 's a road block in the beginning , and the other who 's a reappearing threat to the relationship .
the former is charlotte , lolita 's mother , played by melanie griffith .
in the book , charlotte is a monster of a woman : overbearing , constantly scolding her child , overly - religious , and ultimately selfish .
and she 's the one obstacle humbert
has to overcome to obtain his goal , at least in the beginning .
as played by shelly winters in the original , she represented all these qualities ; as played by griffith here , she 's about half of them .
it 's annoying to watch a film and play a game where you try to see who could have done the role way better than the one on screen without mentioning the actor who played them first .
and even though griffith is not really bad , persay , she 's nothing more .
the other is clare quilty , the writer who is also trying to seduce lolita , and succeeds , but at a price .
langella takes a totally different direction than the one peter sellars took in the original .
quilty was a comic character in the original :
a threat in the form of many forms , popping in states of rambling , german , proning , and eventually drunk .
langella takes the other route , allowing all of the creepiness to be unearthed , and the result is a character who exists in shadows and low shots , and who meets a wonderfully ironic ending , the exact opposite of what we thought of him .
as you can see , most of these are not improvements or mistakes done on the part of lyne and his screenwriter , stephen schiff , but just parts of a whole new look at the novel , at least cinema - wise .
this version is beautiful , and perpetually saddening .
the camera movements are stylized , and each shot is breathtakingly rich .
the acting is for the most part wonderful , and when we watch it , we really get a sense that for humbert , who is telling the story , the only two people on earth most of the time were humbert and lolita .
more importantly , it takes us right up the brink of emotion , then jumps right over it .
by the end , with humbert sadly driving recklessly in his car , following what he says is the only part of his life he does n't regret , we feel that we all lose to something we can never have .

A: P
****
Q: in recent years , harrison ford has been such a grave screen presence , scowling through the likes of tom clancy 's jack ryan series , _ the_fugitive _ , and last year 's smash _ air_force_one _ , that one wonders if the rogue charm that made him such a superstar had been completely drained from his system .
apparently , it was just lying dormant .
with ivan reitman 's enjoyable romantic comedy / adventure
_ six_days ,
_ seven_nights _ ,
the lovable scoundrel is back , giving audiences a fresh reminder of why ford is one of the most enduring and popular modern screen icons .
ford plays quinn harris , a carefree and slightly slobby ( endearingly so ) pilot in the tropics
whose broken - down plane crashes in a storm , stranding him and his charter , new york magazine editor robin monroe ( anne heche ) , on a deserted island .
of course , the sophisticated robin and the salt - of - the - earth quinn are at odds long before the plane goes down , and all manner of hostile repartee is exchanged between the two from their first meeting .
while some of the lines fall flat , the formulaic motions work because of the unexpectedly electric chemistry between ford and heche .
both actors , who have largely done serious works as of late , seem liberated by the lack of dramatic weight on their shoulders , and they deliver their zingers , as weak as they sometimes are , with beguiling abandon .
naturally , there 's nothing like a life - threatening crisis to bring two people together , and quinn and robin 's warmup to each other is sped up even further by the arrival of some bloodthirsty pirates .
granted , some conflict needed to be introduced on the island , but this tacked - on development from writer michael browning is a bit too obviously thrown in for the purpose of adding gratuitous action scenes .
but the point is to get the two together , and their newfound affection causes complications for both , but mostly robin , who came to the islands on a vacation with her fiance frank ( david schwimmer ) , who frantically awaits her return on the home island .
reitman , and old , reliable hand at breezy comedies , keeps the pace brisk and capably handles the more action - oriented sequences .
his big accomplishment , however , is bringing the old , smiling ford back .
as appealing and charismatic as he always is , ford has n't been quite this charming and affable in years ; he 's obviously having a blast , and the audience can not help but have one along with him . holding her own is heche , whose scrappy character never becomes the screaming ninny
she initially promises to be ( as the plane goes down , she frantically pops stress pills ) .
she can take her lumps , physical and otherwise , just as well as quinn , making her a formidable foil and ideal match . formulaic and light as a feather , _ six_days ,
_ seven_nights _ could be cited as a classic example of the summer " popcorn " movie season 's lack of substance .
it 's certainly fluff , but it 's unpretentious , undemanding , and -- most importantly -- fun fluff that goes down as easily as a frothy pina colada on a balmy tropical beach
.
pass the popcorn .

A:
P
****