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

roger ebert asks in his review of sexy beast , " who would have guessed that the most savage mad - dog frothing gangster in recent movies would be played by . . .
ben kingsley ?
"
my response would be that anyone who has seen alan arkin in wait until dark , henry fonda in once upon a time in the west , or anthony hopkins in the silence of the lambs should have guessed it .
they should know that the way for a film to create a really creepy sociopath is cast someone who generally plays mild , sympathetic , or even ineffectual character roles .
the same characteristics that make an actor seem gentle in most of his roles can work in his favor when a role calls for him to be fierce and vicious .
that is the principle that works for kingsley in sexy beast .
gary " gal " dove ( played by ray winstone ) has retired from a london career of crime and is living on a luxurious villa in spain .
life has become a routine of sunning himself and relaxing .
but his paradise is about to be shattered by a one - two - punch .
the first punch is a boulder that comes rolling down the hill next to the villa .
the second punch comes from gal 's past .
back in london
gang boss teddy bass
( ian mcshane , tv 's lovejoy ) is planning to break into a safety deposit room in a bank and he wants gal .
he sends his most rabid henchman don logan ( ben kingsley ) to fetch gal .
don will accept any decision gal makes from " yes " to " certainly .
" however , if gal says " no " don will do whatever it takes to turn it into a yes including threatening guy 's ex - porn- star wife deedee ( amanda redman ) . in the meantime don knows just how to get under everybody 's skin .
kingsley makes don a compact package of fury and nastiness .
there are some serious problems in louis mellis 's and david scinto 's script that should have been caught before filming .
when we see the actual crime we have no idea why gal was so important to its success .
beyond an ability to use skin - diving gear , no special talents are required of him .
any local hood could have done what gal is needed for .
additionally the crime involves digging from a swimming pool to the bank vault , flooding the vault .
no only
could they have let the water out of the pool and avoided the complication altogether , but there is by far too much water to be accounted for by what was in the pool .
in spite of the provocative title , the story is cliched and overly familiar .
i know i have seen all the plot elements of sexy beast in old westerns like the law and jake wade .
the story is usually of the reformed outlaw , a robert taylor type , who has hung up his guns and is trying for a life of peaceful respectability .
the old gang , however , wants to do one more job with their old buddy and sends a rabid richard widmark type to go and git ?
i m .
it is not a great plot .
in sexy beast even the plot twists have gray beards .
perhaps the film has a little more respectability because it was made not as a western but as a stylish british gangster film .
it is an old plot dressed up to look new .
if the plot is old , at least the style is creative .
this is director jonathan glazer 's first film , but he has reputedly done some notable tv ads for guinness stout .
his style does have some unexpected touches including some very odd dream sequences .
cinematographer ivan bird uses a lot of half lit scenes .
we see one side of a person 's faces .
but the other side fades into the darkness , a sort of metaphor for the half - world these characters in - habit .
half of everything that is happening is also kept hidden .
us yanks will have a hard time with some of the dialog .
at least in my theater it was difficult to make out the words with the quiet speaking , the heavy accents , and the cockney language .
sexy beast is a very and familiar minor plot lent respectability in the us by being done in what is here a still somewhat novel genre , the london crime film .
the plot may be new to british crime films , but it would be overly familiar as a western .
further respectability comes from ben kingsley 's high - powered performance .
i give it a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale .
N

pollock starring ed harris , marcia gay harden , tom bower , jennifer connelly screenplay by barbara turner and susan j .
emshwiller , based on the book " jackson pollock : an american saga " by steven naifeh and gregory white smith directed by ed harris
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" how do you know when you 're finished making love ?
"
-jackson pollock to a life magazine reporter on recognizing when you 've completed a painting jackson pollock 's " making love
" quote is famous , but in practically the same breath , he said a more constructive thing , " it 's like looking at a bed of flowers -- tear your hair out over what it means .
"
it took him sixteen words to do as whole dissertations have tried and failed : equate god and abstract art and offer a kind of backhanded comfort to those confused to the point of resentment by the concept .
the biopic _ pollock _ , actor ed harris ' directorial debut
, reflects the second soundbite in how it accepts pollock 's creations as part of the order of things , and should similarly disarm haters of fine art .
arguably more than any other living actor , harris , who also plays _ pollock _ , embodies the archetypal working stiff , and his blue - collar demystification of pollock 's labour - intensive art , both as performer and director , makes for unpretentious cinema .
( from what i know of harris , he , like pollock , was not born gifted or lucky ; instead , a strong work ethic is the seed of his success . )
granted , it 's possible that _ pollock _ will alienate those same viewers perplexed by the imponderable " purpose " of pollock 's splatter series : the common thread between them is a lack of editorializing .
the movie _ pollock
_ is all purposeful gazes and silent exchanges dotted by tantrums , but the motivations are left to our own perceptions .
and it is a sympathetic yet not altogether forgiving film , as illustrated by a disheartening conclusion .
_ pollock
_ encapsulates the period in which he fought a losing battle against personal demons ( alcoholism , depression , and the general attendant miseries of an artist ) while finding a place of subconscious expression .
a brief introduction to pollock 's raging drunk side segues into his getting accosted by a fellow new york artist , lee krasner ( marcia gay harden ,
awarded a best supporting actress oscar for this brilliant portrayal ) , who works from the outside - in , pre - intellectualizing every stroke of her brush .
in a scene after they have moved in together and established adjoining studios , she asks what he hopes to achieve on his latest canvas , grilling him about the interplay of cubism and surrealism until he says , " you paint the fucking thing , " and leaves in a huff .
by the time they we d , she has become his de facto manager ; it is form marrying function and chaos marrying discipline , a most harmonious collision .
( krasner denies him a baby , indicating that it would upset the balance . )
such a union is destined to implode , and i hope i 'm not ruining the _ pollock _ experience by saying that it does .
while it is never depicted as a very romantic matrimony to start -- pollock and wife channel their passions elsewhere -- their symbiosis leaves each other picked dry after several years , and it comes down to krasner suffering one of pollock 's conniptions too many : " you are killing me !
you are killing me !
you are killing me ! "
( aside : harris ' own wife , amy madigan , is unrecognizable and exceptional as gallery diva peggy guggenheim . )
pollock himself moves on to dalliances with younger women like ruth klingman ( the scorching jennifer connelly ) , hoping , one supposes , to catch the revitalizing whiff of youth .
i love jackson pollock 's stuff and
i am enamoured of harris ' _ pollock _ as well .
it 's scrappy and observant ; no coincidence that its minor failings are the occasional invasive flourish , such as jeff beal 's hummable but no less lamentable score -- i ca n't imagine that pollock , or anyone , would paint to this music , which puts filling soundtrack voids ahead of complementing the images .
one of my favourite sequences is an eerily quiet re - enactment of hans namuth shooting that famous pollock footage in east hampton , long island ; the mounting tension is almost comic , as namuth keeps interrupting pollock 's process to reload his camera or take a dinner break .
a more seasoned director might 've been too arrogant to admit that not all artists or mediums are created equal .
P

some movies i should just skip .
my daughter and i had a really vile time at my favorite martian a few weeks back , and here comes another disney effects - filled live - action flick based on an old tv program .
true , the probgram is only 15 years old this time , and it 's a cartoon .
but it 's a cartoon i liked , and i was understandably reluctant to see what disney had done to it on the big screen .
but my daughter really wanted to go , and how bad could it be ?
turns out i was right , mostly .
inspector gadget , oddly enough , follows almost exactly the same format as my favorite martian , down to the jive - talking side - kick .
at first i thought it was done by the same people , but imdb informs me that ig was directed by david kellogg and written by dana olsen and kerry ehrin , where mfm was directed by donald petrie and written by sherri stoner and deanna oliver .
this odd similarity between the two movies may best be explained by the studio that produced it , where " formula " is n't just business
, it 's a way of life .
the producers who obviously micromanaged the two projects should get prominant screen credits .
in some parts you can just hear them saying " more zany !
i want more zany here -- and -- here .
"
" let 's have a really painful sexual reference for no reason right here -- make it really painful .
i want the audience squirming in their seats .
"
" ok , that 's fine , but i want you to add bug guts .
"
" what does this scene do ?
character depth ?
but where 's the zaniness ?
i do n't see zany here .
if you ca n't make it zany , cut it !
"
the latter is the only explanation i can come up with for the absence of the thoroughly charming michelle trachtenberg for most of the movie .
michelle ( who plays penny , gadget 's niece ) shines in every scene she 's in , but unfortunately
she only gets about nine minutes of screen time .
my guess is that the rest is on the cutting room floor .
dabney coleman 's comedic talents are utterly wasted as chief quimby .
i kept expecting him to say or do something really funny and somehow save the film , but instead , he does the best he can with some really poor lines in a few unexceptional scenes .
he is thoroughly upstaged by cheri oteri as the " gidget bitch from hell " town mayor .
oteri 's
overly enthusiastic and continually self - congratulatory speech patterns and mannerisms were so much like portland , oregon 's own manic mayor vera katz that i had to wonder if the studio was n't poking fun at our fair town .
or , maybe all career politicians are like that .
i must say , matthew broderick does not stroll through inspector gadget as he did godzilla .
he appears to have some fun with the film , especially as the evil gadget .
rupert everett is entertaining as the maniacle claw .
joely fisher does fine as the zany scientist and even better as the zany carbon copy of herself .
her performance is one of the few things worth watching in the film .
d .
l . hughley plays the shuckin'-and - jivin ' vehicular side - kick , in a role that firmly sets emancipation back 20 years .
the dialog is . . .
let 's face it ,
it 's pretty bad .
the tag - line after a major set - piece battle is a faux pas that makes no sense in context .
a lot of the lines ( especially hughley 's ) appear to be made up as they go along , by people with little gift for ad - lib .
about three - quarters of the film is a somewhat unnecessary origin story for both gadget and claw .
gadget then spends the latter third of the movie trying to locate claw and having various altercations ( not really " battles " ) with the evil gadget .
penny does about a minute and a half of the detective work her character did every week in the cartoon .
let me rage here just for a minute .
michelle trachtenberg was an excellent choice for the penny character .
she 's utterly charming , and has excellent experience ( harriet the spy ) for the part of the pint - size detective .
why she is so underutilized
in this film is a real mystery .
the film loses a star for casting brilliance coupled with scripting ( or editing )
stupidity .
inspector gadget is missing the long , long stretches of potty humor that ( among other things ) made my favorite martian so unbearable , but it 's a very short movie , so perhaps something was cut at the last moment .
probably the best scenes in the film occur during the end credits .
the " evil sidekick support group " is especially worth seeing , and has an amazing number of cameo appearances for the few seconds it 's onscreen .
all in all , another bad live action film from the premere studio for bad live action films .
i wonder if disney uses the revenues for it 's generally money - making cartoons to produce these losers
.
but if true , why ?
if they 're trying for another mary poppins , they need to find a team that can produce one , and then give them a chance to do it .

N