TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
PROBLEM: this movie about two dysfunctional families never really gets off the ground , despite some good performances from a basically competent cast .
eddie ( sean penn ) and maureen ( robin wright penn ) are a not - so - happily married couple down on their luck .
living in rented rooms in the seedier part of an unnamed city , they spend what little income they have at the local bar , owned by shorty ( stanton ) , eddie 's best friend , and his wife georgie ( mazar ) .
maureen and eddie share an odd relationship marked by eddie 's frequent disappearances .
on his return , he promises her the world and professes his undying love .
their manic reunions all too soon lead to new lows , as eddie disappears again .
like a junky craving the next high , maureen suffers through the lows to reach the next high .
their relationship is further complicated by maureen 's pregnancy .
she wants the baby and the father , but deep down seems to sense the inevitability of losing the latter .
during one of eddie 's absences , maureen is attacked by kiefer , her neighbor , who gets her drunk ( with her cooperation ) and then insists on intimacy .
she leaves badly bruised and in fear of what eddie might do -- not to her , but to kiefer .
she lies about what happens to ensure that no harm will come to eddie as the result of his inevitable rage .
he lashes out as she expects , and ends up in an institution for what he believes to be 3 months -- but in reality is 10 years .
during this decade , maureen divorces eddie and remarries a more solid and reliable individual , joey ( travolta , in a small role ) .
her life falls apart again when eddie is released from the institution and comes to find her .
joey insists on bringing eddie into his home and making his wife choose between her husband ( and father of two children ) and stability ( joey makes a good living , drives a cadillac , and they live in a large house in the suburbs ) and the love of her previous life .
she chooses her past , and sacrifices not only her new life but her old ( by giving up her and eddie 's daughter to joey ) .
but the eddie that she knew is gone , replaced by a mere shell of the man he was .
maureen is herself a mere shell , more an automaton than a woman -- as if she had gone through whatever therapy and treatment eddie was given along with him .
perhaps these two really do need each other and can find happiness ( or maybe the lack of sadness ) together , but the movie 's denouement was not convincing .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: go 's is a gloriously slick hip machine .
director liman ( who also photographed go ) and screenwriter august celebrate the drug / rave scene in l .
a .
, preferring to take ( comedic ) snapshots of troubled youth rather than critique them .
after more than ninety minutes of pill - popping , tantric sex , car chases , and attempted murder , go even has a happy ending .
this is the sort of film that gives members of the dove foundation splitting headaches ; as go wound down , i anticipated an anti - pill - popping - casual - tantric - sex - car - chase - attempted - murder sermon that ( blessedly ) did n't arrive .
a la tarantino 's pulp fiction , go is comprised of three separate but related stories .
the basics are as follows :
ronna ( polley ) is a bitter grocery store clerk facing eviction who turns to drug dealing for extra dough .
her co - worker , simon ( the improbably named askew ) , is a clubber from britain ecstatic about his first trip to vegas .
zack ( mohr ) and adam ( wolf ) are soap opera stars escaping a career - threatening conviction by assisting a peculiar cop ( fichtner ) in a drug bust .
perhaps because the innovative structure of tarantino 's non - linear masterwork is by now old hat , the id - fueled go delighted me but rarely surprised me ( with the exception of that mind - reading cat ! ) ; pulp fiction zigzagged down roads unforeseen , but we see go 's wheels turning from its first flash frame to the last .
torontonian polley ( of the sweet hereafter ) refused to do publicity for this picture on the basis that she was " not pleased with " her turn as the ill - fated cashier .
in go , she delivers , hands - down , her best performance to date .
here 's an ( overrated ) actress who agreed to appear on the poster , but not support her team at the junket or in interviews ; this sort of arrogance is commonplace for ms .
polley , as anyone who has read of her political agenda in the canadian press will tell you .
if she does n't want to be the ingenue of the moment , she should have said " no , " not go .
but i digress .
go is a fun film , so chipperly depraved one ca n't help but turn off his moral judgment for its duration and enjoy the ride .
in that sense , it 's a departure from liman 's last film , swingers , which at least lectured against self - absorption in the form of vince vaughan 's trent and his subtle comeuppance in the story 's clever epilogue ( which has been aped by mcdonald 's for their latest commercial ) .
i wish i cared more about go 's characters : like the techno music they listen to , the bands of anarchists on display here are at once absorbing and vacuous .
when the lights came up and stung my eyes , it was difficult to recall what about it entertained me . yet
entertain me it did
.
go is light and frothy , featuring compelling if not endearing work by polley , timothy olyphant ( scream 2 ) , and especially fichtner , whose homoerotic behavior is milked for effective laughs .
fichtner is a character actor best known for playing backstabbers ( in heat , armageddon , and others ) ; his previously untapped comic abilities shine in go .
unlike much of the film , fichtner is unpredictable .

SOLUTION: P

PROBLEM: i 'm not quite sure what to say about mars attacks ! , which is obviously the work of a deranged genius .
when tim burton 's twisted alien invasion comedy really works , it 's breathtaking and hilarious in equal measure .
and when it does n't work , it 's just dull .
i 'm not even sure it works more often than it does n't , but where it counts -- that is , when this gleefully evil invading force from the red planet gets down to the business of blasting us to kingdom come -- mars attacks !
is brilliant .
mars attacks !
is based on a rather unsavory series of trading cards released by topps in the 1950s , and it takes its cues from the same sources as this summer 's independence day -- old alien invasion flicks , disaster movies , and big - budget special effects extravaganzas .
but unlike independence day , which was a painfully middle - of - the - road appeal to the hearts , minds and wallets of america , mars attacks !
has a fully developed and very personal sense of wonder about it .
the big difference is that while independence day celebrated the resilience of human beings , mars attacks !
portrays us as the greedy and hapless schmucks that we are .
the title sequence is just splendid --
an incredible swarm of flying saucers rises out of the canals of the red planet and then storms earthward through the solar system in formation .
the spinning metal saucers are dead ringers for the invading forces of movies past , and their first appearance on the big screen in combination with danny elfman 's thundering , theremin - driven score is absolutely jaw - dropping .
it 's so overwhelming that , i swear to you , i had trouble breathing .
the movie lays low for the next 40 minutes .
we get a glimpse of the alien leader , resplendent in a purple - sequined cape , when a television message is broadcast to the people of the world -- naturally , the only way to communicate with earthlings is to preempt our regularly scheduled programming .
but mostly , the first act is spent developing characters , setting up mildly comic situations , and drawing a quirky but dishearteningly drab picture of america according to tim burton .
it 's a good thing that the most compelling personality in the movie belongs to the aliens , because burton 's just not interested in making more than caricatures out of his human stars .
anyone who comes to mars attacks !
expecting to see a lot of one favorite actor is bound to be disappointed -- with few exceptions , these characters are dispatched as the film progresses .
jack nicholson is a lot of fun as the president of the united states but fizzles as a sleazy las vegas hotel developer .
rod steiger does an amusing enough take on dr .
strangelove 's buck turgidson , glenn close brings some star power to the role of the first lady , and martin short is a presidential aide who meets the martians in the white house 's " kennedy room , " a secluded nook where he unwittingly tries to seduce an alien dressed up as a big - haired , pointy - breasted sexpot ( lisa marie , the burton flame who played vampira in ed wood ) -- in an earlier scene , it 's made clear that the aliens studied human sexuality in the pages of an old issue of playboy .
sarah jessica parker hosts her own tv show and michael
j .
fox is her newsman husband .
the octogenarian sylvia sidney has a funny part as the old woman who cackles , " they blew up congress ! " and plays a decisive role in the defeat of the alien menace .
jim brown and tom jones are the film 's vegas - based heroes , and director barbet schroeder ( reversal of fortune ) has a funny cameo
as the unfortunate french president .
also on hand and underutilized are annette bening , pierce brosnan , pam grier , lukas haas and natalie portman ( the latter two also show up in woody
allen 's
everyone says i love you ) .
the real stars , of course , are the computer - generated martians , and they 're fantastic .
with bare brains glistening atop their grinning skull - faces , round egg - eyes with red pupils darting this way and that , these animated invaders are malevolence incarnate -- joe dante 's gremlins are the closest equivalent in recent memory , but burton 's little monsters are more inventive .
the film 's raison d'etre are the scenes of crimes against mankind -- the most famous monuments of the world crumble under the alien assault , easter island is turned into a bowling alley , and the nasty little buggers perform hideous medical experiments on captured humans .
the sheer level of mayhem is staggering , especially when the aliens make their first attack , blasting human beings into iridescent skeletons .
parents are urged to pay special attention to the pg-13 rating -- it 's earned .
the special effects vary from charming to astonishing to deliciously cheesy , and at least a couple of shots of mass destruction seem to have been engineered specifically in response to independence day , although mars attacks ! was in production long before that film 's release .
cinematographer peter suschitzky , who makes the most of wynn thomas 's wildly imaginative production design ( thomas helped define the spike lee style ) , actually took time off from his mars attacks !
regimen to shoot crash for david cronenberg .
cronenberg 's movie will almost certainly be more somber -- it wo n't be released in the u . s .
until early next year -- but mars attacks !
is surely a similarly elegant nightmare .
this is not a nice movie .
( and which studio executive was duped into giving burton $ 70 million to make it ? ) by setting the film 's final scenes in the nearly empty , holocaust - ravaged america that independence day conveniently avoided , burton 's invasion epic suggests that the world we 've got may not be worth saving until many of the people on it are dead .
the victims of his invasion are naive , greedy , or disastrously self - absorbed -- and a good thing , too , since the movie 's wicked charm is dependent on our ability to take this invasion partly as a wish - fulfillment fantasy .
the surviving cast members are the innocents and the entertainers , who triumph by determining that the alien invaders -- the ultimate elitists -- are actually susceptible to the kitschiest strains of american pop culture .
ultimately , this messy masterpiece is the year 's funniest comedy and a weird , winking affirmation of the power of the people .

SOLUTION:
P