instruction:
In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
question:
i 'm guessing -- and from the available evidence , it 's not a great guess -- that burn hollywood burn began life as an insider satire of hollywood excess , stupidity , ego and power - mongering .
if so , the film that ended up on the screen ranks as one of the most spectacularly ironic unintentional jokes in film history .
it has already been well - documented that the original title , an alan smithee film , became a problem when miserable test screenings forced re - cuts against the will of director arthur hiller , prompting hiller himself to opt for the directors ' guild - mandated pseudonym of alan smithee .
that left a film satire in the hands of writer joe eszterhas , as humorless a hack as ever put finger to word processor .
and you could just smell the disaster brewing .
if you 're unfortunate enough to sit through burn hollywood burn , you 'll still be smelling that disaster long after the lights come up .
ostensibly , it 's a pseudo - documentary account of a director named alan smithee ( eric idle ) who loses control of a big - budget action film called trio starring sylvester stallone , whoopi goldberg and jackie chan ( all of whom appear as themselves ) .
when the only recourse available to him is abandoning the project to be called " an alan smithee film " -- which , of course , it already is -- smithee steals the negative of the film and threatens to destroy it .
among the parties interviewed are the film 's producer james edmunds ( ryan o'neal ) and studio boss jerry glover ( richard jeni ) , who spend virtually the entire film narrating the story while painfully unfunny things go on around them .
it 's bad enough that burn hollywood burn has -- literally -- not a single laugh for its entire , blissfully brief 84 minutes .
what makes it even worse is eszterhas ' insistence upon telling every bad joke not once , but twice or even three times .
michael ovitz references , showgirls references , oral sex references , whoopi goldberg / ted danson references -- all show up multiple times with all the subtlety that is eszterhas ' stock - in - trade .
the reduncancy even manages to turn actively offensive with some frequency , notably with the hilarious use of the word " feminist " as an identifying caption for every single female character in the film .
by the time coolio and chuck d show up as black independent film - makers the brothers brothers ( cleverly identified as " bad a-- " and " badder a-- " , among other unprintable things ) , you may be ready to walk out of the theater with your coat over your head to avoid being identified .
those documentary captions , for all their leaden obviousness , allow the best insight into what 's so hideously wrong with burn hollywood burn .
not content to stick any hollywood type with only one jab from his rapier wit , eszterhas fills the screen with bullet points every time a new character appears .
the producer is a " liar " who " slept in the white house ; " the media are " maggots " and " leeches " working for publications like " the new york slimes " and " newsleak " ( with the camera zooming in on the altered title to make sure you do n't miss the joke ) .
it does n't even matter that eszterhas tags " penile implant " after his own name when he makes a cameo , because it seems like such a desperate attempt to feign self - deprecation .
this is a petulant schoolboy 's idea of satire -- pictures of hollywood insiders to which eszterhas has taken a pen to draw little moustaches and black out the teeth .
the last stomach - churning straw comes when burn hollywood burn closes with out - takes over the closing credits , the kind that show the audience how much fun everyone was having making the film that just sucked an hour and a half of your life away .
perhaps it was just a final , desperate attempt by eszterhas to convince himself
there was some purpose behind the film , or to convince everyone involved that a few blown lines warranted threatening to blow their whole career .
pity everyone involved with this excessive , ego - driven " satire " of excess and ego .
it 's too bad that only directors can remove their names from noxious material like this .
otherwise , you might have seen credits for burn hollywood burn overflowing with alan smithees .
answer:
N


question:
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 .
answer:
N


question:
118 minutes ; not rated ( though i suspect it would be rated pg for adult themes and language )
mamoru oshii is a name that probably is n't very well - known to most american audiences , but perhaps it should be .
oshii was the director of last year 's best - known japanese animated film import ,
_ ghost in the shell _ , and is known among fans of japanese animation , or anime , for making films with a deep philosophical bent .
one of these films was the first theatrical venture for the patlabor animated series .
in its many incarnations -- graphic novels ( " manga " ) , two different runs of made - for - video episodes ( original animation videos , or oavs for short ) , and a television series running to nearly fifty episodes -- patlabor has proven to be one of the most popular series ever in japan .
set in the very near future ( though it was a somewhat farther away near future when the series was first conceived ) , this atypical giant robot anime features the characters , rather than the machinery , as the primary focus .
as a whole , patlabor is the story of an exciting time for japan .
as the prologue to each episode of the television series explains , giant industrial robots , known as " labors " ( an interesting play on words , considering that " robot " is derived from the czech word for labor ) , have come into widespread use in japan toward the close of the twentieth century .
with the rise of labors , however , has come a new menace -- labor crime .
this led to the creation of the two special vehicle divisions , using patrol labors to fight labor crime .
the patlabor story centers around the second special vehicle division , sv2 , who , through no fault of their own , have acquired a bad reputation for destructiveness .
sometimes utterly hilarious , sometimes almost deadly serious , the patlabor series explores the interpersonal relationships of the special vehicle crewmembers , and also looks at the effects of technology on modern life .
those who are unfamiliar with the patlabor story and characters may find themselves slightly confused coming into the movie , although there is ample background exposition provided for new viewers .
the story , as has much of patlabor before , centers around the controversial babylon project , a gigantic seawall that will , on its completion , allow the reclamation of thousands of square miles of land from tokyo bay .
this project has been an almost constant target of environmentalist terrorists , most notably the house of sea organization .
however , the threat in this case comes not from any terrorist , but from someone who is already dead . . .
shinohara heavy industries , the premier labor manufacturer in japan ( if not the whole world ) , has just come out with a new operating system that increases labors ' movement speed and efficiency by 30 % .
this hyper operating system , hos for short , has very quickly been installed into well over 90 % of the nation 's labors . . .
including the patrol labors of sv2 .
since that installation , dozens of labors , including a heavily - armed military model , have begun to go on berzerk rampages for no apparent reason . . .
and the only factor they all had in common was that they were all running under the new hos .
( some wags have compared this to windows 95 . )
it 's up to asuma shinohara , labor command officer with sv2 and the son of the president of shinohara heavy industries , to find the source of these problems before more labors -- including sv2 's own -- fall victim to them , and before hos drags his father 's company down with it .
as was the case with _ ghost in the shell
_
, if you just want a no - brainer actionfest , this might not be the movie for you .
_ patlabor
: the movie _ is more of a psychological thriller , a technological suspense drama .
it is closer , perhaps , to a chrichton novel than to an action movie ( crichton novels that have been made _ into _ action movies notwithstanding ) .
there are long , thoughtful montages of dialogueless footage as two investigators make their way through slums and derelict housing in old quarters of tokyo , similar to sequences from _ ghost in the shell
_ .
this movie is fraught with symbolism -- in fact a large part of it is based on christian symbolism .
patlabor 's near - future setting is , aside from the giant robots tromping around , very similar to our own present day .
the film uses this setting to make its central point : is progress moving too fast for humans to keep up ? are history and culture falling by the wayside like the old buildings that are being torn down and replaced with new ?
this is a question just as applicable to today as it is to patlabor 's alternate-1999 setting . as far as the technical aspects of the film go ( referring to the subtitled version , as that 's the only one i 've seen ) ,
the film transfer is clear , almost phenomenally so .
the animation quality is incredible , though the character design is different from what most patlabor fans will be used to .
the oavs and tv series were more cheerful , better - suited to humor ; the movie , however , makes everyone look a great deal less cute , and emphasizes that this is going to be , for the most part , a deadly serious storyline . as far as cinematography goes ,
there are many interesting moments in _ patlabor :
the movie _ .
i do n't think i can recall ever seeing a fish - eye perspective used in any other animated film ( save for _ ghost in the shell _ , another oshii film ) , or indeed , in many other movies at all .
the cinematography is well - suited to the storyline , emphasizing what it needs to , though a couple of scenes ( where characters ' features are exaggerated in anger ) may seem slightly strange to western audiences .
the audio track of _ patlabor : the movie _ is in glorious hi - fi stereo , and should be used to demonstrate home theater systems -- it _ is _ that good .
even without headphones , sounds from either side of the screen can be clearly heard to _ come _ from that side .
giant robot footsteps are deep and booming .
the sometimes - understated , sometimes - blaring score is crisp and clear , and always right on the mark , enhancing the moods created by the animated scenery . as far as the subtitles go , i have to say that they 're among the most easily - readable subtitles
i 've ever seen for _ anything _ .
large enough that they do n't strain the eyes , but small enough not to conceal too much of the screen .
although it does have several action sequences in it , most notably the climactic conclusion , _ patlabor _ is foremost not an action movie .
although it is a superbly - realized film , it relies in large part upon prior familiarity with some of the characters to carry the story , and that could detract from some people 's enjoyment .
my .
answer:

P