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

Q: ( dreamworks skg ) running time : 2 hours starring robert duvall , tea leoni and elijah wood directed by mimi leder the first of the two asteroid movies coming out this year ( the second is the macho armageddon ) is actually a dull affair .
elijah wood plays leo biederman , who during astronomy class discovers that a large asteroid is heading for earth .
tea leoni plays a ( rather crap ) news reporter , jenny lerner , who soon discovers about this asteroid through a very long winded and boring way , and robert duvall plays the leader of a space crew , spurgeon tanner , who are planning to blow the asteroid out of the path of earth .
also featuring is morgan freeman as the president , and maximilian schell and vanessa redgrave as jenny 's father and mother . while many people will walk into the film expecting a big special effects fest with the asteroid blowing everything up ( as the trailers seem to promise ) , the film is actually more of a character study , if a very poor one .
the main problem is that there are too many characters in the film , and not enough time to explore them all .
only the space crew are given any depth , jenny lerner , leo and the president are surprisingly 2d , and we never get to know these characters .
and because i could n't care for them , i did n't really give a crap if the asteroid killed them or not .
the script by bruce joel rubin and michael tolkin is horribly simple , and never really makes any interesting statements .
mimi leder , the former er director and director of the average the peacemaker ( 1996 ) , again directs in a ho - hum style , and never really gets any emotion out of a scene , which is a shame .
the cast are seemingly on autopilot , although tea leoni does gives a rather good performance , even if she acts a bit too dorky for her own good .
she seems uncommonly stupid for a journalist .
robert duvall is on autopilot with a underwritten role , he just seems to be in this film for the money .
elijah wood , one of the best child actors working today , is surprisingly average , although his choice of roles lately have n't exactly been brilliant ( i .
e .
flipper , 1996 ) .
his role is also vastly underwritten .
morgan freeman , again , is utterly wasted with a ridiculously underwritten role .
like duvall , he just seems to be in the film for the money .
the supporting cast are all o .
k , none making much of an impression .
ok , so deep impact may have messed up character wise , but surely the special effects are good ?
well , yes and no .
although the special effects should be impressive , with a massive tidal wave destroying new york , the special effects look like , well , special effects .
sadly , the waves looks like it 's been drawn on computer , and does n't look too good at all . surprising really , when the effects are done by industrial light & magic , who did the effects for the lost world and twister .
in the end , deep impact is a wasted opportunity .
what could of been a moving movie with good effects turns out to be a dud in both characters and effects .
the 2 hours the film had could have been used to much greater effect .
once again , dreamworks has churned out another average movie .
let 's hope armageddon is a bit better .
overall rating= review by david wilcock web space provided by geocities

A: N
****
Q: on the basis of this film alone , i never would have predicted that , in two years , quentin tarantino would become the country 's biggest hotshot director .
reservoir dogs
has hints of the tarantino brilliance that emerged in pulp fiction , but is a much less substantive , more conventional crime story than the big pf .
here 's what the two movies do have in common . . .
--scenes of intelligent , amusing dialogue with no relevance to the plot --a story that jumps back and forth in time rather than going in a logical , chronological sequence --graphic yet necessary violence
--an engaging crime story --dialogue liberally spiced with swear words and racial / gender slurs --three of the same actors ( harvey keitel , tim roth and steve buscemi )
--a mexican standoff ending , although this one is considerably less optimistic than pf reservoir dogs is an entire hour shorter than pulp fiction because it 's only got one story to tell rather than three .
crime lord joe cabot ( veteran actor lawrence tierney ) has assembled five criminals who have never even met each other to pull a diamond store heist .
the five are instructed not to reveal their real names or personal details or anything the cops could use if one of them was captured and interrogated .
instead , they are all given code names off the color chart -- mr .
white ( keitel ) , mr .
pink ( buscemi ) , mr .
orange ( roth ) , mr .
blonde ( michael madsen ) , mr .
brown ( tarantino ) and mr .
peach ( tarantino 's chin ) .
most of the movie 's running time is spent with mr .
white and pink waiting at a warehouse for the others to arrive .
mr .
orange , meanwhile , is on the floor , dying from a gunshot wound .
the police had arrived at the scene of the crime way too soon , leading white to believe one of the five was an informant .
the story 's background unfolds through a series of flashbacks , of the crime itself and the meetings between joe and the criminals prior to the crime .
eventually , blonde arrives with a police officer hostage , and what follows is a truly brutal , uncomfortable torture scene .
let 's just say picasso would be inspired by what blonde does to the cop 's ear .
a lot of the time , reservoir dogs seems like your typical gangster heist - gone - wrong movie , but there are a few sequences that are uniquely tarantino .
the opening scene in the coffee shop starts the movie off on a high note the rest of it does n't live up to , as the criminals plus joe have a conversation on , among other things , tipping philosophies and their interpretations of madonna 's " like a virgin .
"
another scene involves roth 's lengthy manufactured story about running into a group of cops and a police dog in a bus station bathroom while carrying a giant bag of marijuana .
neither of these have much plot relevance but are given ample time to develop , like the captain koons gold watch speech in pulp fiction , only here these sequences are more enjoyable than the rest of the movie .
reservoir dogs is good
but it 's no pulp fiction .

A: P
****
Q: note : some may consider portions of the following text to be spoilers . be forewarned . among my fanatical ticker tape - worshipping friends , there 's one who happens to share the same philosophy espoused by the central character in darren aronofsky 's darkly original pi : the entire stock market can be reduced to nothing but a series of patterns which , through analysis , will produce information to accurately forecast future behaviour .
( an example of the mentality involved : if the stock price goes up like this , and then down like that , and then sharply up this way , it then will go * this * way . )
while i freely admit that i know less than nothing about the market ( knowledge check :
prices up -- good ; prices down -- bad ; most of the time , at least ) and hence really could n't comment with any authority , it 's always nonetheless struck me as an incredibly naive oversimplification of an astonishingly complex system ( and besides , if it were that simple , no doubt somebody would 've already figured it all out ) .
the difference in this case is that while my colleague ( an otherwise assuredly realistic individual ) truly believes in this in and of itself as a valid forecaster , pi uses this ideology as a device with which to investigate its character 's psychosis .
it 's also vastly more convincing with its argument .
"
mathematics is the language of the universe , " insists genius protagonist maximillian cohen ( sean gullette ) in a cool , mantra - like voice - over which repeats throughout the picture .
since nature can be expressed in numbers , and there are patterns everywhere in nature , he reasons with eminent logic that finding the patterns will allow him to predict anything -- the ups and downs of the stock market , how many games the yankees will win this year , the flavour of jam i 'm going to put on my toast tomorrow morning .
obsessed with finding the proverbial key to the universe , max lives in paranoid , self - imposed solitude in a seedy nyc chinatown apartment , single - mindedly toiling away with his monstrous homemade computer system .
sullenly withdrawn and plauged by debilitating migraines , the elusive pursuit of a mysterious 216-digit number his machine spits out one day is driving him into madness .
the story , then , is basically an eccentricity , but it 's a clever , astute eccentricity , perceptively zeroing in on the modern mistrust of mathematical reductionism ; in an age where a dominant societal phobia is one 's individualism being replaced by a series of numeric identifiers , max 's all - consuming penchent for numbers at once creates a lingering , unsettling mood .
it helps matters that he 's not a particularly likable protagonist .
all attempts of friendliness from neighbours are curtly rebuffed by max , a spindly , neurotic - looking individual who has n't the time to indulge in pleasantries .
for a film which puts its lead character front and center ( mr .
gullette appears in virtually every scene ) , pi takes a refreshing and effective approach in avoiding conventional aesthetics ; because of our ambivalence with max , we 're not so much avidly rooting for him to triumph with a moment of epiphany as we 're following him through this plot with a sense of mixed dread and morbid fascination -- it 's more disturbing journey than quest .
still , we do care about max 's fate .
teetering on the edge of dementia , he winds up being pursued by two different groups which want to pick his brain , both fronted by deliciously perky , resolutely cheerful representatives with inevitably duplictious intentions .
as we know , in films where paranoia is a dominant element ( see the truman show 's laura linney character ) , or for that matter , in real life , it 's always the ones who never stop smiling at you and are overly friendly that are the ones of which to be wary .
pi , a film that addresses patterns
, itself intentionally adheres to an identifiable pattern cycle -- headache scene ; important revelation or bit of plot development ; pill - popping montage ; hallucinatory nightmare ( with decidedly cronenberg - esque undertones -- few other directors are as equally adept in bridging unsettling concepts and body - themed horror ) ; nosebleeding reality .
the repetitiveness , far from being tedious , is effectively maddening ; more than anything , the picture aims to get under our skins and take in events from max 's claustrophobic perspective .
in this regard , it wildly succeeds due to mr .
aronofsky 's striking direction .
it 's a rarity that a film so completely immerses itself into a protagonist 's warped perspective of his surrounding , and high contrast black - and - white cinematography combined with constant usage of extreme close - ups lend a heightened sense of paranoia to the proceedings .
( in some scenes , the stark composition in conjunction with the lumbering approach by mr .
gullette make his character curiously resemble a latter - day max schreck , from nosferatu . ) using savage , jittery lensing and rapid cuts to create a sense of disorientation , the picture is often dizzying to behold , and max 's effective isolationism is emphasized by shots from the so - called snorri cam , which keep him in plain focus while the environment races by in blurred bursts .
pi 's raw , aggressive visuals are reminiscent of david lynch 's early work ( in particular , eraserhead ) .
the film 's sinister tone splashes onto the screen immediately with a dazzling opening credit sequence ably backed by a sly electronic score by clint mansell , and gradually increases in intensity .
still , amidst all its kafkaesque qualities and overall dispassionate mood , pi does occasionally display a sense of humour .
at one point , marcy dawson ( pamela hart , great fun ) entices max with the offer of an invaluable treasure : a one - of - a - kind . . .
computer chip .
" is n't it beautiful , " she coos .
a showcase for mr .
aronofsky 's technical virtuosity ( made for $ 60 000
, it 's since gone on to capture acclaim at the 1998 sundance film festival ) , pi is an intriguingly cerebral story which , ironically , is perhaps the most purely visceral film of the year .

A:
P
****