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

synopsis : the president of a company wants to test his self - appointed successor , who 's psychotic , and thinks it 's a great idea to spend a week with him and their wives in an isolated cabin a hundred miles from civilization with no dependable transportation or means of communication after a heavy snowfall .
comments : tracks of a killer had a couple of strikes against it before i even began watching it .
strike one was the fact that someone had scrawled the word garbage on the videotape 's sticker in black marker
( not typically a good sign when you rent a film ) .
strike two came while the previews played .
did you ever get a sinking premonition about a movie 's quality ( or lack thereof ) while watching the trailers that come before it ?
well , the cheesy films being advertised before tracks of a killer were films that no one has ever heard of starring people no one knows , and they all looked bad ( definately not a good sign ) .
tracks of a killer itself completed the strikeout .
about the only positive thing this film had going for it was the fact that it sports some nice scenery .
to be fair , the first half - hour or so promises at least a watchable thriller .
wolf larson , who bears more than a passing resemblance to hugh grant , adequately plays the underling obviously set up as the killer of the film 's title .
james brolin and kelly lebrock seem equally adequate as the loving couple larson will later threaten .
brolin 's character , for some inexplicable reason , thinks its a great idea to spend some time in a cabin , practically isolated , with lebrock and larson , whom he 's decided to test for the week before giving him full control of his company .
by the time the characters arrive at the cabin , this film begins to become tedious .
apparently , brolin 's successor 's test involves chopping wood for the fireplace and skiing , which do n't seem like attributes necessary to run a business in the city .
but , then again , what do i know about business ?
i do think , though , that they should have invested in some better furniture for the cabin ; its beds and closets have a habit of just breaking at the slightest touch .
larson 's character accidently kills his own wife rather than the couple he wants to kill .
this leaves the movie with an hour to go and only three characters , which really is n't enough to sustain it .
the film 's writer must have taken a cue from stephen king , as scenes from tracks of a killer seem lifted out of misery and gerald 's game .
larson and lebrock fight and torture each other ( the tables get turned a couple of times ) while brolin tramps around in the snow looking for help .
some old guy 's around too
, just so the killer can add to his body count without killing the couple , who everyone knows will be alive at the end of the film .
the old guy , however , miraculously survives his first death and appears later to be killed again by the killer in a scene
so ludicrous it 's worthy of a chuckle or two
.
outside of that chuckle , unfortunately , tracks of a killer will just bore you as the obvious plot is drawn out ad infinitum and the actors , for some reason , become increasing obnoxious . if you 're in a video store and thinking about renting this turkey , do n't . make tracks to a far superior suspense film , like misery .
N

for about twenty minutes into mission impossible 2 director john woo ( the killer , hard boiled , face off ) appears to have made an exciting , elegant , charming spy thriller , kind of a post millennium james bond adventure with a strapping american ( read : unsophisticated ) hero more willing to drop kick villains than out fox them .
sadly , as the picture progresses , the final product begins to bear a closer resemblance to a souped up , two - hour long episode of magyuver .
and not a particularly good one at that .
what went wrong ?
mi2 begins flashily enough , that initial flash leading us to believe that it 'll soon give way to something of a plot , but it only gives way to more flash , then digresses further into a presumably unintentional parody of itself with much slo mo posturing and countless action set pieces wherein bad guys seem to deliberately leap into the way of tom cruise 's firing gun just so they can die really cool .
early on , during a car chase between soon to be lovers ethan hunt ( tom cruise ) and nyah nordoff - hall ( thandie newton ) , woo works some of his trademark magic .
in one hypnotic , though completely inexplicable sequence , the director slows the action down to a languid semi - stall as cruise and his stunning opponent stare into one and other 's eyes with come hither sexuality ? ? ?
just as their respective cars smash and spin in accordance , coming ever so close to toppling over a neighboring cliff .
prior to this we see the famed trailer opener of cruise climbing a steep mountain , sans scaffolding , then leaping from one jagged rock formation to another .
why ?
i have n't the foggiest .
i doubt even john woo could provide you with a logical reply .
with mi2 woo has become a slave to the summer movie machine , the one that jettisons logic for gravity defying effects and story for more gravity defying effects .
it 's possible that these " spies " could be adrenaline junkies climbing mountains and crashing into each other as means to get off , though of course this is never explored .
the scenes i 've described are really only included to titillate , not to give any insight into character .
god forbid .
woo certainly knows how to make each set piece energetic , but they remain individual set pieces never connecting to form anything more than splices of beer commercial - like visuals .
still in terms of crackerjack eye candy , the opening has much to cherish .
cruise and newton first meet during a vigorous flamenco dance featuring several welcome woo devices ( the graceful slow mo artistry of synchronized movement juxtaposed against the stage 1 romance of two attractive individuals discovering how attractive the other is ) .
between the frantic dancing , woo trains his camera on cruise and newton as they make with some sensuous eye contact .
the scene is a little over the top in a bon jovi music video circa 1988 kind of way , yet it has style and something of soul , and woo casts a bit of a spell on us .
sure it 's all smoke and mirrors , but we can see that there happens to be a talented maestro behind this particular product .
thandie and cruise later meet in a bathtub in a scene that 's about half as playfully charming as the jennifer lopez \ george cloony trunk meeting in out of sight .
they flirt and exchange obvious double entendres .
newton bats her eyes flirtatiously .
cruise grins a little too slyly .
the cruise character , ethan hunt , has been drastically altered since the first film .
here cruise plays him more as a hip , sexual dynamo than the square jawed robot he impersonated in part 1 .
he 's cool and dashing , which is precisely the kind of role we want to see cruise in after watching him sleep walk through eyes wide shut ( which might just be the longest episode of red show diaries ever committed to film ) , and blustered his way through magnolia ( quite possibly the most overrated performance of the 90 's ) .
sadly as the film progresses we see less of cruise 's initial " i 'm the man !
" charm and more slo - mo close - ups of his preening mug .
mi2 falls apart on nearly every level during its repetitious third act , which is essentially one hour long action sequence that just wo n't stop .
the whole thing commences with an utterly generic gun battle ( the first gun fight in the film ) , which really should be unheard of in a john woo film , but alas this particular battle could 've been staged by anyone from renny harlin to joseph merhi ( of course excepting the " symbolic " pigeons who seem to find their way into every john woo picture ) .
we 've all seen guys slide across the floor in slo mo while firing a gun in each hand .
it is n't done any differently here .
the action is pure hard target \ broken arrow theatrics with nothing to propel it but the apparent need to see tom cruise drop kick face less villains while his hair whips stylishly in the wind .
he 's cool for sure but
he 's made to be as empty as the movie .
the actor is n't used so much for his boyish appeal as for his chiseled looks ; he smiles narcissistically into the camera at literally any moment , be it during a gunfight , before one or after one .
when he 's not beaming away , he 's staring into the lens with cold eyes trying to look mad as hell , but woo 's editing seriously undermines the effort .
he fetishizes cruise 's angular face with such glee that it turns into a naked gun style spoof .
i half expected cruise to peel off his facemask and reveal that he 's really austin powers .
in a classic woo action moment , ethan hunt struts past a fiery doorway glaring at the baddies within its frame like a pin - up boy angel of death .
the gunfight turns into a daring escape which turns into a reckless mission which turns into a motorcycle attack in which bad guys seem to angle directly for cruise to kill them like some kind of mass suicide ritual ( one dumb bastard even jumps his bike over the gun toting cruise , basically inviting our handsome hero to shoot him in mid air which he does ) .
the lead bad guy ( played by the appropriately british dougray scott ) and cruise face off in a mentally deficient game of chicken ? ? ? on motorcycles .
though instead of jumping off to the side at the last moment , the two grown men leap directly into the other giving each other a mid air bear hug , only to fly about a hundred feet ( still in bear hug position ) , land on a beach below and begin a mano - e - mano fist fight that ends with the bad guy pulling a " so you thought i was dead . . .
"
.
not to worry , cruise takes care of the problem without even breaking a sweat .
what a hero !
you may have noticed that i opted not to describe an iota of mi2 's plot .
my reasoning is simple : i 'm not sure of any good it would do .
the film itself has absolutely no concern with story , only with hurtling forth to the next " special " effect .
i was n't kidding when i told a friend of mine that mi2 has less plot than the average aerosmith video .
nobody will go to this for the plot , and if they do they 'll surely regret it .
as summer movies evolve ( or devolve ) character and plot have become increasingly whittled down to nearly nothing .
in mi , the plot seemed to be built around brian de palma 's ( that film 's director ) stylistic flourishes , while in mi2 the plot only serves to give us an intermittent breather from woo 's non - stop masturbatory pandemonium .
it 's irrelevant in every sense , as is character .
all that ultimately matters are those pesky smoke and mirrors .
N

i suppose an argument could be made that toy story is one of those films that did n't need a sequel .
beloved by kids and their parents , respected equally by mainstream america and geekish movie buffs , that first movie remains a landmark of recent history , the one that burst open the possibilities of computer animation and demonstrated through wild invention and giddy chutzpah just how complacent the disney animation machine had become in cranking out fluffy razzle - dazzle entertainment full of formula storytelling and banal songwriting .
if disney was embarrassed at being beaten at its own game ( toy story was a smash hit of unexpected proportions , and one that caught the merchandising end of the business unaware as demand for action figures far outstripped supply ) , it did n't show , and as distributor and part - owner of the property , at least it had a piece of the action .
toy story 2 was greenlighted as a direct - to - video project , disney 's standard tactic for milking a few more bucks out of hot franchises without expending the effort of developing a proper feature film .
as someone who does n't believe sequels are necessarily a bad thing ( granted , they usually are a bad thing , but that 's because they 're made for the wrong reasons ) , i had to wonder what in the world they were thinking .
fortunately , disney claimed to have been so knocked - out by early animation tests that they let pixar go full - speed ahead with a theatrical sequel .
lucky thing , too -- like the first movie ,
this one is a joy to behold on the big screen , and technically , it improves on its predecessor on just about every level .
( from a business standpoint , the end credits show that the new creations are copyrighted by pixar , while the previous film 's elements are shared between pixar and disney , a sign of the production house 's new cachet in hollywood . )
visually , the main shortcoming of this fully computer - generated movie is that human figures are still rendered relatively poorly , making them look a little creepy .
fortunately , that eerie unreality fits in perfectly with the perspective of the movie , where the secret world of toys is more immediate , and arguably more attractive , than the world of the humans who surround them .
as before , the story is predicated on the premise that the toys scattered around the bedroom of a little boy named andy -- and , indeed , all the toys scattered around the bedrooms of all little children -- come to life in the child 's absence .
while the toys scamper about and chatter endlessly among themselves , the real joy of a toy 's life is to mean something to its owner .
one of the subjects of this new film is the sadness of toys that have been broken or abandoned , left on a shelf to gather dust , and another is the sort of emotional limbo inhabited by toys that are mere prizes of covetous collectors .
most often , those toys are packed away in dark spaces , safe from sunlight and humidity , and often they 're not even removed from their packaging .
imagine what a chip that would put on your shoulder , and you 'll understand the attitudes of the collector 's items that show up in this movie .
sheriff woody ( voiced by a note - perfect tom hanks ) , the longtime favorite among andy 's toys who was challenged in the previous go - round by the arrival of flashy - new - thing action figure buzz lightyear ( tim allen ) , suffers an injury early in the film , when andy tugs too hard on his arm and pulls a seam apart , revealing the stuffing inside .
this accident catalyzes some uneasieness among the toys , who know too well that a broken toy is often a forgotten toy , and a forgotten toy is one that loses its reason for existence .
those anxieties are crystallized when andy 's mom tears through his living room , collecting old toys for a yard sale .
and there 's an ironic twist to the tale , as woody winds up being stolen by an avid toy collector who needs exactly that quaint cowboy figure to complete a set that he hopes to sell to a japanese toy museum for a sizable sum .
the rest of andy 's toys , who owe him quite a debt , resolve to rescue him .
that this film manages to turn a box marked " 25 cents " into a symbol of doom , or to make its screed against the retention of collectible toys by wrongheaded profiteers fuel for a metaphysical dilemma , is a testament to its skill at metaphor , seamlessly translating the hopes and fears of our real world into that of the toys .
operating on this level of abstraction , toy story 2 tackles some mighty heavy issues without once preaching or veering into pretentiousness .
( the worst i can say is that randy newman seems to have reserved his sappiest lyric in years for sarah mclachlan , who stops the movie cold by singing it at just about the halfway mark . )
sometimes i think toy story 2 tries too hard .
there 's somewhat less of the seat - of - the - pants loopiness that energized the first film , allowing it to surprise and excite on a near - constant basis , and more philosophizing about toys , collectors , the nature of happiness and the meaning of life .
while that leads to fewer bellylaughs , it does make way for more elaborate humor and an uncommonly ambitious reflexivity that asks the toys to consider their own status as commodities that move in and out of fashion .
( just do n't ask why andy 's favorite toy is based on a tv series that was canceled in 1957 . ) where else in mainstream movies do you get such an awesome moment as the one where buzz arrives at al 's toy barn to find it stocked to the gills with his doppelgangers , buzz lightyear action figures ?
forget the self - congratulatory science fiction of the matrix -- this is a fundamental mind - bender for buzz , and the audience shares his humility and wonderment at the sight .
here , as in the roughly concurrent scene where woody watches tapes of the howdy doodyish children 's tv show that originated his character , we see our protagonists come face - to - face with god .
in sly ways , then , toy story 2 can be read as a film about mortality , a metaphorical consideration of aging and death .
significantly , the film 's very first sequence concludes with a grim shocker that had our opening - night crowd in a near - uproar .
and toward the end , when buzz and woody speculate on how long they have before andy grows up and discards his old toys , one of them observes , with an alacrity both inspirational and heartbreaking , that it will be fun while it lasts .
so toy story 2 joins the tradition of children 's stories , largely neglected of late , that say something real about the inevitable joys and tragedies of existence .
what 's really striking is that both toy story films ( and , to a lesser degree , pixar 's a bug 's life ) are kids ' movies with wit and sophistication to shame most of their ostensibly adult counterparts , not to mention whatever piece of tot - friendly eye - candy is due from the disney dream factory any given summer .
it puts one in mind of the glory days of chuck jones and the old gang at warner bros .
animation .
i 'm not sure lasseter and
his pals at pixar will ever operate at quite that level of purely visual invention -- they love traditional narrative too much -- but , boy , it makes me wonder what they might come up with next .
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directed by john lasseter , colin brady , ash brannon , and lee unkrich written by lasseter , brannon , peter docter , andrew stanton , rita hsaio , doug chamberlain , and chris webb cinematography by sharon calahan starring ( voices )
tom hanks , tim allen , and joan cusack usa , 1999 theatrical aspect ratio : 1 .
85
: 1 --------------------------------------------------------------

P