instruction:
In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
question:
tone alone can not sustain a film , but it can go a long way .
if i can find myself lost in the time and place of a story , it scores immediate style points .
when that tone is backed up by an outstanding story and great acting , the effect can be described best by an adjective i do not use lightly : " literary .
"
what 's eating gilbert grape ? is such a film .
it 's a rich , memorable and stunningly acted story of desire colliding with responsibility , staged in a manner which many viewers might find too prosaic , but which insinuated itself into my imagination with its confidence .
gilbert grape ( johnny depp ) is a young man living in rural endora , iowa , facing incredible responsibilities .
as the man of the house since his father 's suicide , gilbert must support the family by working at the local grocery store .
he also must watch over his mentally handicapped brother arnie ( leonardo dicaprio ) and help care for his extremely overweight mother ( darlene cates ) .
gilbert seems destined to spend the rest of his life in the small town until the arrival in endora of becky ( juliette lewis ) , a free spirit passing through with her grandmother when their truck breaks down .
as he spends time with becky , gilbert begins to think about all the things he is missing .
slowly his resentment builds , until he realizes that he can no longer live his entire life for other people .
director lasse hallstrom ( my life as a dog ) and
legendary cinematographer sven nykvist create a magnificent visual backdrop for peter hedges ' screenplay , based on his own novel .
endora is a town on the edge of the world represented by the giant foodmart , a tiny insular community where everyone knows everyone else .
the midwestern sunsets and sprawling fields are beautifully photographed , and the atmosphere of the town is intensely real .
minor characters , like crispin glover as the town 's mortician , are vividly realized , and there are echoes of the last picture show in mary steenburgen 's desperately unhappy housewife .
one of the most perfectly realized scenes focuses on the grand opening of a burger franchise , attended by the entire town and accompanied by the off - key high school band .
not a single note in the depiction of endora rang false .
the same can be said of the character of gilbert .
it 's testimony to the precision involved in his creation that he came together completely with one perfectly placed line , when becky responds to gilbert 's description of his father with , " i knew someone like that once .
"
gilbert is a man harboring an ever - growing bitterness about where he finds himself in life , a bitterness which reveals itself in moments of surprising cruelty .
in one scene , he allows local children to look at his mother through their window , displaying her like a side show attraction .
his entire life seems to be mocked by arnie 's repeated chants of , " we 're not going anywhere , " but instead of expressing his dissatisfaction he lets his anger simmer , and it becomes clear that he is following in his father 's footsteps in this regard .
johnny depp expertly demonstrates the tension central to gilbert by playing everything below the surface , but he never gives in to one - dimensional blankness or simply regurgitates his naif roles in benny & joon and edward scissorhands .
depp 's performance is overshadowed , however , by leonardo dicaprio 's astonishing oscar - nominated supporting work as arnie .
he puts to shame such big name actors as john malkovich and dustin hoffman , whose mentally challenged characters never seemed completely real .
dicaprio is perfect to the last twitch and squeal , and anyone who has ever spent time with mentally challenged kids will be hard - pressed to spot a flaw .
darlene cates , a first - time actor , brings real pain to her scenes as gilbert 's tortured mother , and laura harrington and mary kate schellhardt are solid as gilbert 's sisters .
only juliette lewis does n't quite click , playing a critical role with her now familiar dopey drone and too little genuine spark .
gilbert grape does seem to drift into its conclusion , but it never lost me .
thanks to a lovingly created setting and a marvelous cast , this 1993 release proves well worth the wait .
answer:
P


question:
according to the publicity material , with this movie the directors " hope to restore good old - fashioned bowling to its rightful place in the mainstream of american consciousness .
" hmm .
you never know , they just might be on to something .
what with the rise of geek chic , lounge music and seventies fashion , the ever - contrary kids of the nineties might just latch on to bowling as another terminally unhip bastion of tackyana to claim as their own .
but then , i doubt if kingpin will have anything to do with it .
it 's cheesy all right , but connoisseurs of bad taste will find this film exudes that bland smell of stale jokes rather than the invigorating stink of true kitsch .
that 's a shame , because , in the first ten minutes
or so the film promises to be a lot more .
woody harrelson plays the hotshot bowler on the rise , roy munson .
the movie opens in the fifties with roy 's dad dishing out the reader 's digest / gumpian wisdom in scoopfuls , shifting to the 70s for a hilarious spoof of saturday night fever .
the sardonic tone of the proceedings is much enhanced by the presence of bill murray , as the delectably slimy big ern mcracken .
it 's thanks to murray that the first quarter of kingpin seems so good
- he gives the wry , derisive edge to this otherwise rather unfocused comedy .
mccracken dupes munson into a hustling job , then abandons him to an angry mob who mangle roy 's hand .
then it 's fast forward 17 years later when munson is a fat , balding loser with a prosthetic rubber hand .
he 's hopeless until he meets ishmael ( randy quaid ) ,
an amish amateur bowler that munson takes on as protege .
so together they set out for the million dollar bowling tournament in reno , picking up pretty hustler claudia ( vanessa angel ) on the way .
with the exit of bill murray , the filmmakers seem to have only one direction to go , and that 's . . .
dumb and dumber .
yes , indeed , kingpin is brought to you by those modern proponents of laxative humour , peter and bobby farrelly , the directors of the aforementioned jim carrey vehicle .
so , prepare for much slaparound comedy with flying rubber hands , distended nipples , ridiculous hair and bull semen .
get set for stock fish - out - of - water situations when city - boy roy puts on a beard and tries to blend in with the amish community , or when suaku straitlaced ishmael takes on smoking , striptease and unchristian neighbour - socking .
now , do n't get me wrong , there 's nothing wrong with cheap humour , and i had my fair share of lavatorial laughs with woody and randy .
the trouble is that these jokes are n't bold or funny enough to drive a movie that bumbles along without much sense of direction .
it lurches from sports movie to amish - mocking to road - trip to sentimental melodrama , ( pausing for a broadside spoof of indecent proposal , and many shameless plugs for the accompanying pop soundtrack ) , never quite getting it all together .
some gags fall flat from a lack of build - up , while there are bits and pieces in the movie that simply do n't do anything .
why the long , unfunny fight in the car park ?
why two of these ?
why does that guy wear mascara , or that guy have a glass bowling ball with a rose in it ?
the film is full of these half - thought - through ideas that give the impression of any old gaffer , grip or makeup artist throwing in random stuff and saying , " would n't that be funny ? " .
well , no , actually .
the actors do n't do the movie much favours either .
woody harrelson comes off okay , plausibly acting dumb , smart , cynical or innocent when the implausible script calls for it , but randy quaid is a ceaseless ham , and vanessa angel has no talent ( like schwarzenegger , she seems more convincing playing a computer - creation than a human -- take the tv series weird science . . .
please ) .
even murray hams it up when he reappears in the movie 's climax .
all in all , a fairly useless attempt at comedy , and a certified no - hoper at kickstarting the bowling renaissance .
we 'll have to look to a reinspired john waters , or perhaps somebody from down under ( " strictly bowling " , anyone ? ) for the definitive bowling comedy .
the flying inkpot 's rating system :
* wait for the video .
*
* a little creaky , but still better than staying at home with gotcha !
*
* * pretty good , bring a friend .
*
*
* * amazing , potent stuff .
*
*
*
* * perfection . see it twice .
answer:
N


question:
the promotion for fear and loathing in las vegas ? has made the film out to be a comedy , and for about the first hour
or so it seems like it might be one .
it 's 1971 , and the hippie movement has left behind quite a few wash - outs , among them journalist raoul duke ( johnny depp ) and his " attorney " dr .
gonzo ( benito del toro ) .
these two spend most of the film in a drug - induced stupor , having strange hallucinations , trashing their hotel rooms , and either annoying or scaring almost everyone that crosses their path .
duke is first assigned to cover an outdoor desert motorcycle race in las vegas , but gets lost in a blur of drugs , beer , and flying dust , and ends up wandering around with no clue who won .
he leaves vegas briefly before he is sent back , in what can only be described as a strangely appropriate twist of fate , to cover a drug enforcement conference .
fear and loathing has been misinterpreted by some as glorifying the use of drugs .
it does n't , even in the beginning -- while the pair 's antics are sometimes amusing and relatively harmless at first , the humor here is still fairly dark .
director terry gilliam views them with a rather satirical eye , and even when we 're laughing , we 're laughing at them rather than with them .
they spend most of their time paranoid , angry , or just plain befuddled , which is probably an understandable reaction to seeing the entire room suddenly fill up with giant reptiles .
the black comedy may be entertaining to watch onscreen , but it 's probably not something most other audience members would want to experience first - hand .
all this aside , i was starting to grow a bit restless as the film drew near its one - hour mark , thinking to myself that i wanted something more out of this than just an off - kilter satire of drug culture .
thankfully , the script delivers it before too long , as duke , in a rare moment of lucidity , stops to recall how he was once an enthusiastic hippie , " riding the wave " of something that seemed special and important .
now it 's six years later and the wave has finally broken , as he puts it .
materialistic culture is still alive and well and , for most of this film , right in his face in las vegas ; the " american dream " of which duke occasionally speaks is still just as shallow and phony as ever .
the social protesters have lost , and the more questionable aspects of the movement have turned ugly and left casualties such as duke to drift in a sea of drugs and disillusionment .
in many ways , fear and loathing is gilliam 's most reality - based film ; all of his others , with the exception of the fisher king , have made use of some sort of fantasy or science - fiction plot elements .
yet it is his off - the - wall masterpiece brazil ?
to which this film bears the most visual resemblance .
the protagonist of brazil found himself alternately surrounded by a plastic , soulless society and the constant chaos of totalitarian police inspections and terrorist attacks , and similarly duke 's world is composed of the artificial , empty glam of las vegas and the bizarre anarchy of his drug hallucinations .
unlike the protagonist of brazil , however , duke is not a particularly admirable figure , and neither is gonzo .
during the latter half of the film , their trips turn nastier and the consequences worse , eventually building up to an incident an a diner in which gonzo crudely frightens and humiliates a waitress , while duke , though he does n't seem to approve , does n't do anything to stop it either .
by the time this scene takes place , they do n't seem like hippies or peaceniks or protesters or anything of the sort any more ; they just seem like a couple of stoned jerks in a diner .
duke seems to realize at some level that he 's become something he does n't like , but he 's either too apathetic or too defeated to do anything to change .
this film has taken a critical drubbing from many who view it as an essentially pointless film that simply throws one trip scene after another at the audience .
while gilliam may have overdone it in a few places , i think he and his co - writers deserve more credit than that .
there 's plenty of substance here , particularly in the second half ; its observations about the broken and defeated rebels from the ' 60s and the objects of their rebellion just are n't usually very pleasant .
unlike , say , brazil ? or the fisher king , both of which feature a character who dares to let himself dream in a repressive environment , fear and loathing in las vegas ?
shows us someone who 's given up on his dreams and resorts to the quick fix of drugs .
in its own psychedelic , whacked - out way , it 's sad and regretful , but i think it 's also a bit of a kick in the pants , a challenge to find an alternative between chemically - induced withdrawal and the equally addictive drug of vegas - style materialism .
indeed , duke himself admits at one point that he 's never learned to accept that you can get higher without drugs than with them .
i 'm not sure if he 's any closer to accepting it by the end or not , but i suspect the audience will get the idea .
answer:

P