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

[Q]: a film that means well , but is too pushy in promoting its belabored point and too sentimental to be compelling as a drama .
it 's jeroen krabb ?
's melodrama about a community of jews in antwerp in 1972 who ca n't forget their bitter past .
the heroine is an attractive , carefree , nonreligious 20-year - old , chaja ( fraser ) , who wants to forget her jewish roots by getting involved in student demonstrations , screwing a student rebel leader , and living with her gentile friends away from her nagging mother
( s ? gebrecht ) and her self - absorbed , eccentric father ( schell ) .
her parents are survivors of the holocaust concentration camps , and her home life is filled with angst .
her mother is in denial about the past always busying herself by cooking soup and baking cakes and complaining about everything , while her father is more openly loving but has recently been absorbed in searching for two suitcases filled with mementos , a family album , silverware , and his old violin .
he buried them in a garden during the war while fleeing the nazis , but ca n't locate them now due to all the changes in the city .
out of frustration after quitting her job as a dishwasher and facing eviction from her apartment , she reluctantly accepts a job as a nanny with an hasidic couple that an old man in her parents ' apartment building , mr .
apfelschnitt ( topol ) , tells her about .
the hasidics are ultra - orthodox : they do n't go to the cinema or watch tv , adhere to strict dress codes , and strictly observe their religious laws .
chaja is at first put off by the way they expect her to follow their rules , but soon finds the wife , mrs .
kalman ( rossellini ) , to be kind and she becomes attached to one of her 5 children , a 4-year - old named simcha ( monty ) who does n't talk .
the stern mr .
kalman ( krabb ? ) is not friendly to her and considers her to be a whore because of the way she dresses .
to hammer home the point of how anti - semitism has n't gone away
there 's a barrage of overdone and uninvolving scenes with a sneering concierge ( bradley ) , who keeps making nasty remarks about jews and tries to make things inconvenient for them by preventing the jewish family from using the elevator .
the film is done in by its ham - fisted script as the story , adapted from carl friedman 's book " the shovel and the loom , " goes from one false note to another until it gets lost in all the goo of its sentimentality .
it starts off telling chaja 's story of how she 's a lost jewess trying to find her identity , then to her nanny role as she loves a mute child stuck in an insulated environment , and then it makes it a story about the lingering effects of the bitter past that ca n't be forgotten .
the effort seemed heavy - handed , as the film kept delivering too many obvious messages that it ponderously kept delivering through the stock characters .
the supporting cast consists of all wooden characters who give their roles a cartoonish flavoring
: chaja 's parents are given no human shades , while the janitor villain was a particularly annoying role that was one - dimensional and falsely acted .
the only ones who fought through the script and showed some feelings were fraser , whose effervescent face was expressive of both the trying times she was going through and the joys she felt -- but most admirably showing how she could be so mistaken as to think that she could forget her roots ; while rossellini gave a warm performance of a woman suffering in silence , but is strong in accepting her faith .
topol 's reassuring performance as the wise man who says all the right things to fraser , acts as the true voice of the filmmaker in explaining all the sufferings with common sense .
the film brazenly uses little simcha to get across its agenda of pointing out how the patriarchal world can be cruel when it ca n't love : it starts out by showing how under chaja 's loving care he 's taken to the duck pond and soon starts jabbering away , beginning by saying ' quack , quack ' and then going on to ask the four questions during a passover seder .
but by showing how the boy is so terrified of his strict father that he wets his pants in his presence , refuses to speak because of his stern dad , and eventually becomes the victim of a tragic accident , the film thereby exploits the boy 's sufferings and his story just becomes tiresome and not sincerely done
.
i felt i did n't just see a movie , but i attended a lecture for the whole 100 minutes of this serious but unappetizing story .
it was the kind of movie that you hoped would somehow end soon , as it seemed to be in the habit of rehashing its same viewpoint unnecessarily -- the message it keeps sending was already received .
in the last shot where father and daughter are hopelessly digging for the lost luggage , one has the impression that no one in the film learned anything about themselves or the past .
that seems strange , since i thought that was what this film was supposed to be about . unless i was mistaken and the film 's real aim was to make us cry over simcha .
[A]: N


[Q]: there are two things the american film industry should avoid at all costs .
one is letting an ambitious actor convert one of his or her favorite novels into a feature film .
two is never greenlight a sci - fi film starring john travolta .
to wit , we present the disaster that is battlefield earth .
a science - fiction opus starring the barbarino of the actors guild , battlefield earth should be shown only at maximum - security prisons when a prisoner is tossed in solitary for bad behavior .
sci - fi is always a tricky beast : tight script , a good director , an ensemble cast of decent actors , and the ability to suspend even the most difficult of disbeliefs .
battlefield earth
fails at achieving even one of these attributes .
here 's the ` plot . '
the year is 3000 .
mankind has been become an endangered species thanks to the conquest of a race of aliens called the psychlos ( sounds like either the latest clown act from cirque de soleil or a white rap group ) .
a small band of humans dwell in radioactive caves located in the rockies in fear of the ` demons ' who dwell in the cities below .
the psychlos are strip - mining the earth for its resources and terel , played by travolta , is the head of security for the mining / slave base located in denver .
a young rogue named jonnie goodboy tyler , played with dramatic flair by barry pepper , ventures from the safety of the caves into the city to uncover the truth about the ` demons . '
he is promptly captured and taken to the alien base .
after several attempts at escape , johnnie is placed in the middle of an underhanded subplot of terel 's , involving circumventing gold from an exposed vein in the rockies to his own end .
jonnie , assumed leader of the mining slave group , then manages to attain all psychlo and human intelligence through
a learning machine terel forces him to use .
then the story just runs along until jonnie teaches the rest of the humans the basics of trigonometry , the bill of rights , how to use a machine gun , and how to fly a harrier jet .
the whole mess concludes with a big , loud , obnoxious gun - and - plane battle that had me praying for the end credits .
roger christian , the director of this lumbering beast , must have rented dune , blade runner , planet of the apes , independence day , stargate , beastmaster , the airwolf episodes , the ` v ' miniseries , the matrix , and the omega man . . . and decided to steal every scene he could for battlefield earth .
christian even shoots every scene in a weird dutch angle titled left or right for every frame of the movie !
and every scene in the movie ends with a middle wipe -- really .
the psychlos reminded me of a cross between jamaican basketball players with bad teeth and bloated hands and klingon extras working the star trek convention circuit .
travolta 's acting has n't been this bad since the experts or maybe perfect .
jonnie goodboy tyler evolves into william wallace with lines like
` you can have your freedom if you fight ! '
then there 's the script : the film just never convinces you that the plight of jonnie in teaching his fellow humans to fight and ` take back the planet ' would be a difficult task to achieve .
why ?
because terel provides all the necessary tools to incite a revolt -- for no particular reason beside the fact that ` humans are stupid . '
terel may be right , you know .
humans made this movie .
[A]: N


[Q]: making your first feature film ai n't easy .
assemble a decent , if not , strong cast , as writer / director robert moresco has done with one eyed king , and you 're already ahead of the game . but rehash old plot lines , tired dialogue , and standard clich ?
s , and a well - intentioned effort such as this one could jeopardize your chance at a second feature film .
how many more movies do we need about a rough neighborhood full of lifelong friends hopelessly turned to crime or worse ?
the enormous catalog of such movies might dissuade a filmmaker from making yet another , but here we have it .
again .
five irish kids in nyc 's hell 's kitchen make an overemotional pact over some stolen rings on an anonymous rooftop .
with teary music . and slow motion .
in the film 's first scene .
the kids grow up to be fairly worthless adults , unable or unwilling to make their way out of the heat of the kitchen .
leading the clueless pack is william baldwin as a good - hearted guy who watches out for his buddies and is in tight with local mob head armand assante .
i 'd like to say that his character gets involved over his head in some sort of
blah , blah , blah , but all we seem to get are little tastes of possible plot points .
he 's concerned about buddy jason gedrick 's heroin abuse .
he sticks up for jim breuer after he impregnates baldwin 's character 's sister .
he looks into who might be pushing the most moronic - looking counterfeit cash ever made ( a genuinely funny touch ) .
but none of this ever really amounts to anything .
it seems that moresco 's greater concern is to provide that intangible " slice of life " , that flavor of the neighborhood that everyone 's been trying to evoke since scorsese 's early work .
so , we get the drunk guys , hugging and singing together at the local bar , to prove to us that they really love each other .
( do people actually do this ! ? )
we get a lot of tough street talk -- usually mumbled for effect -- and a whole lot of the f - word , whether it sounds like it fits or not .
we also get a handful of good actors in small roles that seem to lack purpose .
bruno kirby , chazz palminteri , you know , guys you 've seen in movies just like this one before .
assante is intelligent casting as the man that everyone fears , and baldwin 's performance is adequate , but most of the rest of the cast jump into the tough guy persona
so thoroughly that it 's almost funny .
moresco ,
a theater guy and sometimes tv writer ( including the series falcone ) , obviously labored over this one as anyone might a first child , but the content is probably too personal . as a result , the movie 's style is heavy - handed , in need of a considerable amount of toning down .
nearly every time an action by the grown up gang recalls something they did as kids , moresco reminds us -- boy does he remind us . with slow dissolves to the earlier scene , running in slow motion , complete with dialogue from the present , just in case we do n't comprehend the link to the past .
moresco needs to either trust his audience 's intelligence , or have more faith in his own presentation rather than beat us over the head with it .
his next project should have a little more personal distance , and a lot more subtlety .
if he actually gets that chance .
reviewed as part of our 2001 boston film festival coverage ( feature story coming soon ) .
[A]:
N