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

[Q]: this sunday afternoon i had the priviledge of attending a private screening at the sony astor cinema in new york city , of james cameron 's most heralded film , titanic .
postponed from last summer , with an escalated budget that makes it the most expensive movie in history , this was one film i was eager to preview .
so , is this movie going to sink or swim this holiday ?
my best guess .
. . . it will sink , though with many awards attatched to its hull .
no doubt , titanic is the most elaborate disaster movie ever made .
it boasts the most amazing effects that i have ever seen done to date .
to see a ship fall apart , with actual people running across the ship , flying across the deck , and falling to the water , is just amazing to look at .
the effects are so stunningly realistic , you would swear you were looking at actual footage .
but titanic is more than a disaster movie , and that 's where the problem lies .
there is a love story attatched that nearly ruins the entire premise .
i 'll give a capsule summary of the story without spoiling anything for you : the film begins with a modern day excavation of sorts of the sunken titanic .
we see actual footage of the sunken ship , as cammeron had set up special cameras to film the wreckage on the ocean floor .
bill paxton leads the expedition , in search of sunken treasure .
what he finds instead , leads him to a mysterious old woman who recounts her tale of the titanic voyage .
we meet rose ( kate winslet ) , a young woman , who comes from an upper - class family .
rose is to be we d to a man she does not love .
we meet jack ( leonardo dicaprio ) , a young man , who comes from a poor financial background , and wins a ticket aboard the titanic , in a poker game .
the two meet under interesting circumstances , and the love story begins .
add in a jealous fiance , and a not - so - nice law officer played by david warner , and you have a story that , well , gets a bit overplayed and oversappy .
i must add , at this point , that the most likeable character in the movie is played by kathy bates , as a woman with " new money " who is a lot less uptight than the other rich folk on the ship .
she is a pleasure to see on screen .
when the ship does hit the iceberg at exactly 1 : 40 into the film , and eventually sinks , you never really feel for any of these characters .
the film is just loaded with unlikeable rich snobs and other folk you never really get a grasp on .
the effects are tremendous .
from the roars of gears and pumps in the engine room , to a doomed ship cracking at the seams , this is an effects picture that looks and sounds like no other .
we saw titanic in dolby digital surround , and by far , it is the best sounding movie i have ever seen .
my friend commented it was the best sound mix he has ever heard
.
when people are in the water , at film 's end , you are surrounded by the voices of lost soles .
titanic runs far too long .
the movie is 3 hours and 15 minutes in length .
and , while most of the first 2 .
5 hours runs very fast and well - paced
, the final 45 minutes almost comes to a sudden stop , and you realize that this sappy love story has to finish itself out before the movie finally ends .
do n't get me wrong about titanic . . . .
it 's not a bad as i am making it out to be .
it really is an exceptionaly well - made film .
the costumes and sets are incredible , and true to the time period .
the ship is painstakingly created exactly true to form , as we see actual pictures of the modern - day wreckage , transformed into the movie depiction .
this film will certainly win on effects , costume , set design and sound .
cameron has certainly made his best film to date .
unfortunately , titanic is not a best picture candidate .
it just does n't have a strong supporting story .
it 's an exceptional disaster film with sappy filler inside .
it just does n't have the emotional impact that i suspect mr .
cameron was shooting for .
i predict that titanic will open to likeable reviews .
it is a film worth seeing .
i predict that it will only do moderately well at the box office .
with its extreme running time , and lack of enough robust to get substantial word - of - mouth , i expect that it will do even better on home video .
this will certainly be the definitive ac3 movie for all you home theater enthusiasts .
titanic opens december 19th , and is released by paramount pictures and twentieth century - fox .
i give titanic 3 stars ( .
that 's not bad .
ron epstein riginally posted in home theater forum
= = =
[A]: P


[Q]: much ballyhoo has been made over this new version of " lolita , " made in a time when one would think that a faithful adaptation of the infamous novel could be made , over its use of pedophilia , and as such , it 's important to address it straight - forwardly , before any other ideals such as goodness and themes can be discussed , as this film has been in film limbo for a number of years , lying around in vaults san a distributor , and having critics waiting to either hail it
a masterpiece or call it anticlimactic horseshit .
when seeing this film , after all the hoopla , keeping in mind that there are people , namely me , who are fans of the novel , who have been eagerly awaiting this flick since its creation . . .
well , you just have to wonder why no one really picked it up for distribution .
what 's even worse is that seeing this " lolita , " especially the first time and if you 're familiar with anything " lolita , " is admittingly very anticlimactic .
this is a real pity because when you really sit down to watch this film , ignoring all the crap that has preceeded it , it 's really quite a film , perhaps the best film by director adrian lyne ( although , really , look at its competition : " flashdance , " " fatal attraction , " and " indecent proposal " ) , at least besides " jacob 's ladder .
"
i 've seen this " lolita " twice : the first time , i was n't so blown away .
it seemed overly dramatic and surprisingly unaffecting .
the second time , not really thinking about how i 've waited for what seems like forever to see it and how i 'm seeing it on a tv set on a premium cable channel and not a giant movie theatre ,
it really affected me emotionally .
the story itself is a surprisingly heartbreaking one , which is why it 's such a good novel , and why this is such a good film .
the story of a pedophile obsessed with a young 14-year old girl named dolores a .
k .
a . lolita is great because it 's not trash for the perverted
but because it 's about human obsession with things that are out of one 's reach .
its protagonist , the comically - named humbert humbert , is not your average pedophile , but a seriously wounded human being who embodies how we are all destroyed by our sick obsessions and idosyncrasies .
the character of lolita is almost a symbol of the forbidden apple in christian mythology , something that will destroy us but that we ca n't live without .
these ideas are all worked into this film nicely , but done in a way that is not heavy - handed at all , but instead lyrical and emotionally devastating .
the focus of this film , and the reason for making it , it seems , was to really penetrate the emotional depths of the novel and bring them to life on the screen in beautifully dramatic images , and scenes which are blatantly over - stylized .
the tone of the book is a comical one , but it 's also a tragic one , and humbert , telling the story from his perspective , blows every single thing out of perspective .
humbert exists in a fantsy world of his obsessions and desires , and this reflects the way the entire film has been designed .
we get a sense that perhaps it 's by doing this that humbert has really trapped himself into a fate that will ultimately leave him haggard and destroyed .
he weeps uncontrollably and never lets himself get over his original 14-year - old love , and allows himself to embody her as lolita .
he lets his feelings for her navigate all his decisions , and by the end , he has nothing but overly - dramatic feelings for her .
the story recognizes the extreme of this , almost out of a test , seeing if the readers will really sympathize with someone who is socially deemed a pervert , and one almost wonders while reading the book if the author , vladimir nabokov , wrote the book as a means to bring into focus his own sick obsessions , and perhaps bring them to peace .
the weirdest thing about this film is that by the end , when humbert has reached the finale of his obsessional journey , we can easily sympathize and even identify with him .
the opening and final images of the film are the same , and who has n't done a similar action , that is wandering about without any sense of reality or anything else but a deep sadness in us ?
this is the second time the novel has been adapted for the screen , the first time being filmed in - shock - 1962 , by stanley kubrick , who could n't possibly have brought the novel to the screen with as much faithfulness as lyne has been able to do , but did the next best thing : he economized for everything and came up with a droll black comedy about obsession in general .
in that film , he used the traps of society as benefits .
the studio demanded the final scene , that of a heinous murder , come first in the film so to portray humbert first as a murderer and second as a pedophile . . .
and when you see it , it gives the film depth of a man trapped by obsession .
the censors would n't allow anymore than a couple glances and subtle dialogue to show the , um , relationship between humbert and lolita , so kubrick decided to play it as comedy , but still allow the tragedy to seep through . looking at these two versions , especially after reading the novel ( and we all know that when we 've read a novel and see a film adaptation , we are bound to be angered by any size differences ) , it 's really impossible to compare them .
they both go for different things , and one has a lot more room to be as sexually frank as the novel was .
and although it 's true that several scenes are similar , and are thus up for comparison , overall it 's unfair to say which one is better and which one is worse .
i have never been one for saying the level of greatness of a film adaptation of a novel is deemed by how faithful it is , and i wo n't say that here . however ,
this film is pretty amazing , mostly because hey , i loved the book , and this film nearly reminded me of it .
it does n't have nearly as much wit ( a couple comical scenes , and even a lot of good chuckles , but just not totally witty ) , but it does have the same emotional toll that the novel had .
some of that is in the casting of the two leads .
jeremy irons , with his deep , soft british voice and gentle look , is an amazing humbert .
he 's droll in a very unique way , and , well , no one can look distraught the way he does .
he brings a wonderful sympathy to the role that goes beyond pathos and really comes up as being easy to identify with the audience .
and when he looks at lolita with love , and she looks at him with lust , you know that he 's her prisoner for as long as he lives .
and dominique swain , who plays the title character , is rather incredible .
she pulls off the tough role even better than sue lyon did in the original , wonderfully balancing the qualities of seduction , bratiness , and self - centeredness that marks the character .
it 's easy to see why she surrenders to humbert : she loves the attention , and knows that she can have her way with him at any time .
when he denies her something , she blackmails him effortlessly ( a scene involving a rocking chair and a little foot action is damn near classic ) , and when he stands up to her , she weeps and runs away , leaving humbert to follow her .
there are two other minor characters in the film , one who 's a road block in the beginning , and the other who 's a reappearing threat to the relationship .
the former is charlotte , lolita 's mother , played by melanie griffith .
in the book , charlotte is a monster of a woman : overbearing , constantly scolding her child , overly - religious , and ultimately selfish .
and she 's the one obstacle humbert
has to overcome to obtain his goal , at least in the beginning .
as played by shelly winters in the original , she represented all these qualities ; as played by griffith here , she 's about half of them .
it 's annoying to watch a film and play a game where you try to see who could have done the role way better than the one on screen without mentioning the actor who played them first .
and even though griffith is not really bad , persay , she 's nothing more .
the other is clare quilty , the writer who is also trying to seduce lolita , and succeeds , but at a price .
langella takes a totally different direction than the one peter sellars took in the original .
quilty was a comic character in the original :
a threat in the form of many forms , popping in states of rambling , german , proning , and eventually drunk .
langella takes the other route , allowing all of the creepiness to be unearthed , and the result is a character who exists in shadows and low shots , and who meets a wonderfully ironic ending , the exact opposite of what we thought of him .
as you can see , most of these are not improvements or mistakes done on the part of lyne and his screenwriter , stephen schiff , but just parts of a whole new look at the novel , at least cinema - wise .
this version is beautiful , and perpetually saddening .
the camera movements are stylized , and each shot is breathtakingly rich .
the acting is for the most part wonderful , and when we watch it , we really get a sense that for humbert , who is telling the story , the only two people on earth most of the time were humbert and lolita .
more importantly , it takes us right up the brink of emotion , then jumps right over it .
by the end , with humbert sadly driving recklessly in his car , following what he says is the only part of his life he does n't regret , we feel that we all lose to something we can never have .
[A]: P


[Q]: the one question that eats at me after seeing corky romano is why touchstone spent so much money marketing this throwaway film .
since june , i have n't been able to turn on the tv or go to the movies without getting hit by some ad depicting chris kattan as the spastic corky , shrieking out a - ha 's " take on me " in his yellow miata .
why would disney sink so much cash into the corky hype machine ?
honestly , i was hoping that all the goofball ads were actually a front for a decently funny movie .
man , was i wrong .
corky romano is one of those throwaway , clich ?
-ridden
tv - star - to - film vehicles built upon the most rickety of plots .
fortunately for chris kattan 's precariously positioned career , corky does have some good laughs , even if most of them are of the lowest - brow variety
.
kattan plays the title character , the unsinkable assistant veterinarian corky who has a penchant for sunshiny ' 80s tunes , bright ties , and banal coffee mug slogans ( " you do n't have to be crazy to work here , but it sure helps . " ) .
when his mob boss dad ( peter falk ) is about to be put away on murder charges , his bungling , lughead brothers ( peter berg and chris penn ) rope in innocent , black sheep corky to infiltrate the fbi as an agent and steal the evidence .
predictably , hijinks ensue .
if the basic plot sounds bad , wait until you get into the inner - workings of this clunker .
the writers will amaze you with the depth of their inanity .
corky 's fbi agent identity is named corky pissant ( " that 's pronounced pees - ahn .
it 's french . " ) .
he becomes a first - rate agent by accidentally stumbling mr .
magoo - style onto the proper clues and talking his way in and out of situations , which plays like something out of a sitcom .
and not a good sitcom , i mean .
the romano family brothers even insult each other by farting in each other 's face .
and in a scene taken straight from there 's something about mary ,
corky gives a dachshund mouth - to - mouth resuscitation .
but it 's not a complete disaster .
the manic kattan does occasionally rescue some comic moments , including a bit featuring a cat in a fat suit named jesus and another involving schoolchildren , a german shephard , and a kilo of cocaine .
plus , berg -- whose career has obviously gone downhill since the last seduction and chicago hope -- gives a great turn as the illiterate brother paulie .
and , it 's nice to see that richard roundtree of shaft fame is getting work .
unfortunately for those out there who ca n't truly appreciate animal or fart jokes , corky wo n't have much to offer you .
so the next time one of those pesky ads appears on your tv , asking , " who is corky ?
"
you can simply reply , " who cares ? "
[A]:
N