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

there are movies that pose a question in its first five minutes and spend the rest of the time trying to answer it .
then there are movies that spend the whole time posing questions and try to answer it all in the last five minutes .
writer - director john herzfeld 's two days in the valley falls into the latter category .
weaving together a grabbag of seemingly unrelated characters
, herzfeld 's tries very hard to keep the audience guessing with a altmanesque series of parallel stories .
hitmen lee ( james spader ) and his partner dosmo ( danny aiello ) pop a guy in bed while leaving his drugged wife becky fox ( teri hatcher ) lying next to him showing the audience where on her behind
she got nicely pricked .
an understandeably shocked becky runs out of the house the next morning before hailing down a couple of vice cops , ( jeff daniels ) and wes ( eric stoltz ) .
a murder is not vice territory , flirting with asian prostitues is , but wes would rather play inquisitive detective .
meanwhile , washed - up director , teddy ( paul mazursky ) is about to end his life .
but before he can do that , he must find a good home for his dog .
enter nurse audrey ( marsha mason ) , who takes the dog and teddy for a ride .
stuffy art dealer , allan hopper ( greg cruttwell ) has kidney stones .
while struggling about his fancy house , he switches between moaning in self - pity and dropping condescending hints about his loyal secretary 's ( glenne headly ) plain appearance .
do n't be surprised if you find yourself asking more than once just what the hell is going on .
you might like that feeling of cluelessness .
herzfeld does answer all the questions in the course of time and pieces it all rather neatly in the last five minutes .
the jigsaw puzzle assembled is n't stunning by any means though .
the characters lack the stature or moral complexity of altman 's real - life heroes in short cuts , even though they are interesting and funny .
funny , that is if you are n't comparing them to the likes of tarantino 's pulp chcaracters .
the tie - up is tidy but nowhere near the squeaky clean resolution of ( director 's name ?
guy who also did last seduction ) red rock west .
two days is n't a bad movie but there is n't much else to it than the screenplay novelty of the linkage of seemingly unrelated characters .
it 'll keep you guessing alright
but you wo n't remember the answers five minutes after the credits .
the flying inkpot rating system :
* wait for the tv2 broadcast .
*
* a little creaky , but still better than staying at home with gotcha !
*
* * pretty good , bring a friend .
*
*
* * amazing , potent stuff .
*
*
*
* * perfection . see it twice .
N

nicolas cage comes up with an ingenious survival mechanism for his role in the wink - and - a - concussive - nudge bombast - o - rama con air .
the opening credits sequence introduces us to cage as cameron poe , a gulf war veteran convicted of manslaughter and serving eight years in prison after an ill - fated bar - room brawl .
the prison scenes are accompanied by voice - overs in which poe , in a languid southern drawl , describes prison life to his wife back home and offers simple homilies for the daughter he has never met .
if the scene gives you a tickle of familiarity , it probably should .
cage appears to realize that con air is going to be utterly dim - witted and ridiculous , and that he 's going to have to do something to keep himself entertained .
and thus he slips into a familiar , surreal role as his own commentary on the proceedings -- cage plays cameron poe as a buffed - up version of raising arizona 's h .
i .
mcdonnough .
cage should have known what he was getting himself into .
he got a paycheck from jerry bruckheimer last year for the rock , and if there 's one thing you can count on from a bruckheimer production ( even without his late partner don simpson ) , it 's that you can count on seeing everything you saw in the _ last _ bruckheimer production .
the critical difference between the rock and con air is cage 's performance .
in the rock , cage appeared to be having the time of his life jumping into the action fray for the first time .
that sense of discovery has been replaced by a wry self - awareness .
while the plot of con air finds poe a parolee on board a hijacked prison transport plane whose goal is just to get home , cage 's goal is different but just as simple : to get out of the film with some measure of dignity intact .
audiences , too , should know what they 're getting themselves into with a bruckheimer production .
in fact , the marketing people are counting on it .
no one who loathed the rock for its swear - grunt - blast repetitiveness will be converted by con air ; no one who loved the rock for exactly the same reasons will be dissuaded .
director simon west ( yet another tv commercial auteur plucked by bruckheimer from the advertising equivalent of the schwab 's soda fountain )
delivers exactly the kind of adrenaline / testosterone cocktail which could launch an endocrinology lecture
( it 's perversely appropriate that one sympathetic con spends most of the flight nearing a diabetic coma ; like insulin , con air does the work of a gland ) .
what he does n't deliver is a moment of suspense .
a bruckheimer film has no use for hitchcock 's notion that showing you the bomb under the desk creates a more interesting scene than just blowing up the desk ; a really , _ really _ big desk and a really , _ really _ big bomb will serve the purpose nicely .
if either west or bruckheimer were interested in genuine tension , they might have done something with con air 's creepiest set - up .
at a desert stop for the plane - load of convicts , serial killer garland greene ( steve buscemi )
wanders of into a trailer park where he meets a little girl having a tea party in a drained swimming pool .
their tete - a - tete is eerie and menacing , providing a welcome shift in tone and giving buscemi a chance to stand out in a cast with too many villains ( danny trejo , ving rhames and a characteristically reptilian john malkovich among them ) .
in fact , con air usually opts for too much of something when the tiniest measure of restraint would have been an improvement -- too many characters , too much editing , too many dopey punch lines , too much of the cheap , ugly appeals to machismo which characterize too many bruckheimer efforts .
it is that kind of exhausting excess to which cage is responding with his detached performance .
while malkovich goes for the outrageous and john cusack ( as a u . s . marshal )
goes for
earnest , cage looks like he just wants to go to sleep .
his recycled raising arizona performance is a means of escape , his chase after a stuffed bunny a continuation of his pursuit of that big box of huggies .
it does n't bode well for cage 's appearance in face / off later this month ; perhaps he already realizes that all he can do in action films is more of the same over and over .
there 's a word for people like you , nicolas .
that word is called recidivist . . .
repeat offender .
N

working in the motion picture industry must be a constant source of frustration for a front - line african american actress like jada pinkett smith .
despite being one of the freshest talents available , pinkett smith has often been relegated to playing thankless supporting parts ( a low down dirty shame , the nutty professor ) .
the problem is , of course , that there are n't many good roles available for black women .
take away the likes of waiting to exhale , set it off , soul food , and eve 's bayou , and all that 's left is a chance to be someone 's girlfriend , a local whore , or a murder victim . as a result , for pinkett smith 's first opportunity atop the marquee , she is stuck in a stupid , formulaic romantic comedy with the unpromising title of woo .
actually , woo , the latest directorial effort from daisy v .
s .
mayer ( party girl ) , could have been worse than it is .
the film offers a few funny ( albeit juvenile ) moments and the on - screen relationship between pinkett smith 's woo and tommy davidson 's tim is appealing on those rare occasions when the two are n't forced to play it dumb for the sake of an endless barrage of cheap gags .
unfortunately , huge portions of the movie are insulting to the intelligence of anyone with a triple - digit i .
q .
the situations are painfully contrived , the main characters are lifted right out of sit - coms , and the supporting players are so incredibly stupid that i wondered whether they all participated in some kind of " free lobotomy " lab experiment .
woo is a spontaneous , energetic young woman who has been looking for love in all the wrong places .
her latest relationship , with a testosterone - overdosed drug - dealer , came to an abrupt end when she refused to wear a beeper .
now , her transvestite / medium friend celestrial ( girlina ) predicts that she 's about to meet mr .
right , and that he 'll be a virgo .
later that day , woo is given an opportunity to go out on a blind date with tim , a shy man with a penchant for neatness and order , who just happens to be a virgo .
it 's not love at first sight , however .
things get off to a rocky start when tim makes an awkward pass , and they get even worse when the pair arrives at a swanky restaurant to enjoy a " quiet " dinner .
in the one - hundred year history of motion pictures , there have been a ton of bad " white " movies about mismatched lovers , so i suppose it 's only fair that we get a " black " effort of the same low caliber .
as in all romantic comedies , we know from the beginning
that woo and tim are going to end up together .
the question is , are their courtship rituals entertaining ?
in a good entry to the genre , the audience becomes caught up in the love story , no matter how familiar it is . in woo , the constant reliance upon unfunny , moronic humor sinks the project
.
for those who enjoy spotting continuity gaffes , there 's a huge one in woo involving a corvette with a broken window that miraculously repairs itself ( added to that
is the mystery of how the car looses its top )
. sadly , that 's one of the film 's most enjoyable sequences , and the entertainment value is entirely unintentional .
despite exuding charm from every pore , there 's little that pinkett smith and davidson can do to save their characters or david c .
johnson 's script .
since it misses the mark by so much , a better name for woo might have been whoops .

N