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

my first press screening of 1998 and already
i 've gotten a prime candidate for my worst ten of the year list .
what an auspicious beginning !
welcome to the dog days of winter when the only film openings of merit are those oscar contenders that the studios opened in late december in new york and l . a . and which are just now beginning to appear elsewhere .
firestorm , the directorial debut of dances with wolves 's academy award winning cinematographer dean semler , is the first of the new year 's crop of movies .
as our story opens , the movie pretentiously informs us that of the tens of thousands of firefighters only 400 are " smokejumpers .
"
we then cut to a plane load of smoke jumping cowboys and one cowgirl , where one of the gung - ho guys is taking a romance quiz from " cosmopolitan .
" having the time of their lives , they then jump into the middle of a burning forest .
when , even in the beginning , the director ca n't get the small parts right , you can sense the movie is in trouble .
with the noisy fire roaring all about them and with the trapped people huddled near their gasoline - filled cars , smokejumper monica ( christianne hirt ) tells them to get away from their soon - to - explode vehicles .
not bothering to shout nor even get close to them , she announces her warning without raising her voice much or approaching the people .
miraculously , they manage to hear her and move away .
in a movie that specializes in cheap shots , the camera locates the proverbial young girl trapped in a nearby burning building .
as it does throughout
, overly dramatic cinematographer stephen f .
windon from the postman uses extremely fast zooms right down to the endangered girl 's face .
our show 's two heroes , the crew 's chief , wynt perkins , played laconically by scott glenn , and his second - in - command , jesse graves , played by howie long in a weak attempt to be the next steven seagal , enter the burning house looking for the little girl .
in a panic they have difficulty in locating her before they are engulfed in flames .
the manipulative script has her hidden in her own dollhouse .
this mawkish show cuts back to monica , who has a life - or - death decision to make .
the chopper with the fire - retardant chemicals has only enough to save one group .
will it be the large group near the cars or the helpless little girl and monica 's two firefighting buddies ?
she has only seconds to decide who will be saved .
yes , she goes for the majority , but , miracle of miracles , the other three come out alive anyway .
not content with a traditional firefighting story , chris soth 's screenplay attempts to jazz it up by having william forsythe from palookaville play a vicious killer named randy earl shaye who sets a forest fire so that he can join the crew to put it out and then escape .
( " hoods in the woods , " is what the " ground - pounders " yell out when the convicts are bused in to help them fight the fire . ) along the way , shaye picks up an ornithologist hostage played by suzy amis , who turns out to have been trained in warrior ways by her father , who was a marine drill instructor .
most of the highly predictable movie is a long chase in which poor howie long is
given one ridiculous stunt after another to look silly performing .
he flings a chain saw backwards over his head while riding a speeding motorcycle so that the saw can hit the windshield of the pursuing truck .
arguably
the low point is when he escapes from a locked burning building by riding a motorcycle conveniently parked inside .
using a ramp , he shoots straight out of the top of the building 's attic , and when he hits the ground , he just rides off in a cloud of dust .
when the film is n't using some stock footage of actual forest fires , the simulated ones look hokey .
editor jack hofstra cheapens the action even more by his use of burning flames in scene transitions .
the ending , with its sick twists , manages to be even worse than the rest of the movie .
perhaps the best that can be said for the picture is the faint praise i heard afterwards in the lobby , " it 's not as bad as some of the television sitcoms .
" firestorm runs mercifully just 1 : 29 .
it is rated r for violence and language and would be acceptable for teenagers .
N

stars : armand assante ( mike hammer ) , barbara carrera ( dr . charlotte bennett ) , laurene landon ( velda ) , alan king ( charles kalecki ) , geoffrey lewis ( joe butler ) , paul sorvino ( detective pat chambers ) , judson scott ( charles hendricks ) , barry snider ( romero ) , julia barr ( norma childs ) / mpaa rating :
r / review : in the 1982 updating of mickey spillane 's 1947 novel " i , the jury , " hard - boiled detective mike hammer is a vietnam vet who drives a shiny bronze trans am , dresses like don johnson in " miami vice " with less pastels , and has sworn off alcohol .
however , he still smokes his lucky strikes , detests all forms of authority , and kills at a whim .
beyond that , the updated film retains little or no resemblance to the original pulpy page - turner by spillane , probably the most infamous and often reviled of all mystery writers .
the movie starts off with a bang : a howler of an opening credits sequence that is a cheap steal from the james bond series , complete with cheesy graphics and an overbearing jazz score by bill conti ( " rocky " ) .
after that , the movie and the book begin the same , with the murder of jack williams ( frederick downs ) , a one - armed detective and hammer 's best friend .
hammer declares that he will seek vengeance for jack 's death , and with the help of his devoted secretary , the blond and shapely velda ( laurene landon ) , and the alternately friendly / antagonistic police chief pat chambers ( paul sorvino ) , he is immediately on the killer 's trail .
here the movie splits completely from the book , and dives into a convoluted and improbable tale of government conspiracy and mind control tactics involving the mafia , the cia , one of hammer 's vietnam vet buddies , and a kinky sex clinic .
many of the same characters from the book appear in the movie , but they take on slightly different roles .
for instance , charles kalecki ( alan king ) , a numbers runner and narcotics dealer in the book , turns into a suave mob boss .
and , more importantly , hammer 's suspicious love interest , charlotte bennett ( barbara carrera ) , morphs from a run - of - the - mill psychiatrist into the coordinator and founder of the sex clinic .
"
i , the jury " is one of several cinematic renditions of spillane 's books ( including a 1953 version which was made in 3-d ) , but this film differs from those earlier versions in one major way :
it includes all of the sex and violence spillane wrote about that could never be given screen treatment due to hollywood 's production code .
although this takes the 1982 version of " i , the jury " closer to the core of the original subject matter , it is in this aspect that the film received the most criticism , because it took this new license to extremes that many argued surpassed what was in the book .
rest assured , the movie not only includes a great deal of nudity , but it is thoroughly violent , especially toward women .
it features one woman having her neck slashed , a set of twins forced to strip before being stabbed to death by a psychotic sexual deviant programmed by the cia ( judson scott ) , and another woman shot point - blank in the belly by hammer himself .
no one would deny that spillane 's writing has a definite misogynistic nature , but the movie seems to take it a step further by giving it such glorious screen treatment ; its constant equation of sex and violence , much of which is played with the intention of being erotic , is quite unsettling .
it 's no surprise that the movie , like the book , fades to black with a dead woman on the floor .
"
i , the jury " had a troubled production and was not well - supported by the studio that made it , which is one explanation why it did n't do well in theaters and many people have forgotten that it was ever made .
the script was written by larry cohen , who is best known for his creatively cheesy but nonetheless effective monster movies , like " it 's alive " ( 1974 ) and its two sequels , " q " ( 1981 ) , and " the stuff " ( 1985 ) .
cohen wrote the script thinking he was going to helm the project as well , but he was yanked from the director 's chair after only a week 's worth of shooting because he was already $ 100 , 000 over budget .
he was quickly replaced by richard t. heffron , who has worked for the last three decades on a handful of undistinguished movies and dozens of television projects .
heffron was obviously brought in not for his talent , but because he could make the movie rapidly and efficiently .
it shows in the final product .
cohen had personal interest in the updated version of hammer , but heffron has none .
he shot the movie quickly and clumsily , and although some scenes ring true , most of them are flat , trite , and invariably dull .
the movie features numerous car chases , shoot - outs , and stunts , but heffron 's background in television is the dominant tone ; despite the graphic violence and full - frontal nudity , " i , the jury , " takes on the air of a made - for - tv quickie , with no real punch or depth . but the problems in " i , the jury " run deeper than the technical .
the central fault in this updating is mike hammer , whose character was lost in the shuffle while updating from the fifties to the eighties .
because spillane wrote all his hammer mysteries in the first person , hammer 's character is central to the tale because all the events are filtered through his persona .
we never really get that impression in the movie -- there is no first - person voice - over narration and some scenes do n't have hammer in them at all .
consequently , a great deal of the texture of spillane 's storytelling is lost .
the period updating turns out to be a detrimentally bad idea because much of hammer 's moral code is thrown to the wind .
despite his characterization as a hard - nosed , violent , misogynistic killer , hammer always stuck fervently to his own moral code .
the title itself , " i , the jury , " refers to his anti - establishment notion of being his own law .
unlike private eyes who seek out the bad guys and then turn them over the police
, hammer both pursues the criminal and exacts the punishment .
in this way , he can be seen as " above the law , " but he still adheres strictly to her own personal code of conduct , his own morality .
the movie forgoes that aspect of his character , and hammer comes off not only as amoral in society 's terms , but in any terms , especially his own .
if anything , hammer always had his professionalism , but the movie does away with that in the first three minutes by showing him rolling in the sack with the wife of a client who had paid him to find out if that wife was being unfaithful .
maybe the scene was intended for laughs , but it only cheapens hammer 's character and is , by all accounts , a lousy way to start the movie .
the blame for hammer 's character ca n't be laid on assante 's shoulders , because despite some unnecessary marlon brandon - like mumbling , he delivers a fine performance .
spillane never once described hammer 's physical attributes in any
of the dozen books in which he appeared
, so any actor could conceivably portray him .
of course , because of the lack of written description , those who have read spillane 's books will have a strong personal notion of what hammer looks like , and therefore almost any screen incarnation will somehow fall short of expectations ( spillane , who played the character himself in 1963 's
" the girl hunters , " is generally considered the best of the film hammers ) .
the rest of actors are most un - noteworthy .
with the exceptions of alan king and paul sorvino , everyone who appeared in " i , the jury " were up - and - comers who basically went nowhere .
many of them ended up working in television ( like carrera , who had a short stint on " dallas " in the mid - eighties ) , which only adds to the made - for - tv atmosphere of the film .
maybe someday , someone will manage to get the right elements together and make an effective film rendition of a spillane book , but this is certainly not it .
N

i did n't come into city of angels expecting greatness .
i 've never seen wim wenders ' wings of desire , the classic movie upon which city is loosely based .
then again , i have seen enough stories which are based upon a similar plot device , with the little mermaid ( both the disney version and the original folktale ) being among them , that i had some high expectations about the possible power such a story of impossible love can hold .
unfortunately , city of angels ended up fulfilling few of them .
the plot , for those that could n't tell from the previews , revolves around the angel seth , played with an almost creepy intensity by nicolas cage , who , in the midst of his angelic duties , falls in love with a heart surgeon named maggie ( meg ryan in her most endearing performance since when harry met sally ) .
of course , his being an angel prevents him from doing much about his love except appearing at random times to talk to her , watch her buy groceries , only to disappear in the blink of an eye .
their love must remain unrequited unless seth decides to make the ultimate sacrifice and become human . using this framework as a jumping - off point , the movie attempts to veer through some heavy philosophical ruminations on the nature of desire , the joys of being human , and the definition of perfection .
the first half of the movie succeeds on most points .
cage excellently plays the eminently difficult role of an angel who does n't know feelings so ca n't really express , preventing the character of seth from getting boring despite his limited repertoire of intent looks and hang - dog expressions .
unfortunately , cage takes the intensity too far sometimes , and then seth comes across as more creepy than sensitive .
as maggie , ryan manages to be convincing as a heart surgeon who has trouble coming to terms with her having lost a patient on the operating table despite having done everything right .
her beauty , unlike her unbearable cuteness in french kiss , is mature , intelligent , and winning .
likewise , some interesting ideas float around at the beginning of the film .
when the camera pans through traffic jams and libraries and we get to hear the thoughts of the random people who flash across the screen , the audience experiences a little of what it must be like to be an angel .
the beautiful camera work , shooting down onto the hectic world of los angeles from the improbable perches of the angels , also gives us a sense of the unique wonder angels feel .
the film begins to lose its way , though , when the focus tightens more and more on seth and maggie .
the grand , angelic perspective gets lost , except for some idly tossed lines about the incredible beauty of the world through an angel 's eyes .
the movie devolves into an examination of how seth ca n't feel the world or , more importantly , he ca n't feel maggie : he ca n't smell her hair , feel her touch , or taste the pears she eats .
this change in focus attempts to capture the audience in seth 's intense longing , but in doing so , the conflict disappears .
if he wants maggie so badly , then why does n't her just make the leap and become human ? after all , what 's so great about being an angel ?
sure , you get to sit on marlboro signs , but what 's that compared to getting to be with meg ryan ?
and from there , once the yearning has been established and the romantic denouement must occur , it 's all downhill .
the philosophy becomes heavy - handed , the dialogue pedestrian when it tries to be deep , and the plot twists simply attempt to yank a few more tears into the audience 's hankie .
it 's the last thirty minutes of the movie , then , that wrecks the film .
i feel like the writer , by pulling out all the melodramatic stops , has robbed me of what could have been a genuinely powerful movie experience on both the romantic and the philosophical level .
i came out feeling robbed , seeing so much possibility in a film becoming nothing .
i could go on longer , but i do n't want to " ruin " the end by revealing any of the cheap plot devices the film relies on .
city of angels , then , is a paradox .
it 's a well - acted ( particularly look for dennis franz cutting against type - casting as a happy - go - lucky fallen angel ) , well - filmed , and based on a wonderful idea .
all these possibilities , though , are what make the film so unredeemable when the closing credits come up .

N