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

Q: renee zellweger stars as sonia , a young jewish wife and mother frustrated by the constraints of her hasidic community in brooklyn .
her husband ( glenn fitzgerald ) is a religious scholar whose all - in - a - day's - work attitude on sex fails to tame the " fire " she feels within , as so she confesses to the rebbe ( after hearing her fiery confession , the rebbe suddenly gets frisky with his pleasantly surprised wife -- and dies the next morning ) .
sensing her frustration , her husband 's brother ( christopher eccleston ) gives her a job in his jewelry brokering business in exchange for raw , passionless sex that just fans sonia 's still - burning flame .
on the job , sonia befriends ramon ( allen payne ) , a cool blast of hunky puerto rican water who does his own jewelry designs when not working as a grunt in an upscale jewelry store .
can fire - taming be far be that far behind for the ever - smoldering sonia ?
just about everything in writer - director boaz yakin 's rings false , starting with the improbably cast zellweger , who does an adequate enough acting job but simply looks too waspy for the role .
a better fit would have been julianna margulies , who outshines zellweger as sonia 's take - no - crap sister - in - law .
some of sonia 's baby steps toward liberation , such as indulging in a non - kosher egg roll in chinatown , come off as silly .
yakin attempts to spice up the proceedings with a touch of magical realism -- in the form of the recurring presence of sonia 's long - dead brother 's ghost -- make the story feel even more trite than it already is .
"
i did n't know what to expect .
it 's like something you chase for so long , but then you do n't know how to react when you get it .
i still do n't know how to react .
"
--michael
jordan , on winning his first nba championship in 1991 .
..
or , my thoughts after meeting him on november 21 , 1997

A: N
****
Q: i rented " brokedown palace " last night blind , having heard nothing about it beforehand , and i enjoyed it immensely despite some flaws .
for anyone wishing to have the same experience i would suggest reserving judgement of the movie until viewing it in its entirety .
that is no easy task .
superficially , it bears an unfortunate ( and not necessarily unintended ) resemblance to several other movies , notably " return to paradise " and " midnight express .
" as a result nearly every review of " brokedown palace " i subsequently read became hopelessly entangled in making the obvious comparisons .
the consequence was nearly universal condemnation , which is a shame as
this is a fine film .
for those who have yet to view the movie , let me say that it is not an attempt to portray the nightmarish reality of the third world criminal justice system ( as was " midnight express " ) nor completely the moral dilemma and examination of the meaning of friendship and humanity that was the heart of " return to paradise .
" in my view , if this film is to be compared to any other source it would have to be joseph conrad 's acclaimed novel , " lord jim .
"
problematically , the basic storyline seems more than familiar : two american teenage girls on vacation are sentenced to spend most of their lives in a thai prison for drug smuggling in an obvious set - up involving a suave con - man , a shadowy criminal conspiracy and a corrupt third world " justice " system .
the girls are alice ( claire danes ) and darlene ( kate beckinsale ) .
they 're life - long buddies who planned a high - school graduation trip to hawaii , and then secretly changed their destination to the more exotic thailand without telling their parents .
once there , they find a $ 6 hotel and go sight - seeing , which includes sneaking into a luxury hotel to sip expensive drinks poolside .
they get caught trying to charge the bill to the wrong room , a minor transgression which will later come back to haunt them , but they are saved from hotel security by a charming , friendly australian , nick ( daniel lapaine ) , who takes care of the bill with a more polished execution of the girl 's scam .
he then proceeds to separate the girls and make smooth moves , first toward alice , then toward darlene .
by now alarm bells are going off among viewers .
the ever - present nick is too slick and his stories do n't add up ( to us ) --the girls , of course , are too naive to notice .
long before it happens , we 're anticipating the inevitable disappearance of the fast - talking smuggler and the arrest of our teenaged sitting - ducks at the airport en route to hong kong caught holding the bag ( literally ) containing heroin .
just as predictably , the thai police and courts do their part in meting out injustice and our trusting tourists are prison - bound for a long stretch .
left unanswered is the red herring issue of whether one or the other of the girls was a willing accomplice .
for those in need of a ready answer , might i suggest closer scrutiny of the bell hop at the girl 's fleabag hotel .
as one door after another to their comfortable former life is closed , the girls and their families turn in desperation to the noiresque expatriate lawyer / fixer " yankee hank " ( bill pullam ) and his thai - born partner - wife .
a recurring element of the movie is the tension between appearance and reality as expressed in one of the film 's tag lines , " who do you trust ? , " and hank is no exception although seasoned movie- goers and those familiar with pullman 's oeuvre will find few surprises .
much of the remainder of the movie is a smorgasbord of intriguing themes incompletely explored in short - hand fashion .
lou diamond phillips , for instance , plays a delightfully sinister and callous dea agent who , while appearing to be casually accommodating to hank , withholds vital information at crucial moments .
is he part of a wider conspiracy ? with an inherently powerful , if somewhat tired premise , the film offers by parts a riveting courtroom drama , a prison story , and a potential character study of american teens , their relationship , and what constitutes friendship between them .
the result is reasonably engaging and suspenseful , with the girls ' interaction , hank 's investigation , and the various trials and hearings , offering hope for their release , delivering tension -- as does the foredoomed possibility of their escape .
if " brokedown palace " has a major flaw , it is its creators ' tendency , like time - constrained tourists , to take frequent side trips down fascinating alleys only to reverse direction half - way down and return to the story 's main avenue .
and , if that were all there was to " brokedown palace , " it would n't be a very good movie .
but i believe the writers and director were after bigger game and , in this , they succeeded .
for the main theme of the movie , like the proffered name of its location , is freedom -- in all its permutations .
ultimately , the other sub - themes may be considered window dressing .
young and pretty , alice ( danes ) is an old soul ; a wild , streetwise teenager with a thirst for freedom and adventure .
presented as a perfect blend of yin and yang , dark and light , is her cautious best friend , darlene ( beckinsale ) .
clear - eyed and straightforward , alice is more complex than her friend .
she comes from a poorer background , has a reputation for getting into trouble and has lost the trust of everyone ( including her own father ) .
whereas darlene 's life is " on - track , " aimed at college , marriage , kids , a career , a suburban home , middle age and " fulfillment , " alice 's is uncertain , unfocused , and yearning .
one poignant scene in the film shows darlene shouting across an open moat to visitors -- friends and relatives from home , whose lives continue while hers is in limbo .
tellingly , alice is present but not included .
just as revealing of their different personalities , when alice and dar first come to thailand , the openness and delight on alice 's face does n't read as simple naivet ?
; the way she stands up and stretches as she and her friend ride along in a small boat , reaching toward the sun , she really is drinking in what she believes to be freedom , while " dar " remains seated in the shade .
"
brokedown palace " begins with an admission by alice of her guilt in a tape recording sent to hank .
however unintentional , it 's all alice 's fault .
she 's responsible for persuading her friend to lie to her parents , to sneak away from the safety of hawaii to the perils of thailand , to try the petty scam which places them in the clutches of the evil nick .
( in case one misses this point in the inevitable confusion of a film 's beginning , darlene obligingly reminds alice of her culpability in prison . )
dar , of course , is the willing dupe which , in her view , confers innocence .
never mind that it was her coercion of a reluctant alice to accompany her to hong kong which placed them in police custody in the first place or that her naive confession sealed their fate .
dar is innocent .
it does n't matter .
alice is the subject of this movie .
she and her journey toward personal freedom .
along the way we are treated to an unsympathetic portrait of the shallow american culture which created these girls with their half - baked sensibilities and materialistic goals .
in the end , that culture , like its representatives , " yankee " hank and dar 's father ( a " man who knows how to grease the wheels " ) , proves as impotent as its government in the face of the girl 's tragedy .
thailand 's culture , contrary to most opinion , comes off much better by comparison .
it amazes me that reviewers argued this point at both extremes .
i believe the filmmaker 's view was that thai culture is vastly different from the american but not necessarily inferior .
the thai ( with the sole exceptions of a corrupt official and a spiteful prison spy ) were uniformly consistent in their behavior and true to their principles .
the girls were shown to be treated no better but certainly no worse than the native - born .
their prison ( in stark contrast to the probable reality ) was no hellhole , being relatively clean and sunlit .
the prison authorities demanded good hygiene , provided medical care when needed , and " hard manual labor " consisted of picking grass !
the thai guards were authoritarian ( what else ? )
but certainly not routinely sadistic .
as for the thai justice system , the reasoning of the thai judges , during both an appeal hearing and in the film 's penultimate scene was devastating in its logic and morality .
' freedom ' has many faces and " brokedown palace " explores many of them .
in the extreme , we have freedom of the body and freedom of the spirit .
some settle for the former alone while others remain imprisoned with an entire nation to roam without the latter .
but freedom seldom comes without a price .
which is why the movie 's other tag lines are : " what is your dream ?
" and " how far would you go ?
"
i believe i could make a good case for the interpretation that the person who attains freedom , incarcerated or not , by film 's end is alice .
she finds redemption and salvation through the acceptance of personal responsibility .
i think the light bathing only her figure among the assembled prisoners in the final scene visually signals that fact .
kate beckinsale 's character might more properly be likened to the " released " temple bird referred to twice during the film , " trained to fly back to its cage .
" as the thai magistrate observed in the film 's climactic scene , the issue was always one of " character ; " and the jamaican prisoner made it clear that " freedom " is achieved within oneself . if one thinks back over the movie , which character was transformed by their experiences ?
increasingly , the cinema landscape seems to have become littered with endless permutations of ' kung fu woman'--female characters virtually indistinguishable from male action figures .
here , at last , is the story of a modern heroine .
in reading the many user 's comments , i was struck by what seems an unusual phenomenon : whether or not a person liked the movie ,
almost everyone praised the actors .
think about that .
when was the last time you came away from a motion picture possibly hating it , but raving about all the performances in it ?
do yourself a favor : rent " brokedown palace " and watch it with a open mind .
there 's more there than meets the eye .

A: P
****
Q: the first thing you notice about this movie is that it 's cold .
placed in minnesota and north dakota during the winter , many of the scenes take place outside with long scenes of snow - covered ground against a background of white .
just what we need as bloomington struggles out of the endless long cold night .
as with most coen brothers films , this features outlandish characters in nefarious schemes , each of which works out in the oddest way possible .
a car salesman hires a couple of hoods to kidnap his wife so that he can collect the ransom from her father .
along the way everything that can possibly go wrong does .
in brief scenes of vicious violence , people get shot through the head , in the back , face , chest and various other areas of the anatomy .
there is also one of the most unpleasant body disposal scenes yet seen on the screen .
remarkably enough , most of the movie is played for laughs .
even more remarkably , it works .
the only likable person in the film is the very pregnant sheriff ( frances mcdormand ) who hunts down the killers while eating at every possible opportunity .
with every good film the audience gains new knowledge .
here you learn _ two _ things .
everyone in minnesota speaks in an annoying whining accent that would drive you crazy .
and do n't do violent illegal business with low - life amoral degenerate scum - sucking losers .
oh yeah ,
if you get shot in the face , using a brightly decorated napkin to stop the bleeding just makes you look goofy .

A:
P
****