TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
PROBLEM: this movie is based off the wildly popular video - game series of the same name .
before this film , the game had a few spin - off cartoons-
which were ok .
but the idea of doing a movie is insane .
it should have been animated , if it should have been done at all .
instead the people do the best they can with a talented cast .
yet it still fails .
the plot is completely different from the game 's plot-
i 'm not complaining about that .
the story involves the mario bros .
having a plumbing business in brooklyn and having to compete with a rival company .
eventually they find a construction site by their nemesis , which happens to be enviromentally un - safe .
so , due to luigi 's ( john leguizamo ) girlfriend - princess daisy - they go and investigate .
they get transported to a blade runner - esque world lead by king koopa ( dennis hopper ) .
somehow a plot dealing with all the dinosaurs being mutated and transported to an alternate futuristic mega - city jumbles in .
the plot is fine- better than the movie deserves .
the acting is ok .
this seems to be more of a visual film .
the special effects are good , especially on the robotic yoshi .
however the film drags and is no fun .
and it leaves itself open to a sequel , which probably wo n't ever be made .
this movie begins sort of promising , but ends up leaving a weird taste in your mouth .
so if you want to watch a sort of odd movie starring the excellent dennis hopper , then watch super mario bros .
: the movie .
you could do worse .
but you could definitely do better . . .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: there was probably a good reason that the warner bros .
studio chose not to allow critics to view this steven seagal film when it first opened .
and , after seeing this piece of toxic waste , i now know why .
this movie is by far the worst offering that has hit the screen since possibly those ernest movies years ago .
fire down below centers its story on a little mining town in god 's country , somewhere in eastern kentucky .
it 's beauty and natural goodness is being slowly destroyed by an uncaring mining magnate ( kris kristopherson , who constantly looks like he wants to kill his agent for getting him this role ) .
it turns out that he 's filling the mines throughout kentucky with toxic waste for a tidy profit .
seagal plays jack taggert , an aikido - versed , fighting machine , who is an agent with the epa .
no . . . not the cia nor the fbi nor the nsa .
it 's the environmental protection agency .
i had no idea that epa agents were trained to be killers !
taggert is sent to find the perpetrators and to bring them to justice .
written by someone named jeb , i could already envision the stereotypes of incestuous relationships , banjo - picking preachers , and dumb - as - nails rednecks .
but the script puts seagal right smack dab in the middle of all of these scenarios as he tries to discreetly fit in .
seagal 's idea of a disguise is a long - length $ 1000 leather jacket .
but to get closer to the kinfolk , he will fix people 's porches for free .
that 's another great epa asset - teaching agents how to fix porches .
slow and plodding , this project is a total mess .
the sometimes allure of watching seagal is watching him outmaneuver enemies that outnumber and outgun him like in under seige .
here , his bravado basically turns into bullyness .
townsfolk who are foolish enough to challenge seagal are quickly subdued .
fight scenes are quick and senseless and offers no enjoyment value whatsoever
.
and his soap box message wears thin within the first 15 minutes .
the most annoying moment comes when he barges into the middle of a sunday church ceremony , gets behind the pulpit , and beseeches the townsfolk to take control of their lives and to help clean up the environment .
but the epitome of how moralistically mushy this film gets happens when the person responsible for the toxic dumping , kristopherson , meets up with seagal .
kristopherson asks seagal how much it will take for him to go away .
seagal gallantly replies : " i 'll leave when you take the poison from the streams and the earth .
"
i was expecting patriotic music to start blasting and a show of fireworks in the background .
this is truly nothing more than a pompous showcase for seagal 's righteousness and narcissistic arrogance .
seagal has been vanguard in trying to bring a new genre into the filmplace , that of the enviro - thriller ( on deadly ground ) .
however , the message will never come across through poorly developed vehicles like this .
still , i believe in preserving mother earth , so save your $ 5 and please donate it instead to some worthy environmentally conscious charity .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: " with all that education , you should know what happiness is .
" starring sylvia chang , teresa hu , hsu ming , li lieh ,
mao hsueh - wei ; directed by edward yang ; written by yang and wu nien - chen ;
cinematography by christopher doyle and chang hui - kung every country has , eventually , its new wave .
france had its nouvelle vague , brazil its cinema novo , china its fifth generation , and on and on .
some waves just take longer than others , before they wash over us , cleansing us with the balm of discovery .
taiwan 's new wave came in the 1980s , in the work of directors like hou hsiao - hsien , wan jen , and edward yang ; that day , on the beach -- yang 's first feature -- is central .
it created a new language for young taiwanese directors , even if the first attempts to speak that language were hesitant and faltering .
later works refined the techniques that yang first explored here , giving taiwan a distinctive international presence .
that day itself is long and frustrating , the document of a nation 's attempt to find a voice .
it does not lack ambition .
it anatomizes urban life in modern taiwan , in the manner of antonioni , elaborating the alienation that the westernized white - collar middle - class feel as their lives are shaped by old - fashioned roles -- dedicated career men , loyal housewives -- that they find unfulfilling .
jia - li ( sylvia chang ) is the focus , but the film brings others into its compass -- her husband , her brother , friends from her college days -- as it charts her discontents .
no one is happy .
jia - li married her husband , we - lei , at a young age .
at the time , her brother had been urged into an arranged marriage , despite his affection for another woman , and so jia - li 's marriage seemed , in comparison , a good one : she chose we - lei of her own free will , they loved each other .
but it goes wrong .
that day dutifully presents all the clich ?
s :
we - lei becomes absorbed in his career , indulges in an affair with a co - worker ; jia - li feels restless and trapped , bound by a choice she made while young , but which no longer seems wise .
the film never redeems these clich ?
s
by conveying the feel of authentic experience , the intensity of lived pain , and much of it seems trite and belaboured .
it unfolds , awkwardly , as a series of flashbacks , told during a luncheon in vienna , where jia - li meets her brother 's old flame ( teresa hu ) , now a concert pianist , whom she has not seen since college .
both women seem rather sad , and resigned to their sadness .
their circumstances ( and those of jia - li 's brother and a college friend ) suggest not so much that they have made the wrong choices -- married the wrong man , chosen the wrong career path , etc .
--but rather that the choices available to them were inadequate .
it is not that jia - li married the wrong man ; she did n't .
the problem is that she needed to marry at all -- and that if she did not marry , she would still be just as unhappy .
for a woman in modern taiwan , that day tells us , the cards are stacked , the dice are loaded : she can play the game , but the house always wins .
the film 's sympathetic feminist implications are presumably the reason it caused such controversy upon its release in taiwan .
seen now , it does not seem provocative .
indeed , it 's hard to imagine anyone having felt passionate enough about the film to generate any controversy : it may be ambitious , it may be innovative , but it is also terribly , terribly dull .
and what was new for taiwan was not necessarily new for the rest of us : yang adopts methods established years before by antonioni and others , and his use of those methods is fumbling , uncertain , undisciplined . nor does he bring anything new -- other than the locale -- to the material .
there are moments when that day takes on some of the emotional richness it strives for -- in a young couple 's first kiss , in the awkward meeting of a woman and her husband 's mistress -- but they are brief .
too often , yang devotes needless time to mundane scenes -- grocery shopping , flower - arranging -- in which nothing happens , little is said , no emotion imparted .
perhaps , if the film were content to focus on such reflective , inward moments , leaving us to guess at thoughts and feelings , it might have been ambiguous , suggestive , insinuating .
but jia - li and her disaffected companions do not only brood in silence
: they talk about their problems , at length , in detail , redundantly , and eliminate all subtleties .
at two hours and forty - five minutes , it all seems exorbitantly long , indulgently long - winded . consider the defining moment for jia - li , the titular day on the beach .
the thrust of the whole film explains , easily enough , what we are to think of that moment , what it means when she walks away from a particular situation .
even so , the film has not one but two characters explain it for us verbally , in case we may have missed the point .
needless time is devoted to expressing what should have remained unexpressed , and that is the problem throughout .
the look of the film is as tedious as the drawn - out narrative .
it was the first feature shot by christopher doyle -- at least , it 's his name in the credits -- who is now rightly regarded as one of the world 's leading cinematographers .
in the freewheeling expressionism of his work with directors like chen kaige and wong kar - wai , he seems incapable of fashioning a boring image .
you would never know it from watching that day , which , due either to doyle 's inexperience or yang 's humdrum direction , is almost perverse in its insistence on making the physical environment seem as drab and banal as possible .
in scrutinizing the long decay of a marriage , that day manages to capture the ennui of the experience , but none of the damage , none of the heartbreak .

SOLUTION:
N