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

[Q]: synopsis : blond criminal psychologist sarah chooses to copulate with greasy tony the mysterious puerto rican rather than bearded cliff the wisecracking neighbor upstairs .
in the meantime , someone sends sarah rotting flowers , puts her name in the newspaper 's obituary column , and kills her cat .
comments : never talk to strangers ,
a colossal waste of time , moves slower than molasses in winter to arrive at a conclusion which should be obvious to the audience 20 minutes into the film .
one would n't think that two genuine movie stars , antonio banderas ( evita ) and rebecca de mornay ( hand that rocks the cradle ) , and the acerbic comic genius dennis miller ( " saturday night live " ) would be involved in such a celluloid backfire as this turkey .
not only are they in it , however , but de mornay executive produced it .
what was she thinking ?
never talk to strangers centers upon sarah , a psychologist examining the ill - tempered max , a murderer soon to stand trial .
she receives a sudden visit from her father which elicits flashbacks of some tragedy in her early childhood .
two men woo her ; tony the " security consultant " wins her over ( so they have passionate sex replete with cheesy saxophone music ) .
a lot of psychobabble is thrown around about multiple personality disorder , but the movie asks its audience not to derive the obvious conclusion between mpd and sarah , and instead offers several male characters as red herrings .
86 minutes , the running time of this cinematic mess , thus , seem like 86 hours .
a good chunk of never talk to strangers is spent upon sarah and tony .
why would the career - minded , professional sarah feel attracted to the walking steroid with a black hat called tony ?
that 's one of the film 's mysteries which are never answered .
regardless of motive , de mornay and banderas strip down and have sex several times in what passes for eroticism .
they also manage to go out before copulating occasionally -- in one of the stupidest scenes of the film , tony takes sarah to a carnival that 's * right outside *
his dingy apartment (
that way , they can hurry back and have sex quickly ) .
also , apparently , the weather changes quickly in their locale : they 're at this outdoor carnival one day before having sex ;
the next day , they 're out playing in the snow before having sex .
the filmmakers attempt to produce a suspenseful plot interspersed with tony and sarah 's " character development .
"
someone is out to get poor sarah ( though most of the audience should have figured out who before any of this starts ) . rotting flowers , a writeup in the obituary , and a beaten neighbor are just a few of the bad things which happen to her .
suspense cliche number one also occurs : whenever someone is stalked in thrillers , by any means , if the stalked has a pet , that pet will die . oftentimes , to even further the cliche
, the murdered pet is a cat ( suspense filmmakers , for some reason , just do n't like cats ) .
sarah
, in never talk to strangers , receives a package and , lo and behold , discovers her mutilated cat within .
suspense at its very derivative !
as stated before , never talk to strangers is a poor excuse for a film whose sole purpose seems to be exploiting banderas and de mornay 's bodies as often as possible .
comedian dennis miller is completely wasted here
( he 's not given lines that are suitable for his persona ) and does n't even appear all that much .
maybe , in a way , he 's lucky for that .
early on in the movie , sarah tells tony , after meeting him in a supermarket , that she had been advised to never talk to strangers .
allow me to advise that you never watch this stinker .
[A]: N


[Q]: [ note that followups are directed to rec .
arts .
movies .
current - films and rec .
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movies .
startrek .
current only , not to rec .
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-moderator
] star trek : first contact a film review by michael
dequina copyright 1996 michael dequina star trek :
first contact ( pg-13 ) anyone familiar with the series of star trek movies knows of the " even - odd pattern " --the even - numbered installments of the series are good while the odd - numbered ones are , well , not - so - good .
the pattern continues with the new star trek : first contact , an energetic sci - fi adventure that
( coincidentally ? ) is the eighth entry in the hugely popular series .
in this first trek feature to feature only cast members from the late star trek : the next generation television series , captain jean - luc picard ( patrick stewart ) and the rest of the 24th - century crew of the starship enterprise -- commander will riker ( jonathan frakes , who also directed ) , android lt .
cmdr .
data ( brent spiner ) , lt .
cmdr .
geordi laforge ( levar burton ) , lt .
cmdr .
worf ( michael dorn ) , dr .
beverly crusher ( gates mcfadden ) , and counselor deanna troi ( marina sirtis )
--travel back to 21st - century earth while doing battle with the borg , a race of cybernetic beings that share a collective mind with the borg queen ( alice krige ) .
the borg intend to alter history and assimilate all of humankind into their race -- starting with the earth - orbiting crew of the enterprise and a 21st century stowaway ( alfre woodard ) .
this is an interesting plotline that is sure to mesmerize trekkers everywhere and engage everyone else , but , unfortunately , it only makes up the star trek half of the script by brannon braga and
ronald d . moore .
the other half of the title -- first contact -- refers to a subplot that takes place on 21st - century earth , where riker , troi , and laforge meet legendary scientist zephram cochran ( james cromwell ) , who is about to embark on the first warp speed flight in human history , which directly leads to the first contact with extraterrestrials .
while this story does tie into the main plot and pays off interestingly in the end , it is nowhere near as involving or exciting as the borg battles on the enterprise .
not helping matters is the tiresome cochran character , an eccentric whose drunken schtick starts out funny but becomes too one - note after a while .
in the end , though , the first contact subplot does n't detract from the enjoyment of the film as a whole .
the story is typical sci - fi fantasy , but the conviction of the cast -- most notably the always - phenomenal stewart -- makes you believe and care .
frakes , making his feature directorial debut , keeps the action swiftly rolling along and delivers the action goods , even upping the violence a notch ( this is the first trek film to bear a pg-13 rating ) to greater effect .
st : fc has a bigger budget than the last trek outing , the middling star trek generations , and it definitely shows on screen -- the production design and especially visual and makeup effects are outstanding
( in particular those involving the borg queen ) .
braga and moore 's mostly sharp script will please both trek devotees and the rest ; the references to the borg storyline in the tv series , the continuity with the previous film ( e . g .
the ongoing saga of data 's emotion chip ) , and a fleeting star trek : voyager crossover will make trekkers squeal with delight , but such points are made easily accessible to those less familiar to the trek mythos .
paramount was reportedly worried about the staying power of its trek franchise with the next generation cast now carrying the helm .
based on the entertaining success that is star trek : first contact , i 'd say the studio has nothing to worry about
( at least not until this cast retires and the crew of the wan star trek : deep space nine takes over . . . ) .
[A]: P


[Q]: you know , i never really wondered what the tarzan films would have been like had tarzan been an old man .
while watching instinct , i could n't help but acknowledge the way the film carelessly rehashes the well - explored themes of those earlier movies .
even beside the tarzan comparison , instinct just is n't a very good film .
it 's painfully idealistic , manipulative , and silly .
i did n't hate it -- it 's simply impossible for me to hate any film starring anthony hopkins ; furthermore , most of the acting is quite good .
but i can recognize instinct for what it is beyond my subjective admiration for the actors involved .
i can also recognize reasons for wanting to make instinct , and it 's pretty clear that this could have been a good film with a massive script overhaul and a director less interested in imitating movies like patch adams .
things start off in the predictable way , as director jon turtletaub introduces us to our hero , theo caulder ( cuba gooding , jr . ) , an ambitious , young psychiatrist under the supervision of an experienced , old psychiatrist ( donald sutherland ) .
caulder soon finds himself involved in the case of his life , the one he thinks will make him famous .
the subject is ethan powell ( hopkins ) , an anthropologist who has been living among gorillas in africa for the past two years .
powell has been charged with the brutal murders of several men in africa , and it 's now caulder 's job to find out of he 's mentally competent enough to stand trial .
through a series of short sessions , caulder tries to put together the complex psyche of powell .
even though it really is an old man version of tarzan , much of this central idea is rather interesting .
as i said , hopkins is captivating for every second he 's on screen ; he has a way of convincing us that he 's not acting , that he 's actually a man who has just spent two years of his life living with a family of wild gorillas .
the character himself is n't very interesting -- he 's just an anthropologist who really likes gorillas -- but hopkins makes him interesting with subtleties both in speech and action .
gooding jr .
does strong work opposite hopkins , playing caulder as an intelligent and flawed individual .
the screenplay , written by gerald di pego and " suggested by " a novel by daniel quinn , gives us no background information on caulder , but that seems to be the point
( he has no time for friends because he 's obsessed with his work ) .
nonetheless , these two actors are essentially the entire list of things that are good about instinct .
unfortunately , filmmaking this inept can mangle the effect of even the best acting .
turtletaub and di pego are both guilty of instinct 's artistic failure , for they work together to make the dumbest , most cliche - ridden environment in which their characters are to live , and they do so by means of brainless subplots .
first , we have the prison warden subplot .
the prison warden is evil and wants to stop caulder 's progress at any cost ; if this means taking caulder off the powell case , then that 's fine .
there 's also the prison guard subplot .
the prison guard is played by john ashton ; the prison guard seems to enjoy mercilessly beating upon the psychotics under his supervision , and he 's instrumental in helping the story along to its obvious conclusion .
then there 's the daughter subplot , in which maura tierney ( playing the daughter ) must look very upset a lot of the time ; after all , she is the daughter of a deranged man .
if some of this stuff sounds familiar , that 's because they 're all devices that have been used and reused in countless other films .
the evil doctor in patch adams is not unlike the evil warden here .
the offensive caricatures of mental patients lack the depth that the similar portrayals in one flew over the cuckoo 's nest had .
ashton 's evil prison guard pales in comparison to clancy brown 's in the shawshank redemption .
hopkins ' performance will undoubtedly remind audiences of his turn in the silence of the lambs .
and then there 's the whole tarzan thing , which is more than a little bit obvious through the entire film .
perhaps what irritates me most about instinct is the half - hearted attempt at philosophical depth .
the message powell brings back from the wild is not a subtle one : he thinks that humans are " takers , " that they expand and kill and that we should all just live like gorillas .
i can sympathize with that , but only when it 's in a compelling film .
this is the kind of stupid movie -- just like patch adams -- in which a big group of characters ( psychotic inmates , in this case ) rise against the evil forces oppressing them by tearing up playing cards .
what does any of this have to do with a man who has just spent two years of his life with gorillas ?
if all the subplots of instinct had been left on the cutting room floor , we would have had a thirty - minute movie far superior to the two - hour one that i watched today .
if the central idea had been developed beyond the old man tarzan premise , then we would really have had something interesting -- a movie that does n't rely on the strength of its actors .
[A]:
N