TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
PROBLEM: before you read my review , you got ta know that i love woody allen .
this is a very important note because allen 's films are generally an acquired taste and definitely not for everyone .
i know folks who believe him to be a complete genius , while others see him as a dirty ol' schnook who keeps making the same movie over and over again .
i love most of his films , but will admit to having been quite disappointed by his recent crop during the 90s .
in fact , why he felt the need to make 10 movies in those 10 years is beyond me ! if you look at the quality of those films , you 'll hear what i 'm saying .
the only two films of his that i really liked during that time were bullets over broadway and husbands and wives .
in fact , i secretly hoped that he would take some " time off " at the turn of the millennium , just to re - energize or something , but it does n't appear as though he has any intention of doing that .
so here i am again , reviewing yet another woody allen movie and hoping that it brings back the woody from the days of old .
plot :
the year is 1940 and woody allen
is a top - notch insurance investigator .
his methods are very old - fashioned and apparently out of date .
a new employee ( hunt ) has just been hired to streamline the operations for greater efficiency .
the two do not like each other .
one night , they are both put under a hypnotic trance by a magician , and unbeknownst to them , placed under his control .
soon thereafter , jewels are stolen , words of love are exchanged and everyone is looking for an answer .
critique : a wonderful recreation of the 1940s style movies , with the fast - talking witty banter between
co - workers , a catchy jazz score moving things along , film noirish elements such as the veronica lake - type sexpot , one - liners galore and a fluffy , if inconsequential plotline .
on the downside , the film actually starts off pretty slowly , with the first hour tossing only a few guffaws out there , but never really generating any kind of steady flow or energy .
the sets , on the other hand , were amazing , the production design and costumes were perfect , and the casting ideal , so i kept hoping that the film would pick up and not turn into yet another mediocre outing for the man .
but it was n't not long before i was fully engaged by the characters , entertained by the many zingers delivered back - and - forth between allen and hunt , and actually interested in the resolution of the flick .
i also appreciated how allen played the fine line between homage to the films of old , parody and actual reinvention ( note theron 's entire female persona that is drenched in film noir- very cool ) .
of course , films like this ( with little or no real tension in the plot ) need solid actors to keep you interested in the quick - fire dialogue , and once again
, allen does a great job in playing his character , who for once , is n't his typical new york jewish neurotic cheating insecure husband dude .
he actually plays a " macho " guy here and handles it pretty well , especially the scenes in which he 's hypnotized .
but the bigger surprise for me in this film was helen hunt , an actress who i was openly " sick of seeing " in movies late last year ( sorry babe , you were just in too many at the same time ! ) .
anyway
, she 's really great in this film
as the headstrong woman looking to a new era of equality amongst men , and does n't miss a beat of allen 's fast - paced dialogue .
i did n't care much for her running joke about him " dying " whenever he left a room , but overall she was really good
and i especially liked the way that her sweaters clung to her breasts as they did .
..
yum , yum !
harumph , but i digress .
so let 's recap .
a great looking picture with a nice jazzy score , some funny one - liners , especially in the second half , a decent plotline , although you should n't expect a real mystery or anything , and some solid acting all around .
i ca n't say that this is even remotely close to any of allen 's best work , but i certainly believe it to be a step in the right direction , especially after the dinky decade of films that he just went through .
it 's probably better geared towards allen fans more than anyone else ,
but i would still recommend this film to anyone looking for a cute , " old - school " kind of vibe , with chemistry between the leads , zippy dialogue and a satisfying conclusion .
little known facts about this film and its stars :
annie hall ( 10/10 )
- celebrity ( 5/10 )
- everyone says i love you ( 5/10 ) - husbands and wives ( 9/10 ) - mighty aphrodite ( 5/10 ) - small time crooks ( 7/10 ) - when harry met sally ( 10/10 )
- you 've got mail ( 4/10 )

SOLUTION: P

PROBLEM: you know the plot : a dimwit with a shady past is seduced into committing a crime only to be double - crossed by a fatal femme .
in " palmetto , " the dimwit is harry barber ( woody harrelson ) , a reporter who 's just been released from prison ( he was framed by the gangsters and corrupt officials he was investigating ) .
enter la femme : rhea malroux ( elisabeth shue ) , the sexy young wife of the richest man in palmetto , florida ( rolf hoppe ) .
she and her stepdaughter odette ( chlo ? sevigny ) have a plot to extort 500k from the old man : harry will " kidnap " odette .
after groping both women , harry agrees .
as everyone except harry can see , he 's being set up as a fall guy .
sure enough , before long , harry has a dead body in his trunk and the cops on his tail .
his brother - in - law ( tom wright ) , an assistant da , has hired harry to be the press liaison for the case , so harry gets a front row seat for his own manhunt ( and we get to watch him sweat - literally ) .
there are several plot twists , of course - a couple of them even took me by surprise .
apparently every woman in palmetto is a raving horndog , and they 're on harry like he 's the only bone in the kennel .
shue vamps so broadly that i expected tex avery 's wolf to show up .
her incredible performance in " leaving las vegas " seems to have been a fluke .
here , she could easily be mistaken for melanie griffith .
shue 's character is supposed to be a savvy schemer
but she comes off as a brainless bimbo
.
in addition to shue and sevigny , the kennel includes gina gershon ( who filled the dimwit - with - a - shady - past role in " bound " ) as harry 's girlfriend nina ; when harry gets out of jail , she licks his face ( now there 's a horndog ) .
the parts are so overplayed that with a little push " palmetto " could have been an over - the - top parody of film noir
a la " romeo is bleeding .
"
as it is , it 's best watched at 2 am on showtime ( the love scenes seem to have been written for one of that channel 's soft porn programs anyway ) .
" palmetto " has a well - known director , volker schl ?
ndorff , who 's best known for his adaptations of major literary works , especially " the tin drum .
"
i suppose he must have been drawn to this plot - by - numbers script by the same admiration for classic film noir that led scorsese to remake " cape fear .
"
schl ?
ndorff tries hard - he makes an interesting motif out of the ubiquitous palmetto bugs - but
nothing can freshen up this stale script .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: vampires starts out almost in the style of a spaghetti western with an attack on a small homestead in new mexico .
the house has a nest of vampires and jack crow ( james woods ) is leading a team of vampire hunters in to clean them out .
while the initial imagery is a little over - dramatic , it gives way to what is a fairly decent action sequence .
that is enough action to last us a while
and we could , director john carpenter would let us , get to a story line .
but it is not very long and there is not much plot until the next big action scene .
then there is only a bit more of plot before the next action scene after that .
the plot is kept to a minimum and the interesting ideas in the plot really get the short end .
and that is something of a pity because the film , based on the book vampire$ by john steakley , gives us a myth for the origins of vampires and explains why vampires are so intertwined with religious imagery .
this could be an interesting departure from the standard vampire film , but carpenter decides to tell us about it rather than to show it .
what carpenter saves his serious screen time for a sequence of spectacular fights between hunters and vampires .
there is a lot of fighting and lots of gore .
anything intriguing is kept to a minimum to so it does not get in the way of pleasing the action film fans .
this has not always been carpenter 's style .
his 1981 version of the thing has action but also challenges the viewer to do a little thinking about the film 's central science fictional question .
jack crow heads a vampire swat team , cleaning up nests of vampires with high - tech spears and crossbows .
in the early part of the film his team is wiped out by a particularly mean vampire valek ( thomas ian griffith ) who has been tipped off to who crow is .
now crow team is gone and he is down to himself and his sidekick tony montoya ( daniel baldwin ) . to make matters worse
, he does not know the people on his own side , tony and his backers , he can trust .
meanwhile jack is sure the vampires are looking for something that must be hidden somewhere here in new mexico .
if this is sounding like a very tired police corruption plot with a few obvious substitutions , that 's exactly what it is .
the same story looks just as well with two partner cops looking for a gang of hood who are themselves looking for a packet of heroin .
but carpenter goes against a familiar principle of film : show people , do n't tell them .
just about everything in the plot other than the fights we are told about in the dialog and not shown .
fundamental questions in the plot like where does crow get his funding
, why are the vampires in new mexico -- what do they want and why do they want it
, what is the connection of the vampires and the catholic church , how did crow come to be a vampire hunter and why devote his life to it ?
the answers to any of these questions could have been dramatized , but instead are revealed through dialog .
now if all this was not bad enough , carpenter misuses the james wood persona .
woods plays a particular sort of cool lowlife very well .
but carpenter leads off the film by having woods do some sergio - leone- style mythic posturing .
while his crew prepares for an attack he stands staring fixedly through shades at the house that will be his target .
woods does not work as a larger than life mythic hero .
that is not his style and it just does not work very well .
there are some simple things that carpenter should be looking for as director that he misses .
in one scene we are looking at a motel room with dead people on the floor .
one female corpse is on the floor in front of a chair so that there is about an inch of daylight between her and the chair .
as the actress breathes the gap widening and narrowing makes it obvious her arm is moving up and down .
one also wonders how the existence of vampires is kept secret .
these vampires do not maintain a low profile .
there are arguably logical flaws in the film .
there is some question in my mind whether carpenter has a consistent policy on what effect bullets have on vampires .
it would take some rationalization to explain why in some scenes sunlight has a dramatic effect on vampires , yet in a scene toward the end a vampire can walk under a burned roof that lets him be swept by beams of sunlight .
i suspect that the book on which this film was based was better thought out .
while i might recommend this film to an action audience i would say that what i look for in a vampire film vampires rates a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale .
perhaps i will read the book .

SOLUTION:
N