instruction:
In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
question:
movies can do the two big es very well : educate and entertain .
in the best of all possible worlds , they accomplish both .
on the red planet , they fail entirely .
in the near future , a manned mission is sent to mars to observe primitive plant growth .
this film does a remarkable job of demonstrating exactly how exciting watching algae grow would be .
after some mumbo - jumbo about an ecological disaster on earth and an interminable wait to reach the fourth planet , the ship falls apart almost as fast as the movie does .
the ground crew of people
you could n't care less about
is trapped on the surface without food , water or air and stalked by a deadly rogue cyberdog .
the one potentially interesting character ( carrie - anne moss ) spends her time alone in the orbiting ship talking to a computer .
attempting to graft " 2001 " esque space mysticism with " terminator " robot horror , first time director antony hoffman ca n't seem to figure out what 's going on .
neither
can we .
did n't he have anyone who could step back from the shooting and make sure there was a coherent story ?
could n't he have used the money saved by only having to pay half a dozen actors to hire a scriptwriter ?
there are so many mis - steps .
every opportunity to create dynamic tension is thwarted by plot holes and lackluster direction .
why introduce the theme of faith vs .
science if the crewman who could comment on it disappears early only to die
_
offscreen _ ?
the audience begins the film waiting for something to happen .
two hours later , they 're still waiting .
despite our greatest hopes , there is no life on the red planet .
answer:
N


question:
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 .
answer:
P


question:
much ballyhoo has been made over this new version of " lolita , " made in a time when one would think that a faithful adaptation of the infamous novel could be made , over its use of pedophilia , and as such , it 's important to address it straight - forwardly , before any other ideals such as goodness and themes can be discussed , as this film has been in film limbo for a number of years , lying around in vaults san a distributor , and having critics waiting to either hail it
a masterpiece or call it anticlimactic horseshit .
when seeing this film , after all the hoopla , keeping in mind that there are people , namely me , who are fans of the novel , who have been eagerly awaiting this flick since its creation . . .
well , you just have to wonder why no one really picked it up for distribution .
what 's even worse is that seeing this " lolita , " especially the first time and if you 're familiar with anything " lolita , " is admittingly very anticlimactic .
this is a real pity because when you really sit down to watch this film , ignoring all the crap that has preceeded it , it 's really quite a film , perhaps the best film by director adrian lyne ( although , really , look at its competition : " flashdance , " " fatal attraction , " and " indecent proposal " ) , at least besides " jacob 's ladder .
"
i 've seen this " lolita " twice : the first time , i was n't so blown away .
it seemed overly dramatic and surprisingly unaffecting .
the second time , not really thinking about how i 've waited for what seems like forever to see it and how i 'm seeing it on a tv set on a premium cable channel and not a giant movie theatre ,
it really affected me emotionally .
the story itself is a surprisingly heartbreaking one , which is why it 's such a good novel , and why this is such a good film .
the story of a pedophile obsessed with a young 14-year old girl named dolores a .
k .
a . lolita is great because it 's not trash for the perverted
but because it 's about human obsession with things that are out of one 's reach .
its protagonist , the comically - named humbert humbert , is not your average pedophile , but a seriously wounded human being who embodies how we are all destroyed by our sick obsessions and idosyncrasies .
the character of lolita is almost a symbol of the forbidden apple in christian mythology , something that will destroy us but that we ca n't live without .
these ideas are all worked into this film nicely , but done in a way that is not heavy - handed at all , but instead lyrical and emotionally devastating .
the focus of this film , and the reason for making it , it seems , was to really penetrate the emotional depths of the novel and bring them to life on the screen in beautifully dramatic images , and scenes which are blatantly over - stylized .
the tone of the book is a comical one , but it 's also a tragic one , and humbert , telling the story from his perspective , blows every single thing out of perspective .
humbert exists in a fantsy world of his obsessions and desires , and this reflects the way the entire film has been designed .
we get a sense that perhaps it 's by doing this that humbert has really trapped himself into a fate that will ultimately leave him haggard and destroyed .
he weeps uncontrollably and never lets himself get over his original 14-year - old love , and allows himself to embody her as lolita .
he lets his feelings for her navigate all his decisions , and by the end , he has nothing but overly - dramatic feelings for her .
the story recognizes the extreme of this , almost out of a test , seeing if the readers will really sympathize with someone who is socially deemed a pervert , and one almost wonders while reading the book if the author , vladimir nabokov , wrote the book as a means to bring into focus his own sick obsessions , and perhaps bring them to peace .
the weirdest thing about this film is that by the end , when humbert has reached the finale of his obsessional journey , we can easily sympathize and even identify with him .
the opening and final images of the film are the same , and who has n't done a similar action , that is wandering about without any sense of reality or anything else but a deep sadness in us ?
this is the second time the novel has been adapted for the screen , the first time being filmed in - shock - 1962 , by stanley kubrick , who could n't possibly have brought the novel to the screen with as much faithfulness as lyne has been able to do , but did the next best thing : he economized for everything and came up with a droll black comedy about obsession in general .
in that film , he used the traps of society as benefits .
the studio demanded the final scene , that of a heinous murder , come first in the film so to portray humbert first as a murderer and second as a pedophile . . .
and when you see it , it gives the film depth of a man trapped by obsession .
the censors would n't allow anymore than a couple glances and subtle dialogue to show the , um , relationship between humbert and lolita , so kubrick decided to play it as comedy , but still allow the tragedy to seep through . looking at these two versions , especially after reading the novel ( and we all know that when we 've read a novel and see a film adaptation , we are bound to be angered by any size differences ) , it 's really impossible to compare them .
they both go for different things , and one has a lot more room to be as sexually frank as the novel was .
and although it 's true that several scenes are similar , and are thus up for comparison , overall it 's unfair to say which one is better and which one is worse .
i have never been one for saying the level of greatness of a film adaptation of a novel is deemed by how faithful it is , and i wo n't say that here . however ,
this film is pretty amazing , mostly because hey , i loved the book , and this film nearly reminded me of it .
it does n't have nearly as much wit ( a couple comical scenes , and even a lot of good chuckles , but just not totally witty ) , but it does have the same emotional toll that the novel had .
some of that is in the casting of the two leads .
jeremy irons , with his deep , soft british voice and gentle look , is an amazing humbert .
he 's droll in a very unique way , and , well , no one can look distraught the way he does .
he brings a wonderful sympathy to the role that goes beyond pathos and really comes up as being easy to identify with the audience .
and when he looks at lolita with love , and she looks at him with lust , you know that he 's her prisoner for as long as he lives .
and dominique swain , who plays the title character , is rather incredible .
she pulls off the tough role even better than sue lyon did in the original , wonderfully balancing the qualities of seduction , bratiness , and self - centeredness that marks the character .
it 's easy to see why she surrenders to humbert : she loves the attention , and knows that she can have her way with him at any time .
when he denies her something , she blackmails him effortlessly ( a scene involving a rocking chair and a little foot action is damn near classic ) , and when he stands up to her , she weeps and runs away , leaving humbert to follow her .
there are two other minor characters in the film , one who 's a road block in the beginning , and the other who 's a reappearing threat to the relationship .
the former is charlotte , lolita 's mother , played by melanie griffith .
in the book , charlotte is a monster of a woman : overbearing , constantly scolding her child , overly - religious , and ultimately selfish .
and she 's the one obstacle humbert
has to overcome to obtain his goal , at least in the beginning .
as played by shelly winters in the original , she represented all these qualities ; as played by griffith here , she 's about half of them .
it 's annoying to watch a film and play a game where you try to see who could have done the role way better than the one on screen without mentioning the actor who played them first .
and even though griffith is not really bad , persay , she 's nothing more .
the other is clare quilty , the writer who is also trying to seduce lolita , and succeeds , but at a price .
langella takes a totally different direction than the one peter sellars took in the original .
quilty was a comic character in the original :
a threat in the form of many forms , popping in states of rambling , german , proning , and eventually drunk .
langella takes the other route , allowing all of the creepiness to be unearthed , and the result is a character who exists in shadows and low shots , and who meets a wonderfully ironic ending , the exact opposite of what we thought of him .
as you can see , most of these are not improvements or mistakes done on the part of lyne and his screenwriter , stephen schiff , but just parts of a whole new look at the novel , at least cinema - wise .
this version is beautiful , and perpetually saddening .
the camera movements are stylized , and each shot is breathtakingly rich .
the acting is for the most part wonderful , and when we watch it , we really get a sense that for humbert , who is telling the story , the only two people on earth most of the time were humbert and lolita .
more importantly , it takes us right up the brink of emotion , then jumps right over it .
by the end , with humbert sadly driving recklessly in his car , following what he says is the only part of his life he does n't regret , we feel that we all lose to something we can never have .
answer:

P