instruction:
In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
question:
on the basis of this film alone , i never would have predicted that , in two years , quentin tarantino would become the country 's biggest hotshot director .
reservoir dogs
has hints of the tarantino brilliance that emerged in pulp fiction , but is a much less substantive , more conventional crime story than the big pf .
here 's what the two movies do have in common . . .
--scenes of intelligent , amusing dialogue with no relevance to the plot --a story that jumps back and forth in time rather than going in a logical , chronological sequence --graphic yet necessary violence
--an engaging crime story --dialogue liberally spiced with swear words and racial / gender slurs --three of the same actors ( harvey keitel , tim roth and steve buscemi )
--a mexican standoff ending , although this one is considerably less optimistic than pf reservoir dogs is an entire hour shorter than pulp fiction because it 's only got one story to tell rather than three .
crime lord joe cabot ( veteran actor lawrence tierney ) has assembled five criminals who have never even met each other to pull a diamond store heist .
the five are instructed not to reveal their real names or personal details or anything the cops could use if one of them was captured and interrogated .
instead , they are all given code names off the color chart -- mr .
white ( keitel ) , mr .
pink ( buscemi ) , mr .
orange ( roth ) , mr .
blonde ( michael madsen ) , mr .
brown ( tarantino ) and mr .
peach ( tarantino 's chin ) .
most of the movie 's running time is spent with mr .
white and pink waiting at a warehouse for the others to arrive .
mr .
orange , meanwhile , is on the floor , dying from a gunshot wound .
the police had arrived at the scene of the crime way too soon , leading white to believe one of the five was an informant .
the story 's background unfolds through a series of flashbacks , of the crime itself and the meetings between joe and the criminals prior to the crime .
eventually , blonde arrives with a police officer hostage , and what follows is a truly brutal , uncomfortable torture scene .
let 's just say picasso would be inspired by what blonde does to the cop 's ear .
a lot of the time , reservoir dogs seems like your typical gangster heist - gone - wrong movie , but there are a few sequences that are uniquely tarantino .
the opening scene in the coffee shop starts the movie off on a high note the rest of it does n't live up to , as the criminals plus joe have a conversation on , among other things , tipping philosophies and their interpretations of madonna 's " like a virgin .
"
another scene involves roth 's lengthy manufactured story about running into a group of cops and a police dog in a bus station bathroom while carrying a giant bag of marijuana .
neither of these have much plot relevance but are given ample time to develop , like the captain koons gold watch speech in pulp fiction , only here these sequences are more enjoyable than the rest of the movie .
reservoir dogs is good
but it 's no pulp fiction .
answer:
P


question:
capsule : earthy , experimental , difficult , shockingly frank ( even for 1997 ! ) , and ultimately refreshing story of a black man on the run from the cops .
the first few minutes of sweet sweetback 's baad asssss song ( yes , i checked --
that 's the correct number of ss )
are without dialogue , just eerie montages of sounds .
a young boy , obviously malnourished , is taken in and fed up by several loving mother - surrogate figures .
then one of them takes the boy to bed for a sexual initation ( underneath the title credits ) that 's far more confrontatory and shocking than any ten basic instincts -- probably because it has the directness and clumsiness of real life , something we 're not used to seeing on screen .
this is one tough movie to swallow , no matter who you are , but that probably reflects more on how pallid and unchallenging movies have gotten lately .
( i suspect the sex scenes in movies like el topo and salo would probably melt the synapses of most modern audiences . )
the plot is simple but not simpleminded .
sweetback , hassled by two white cops who are apparently just looking for an excuse to beat up on a black man , breaks his bonds and runs like hell .
along the way he moves through a good many of the kinds of environments that we are only just now being seen in a more serious light in the movies -- or at all , for that matter : the slums , the missions , the ghetto .
in other , lesser , movies , sweetback would be machine - gunning everything in sight and the end credits would roll over a pile of bodies ; in this one , we get taken on a kind of a tour of the depressing and anarchic world that sweetback takes for granted .
ssbas first appeared in 1971 and was promptly rated x ( " by an all - white jury " , as director melvin van peebles crowed in his legendary ad campaigns ) , and it 's hardly surprising why .
there 's a good deal of sex in the movie , but it 's handled in a way that 's unsettlingly frank -- a frankness that spills over into the rest of the movie .
in one scene , sweetback visits a friend 's house in the hope of getting sanctuary there , and the other man chats him up while on the toilet .
we 're not used to coming this close to people in real life , let alone in the movies -- especially not people who are not made out to be glamorous .
the movie is also full of experimental stylistics that are relatively unused today , but probably because of that seem curiously fresh and new in van peebles ' hands .
one scene , in which a man is interrogated by the cops , is loaded full of menacing energy as they fire off a gun inches from his ears , and suggest his deafness through a cleverly edited soundtrack .
another note : ssbas is not so much anti - white ( that would be too easy ) as anti - authority , and as the movie goes on to demonstrate , authority exists in many forms -- governments , churches , and even the paranoid inside of one 's own mind .
ssbas is ultimately about thirsting for freedom -- and it looks like we could use a little more of that in our movie diet , god knows .
answer:
P


question:
i tried hard not like this movie without succeeding .
it contains parts of bringing up baby , any hepburn / tracy film , part of the plot of war games , cary grant and rosalind russell in his girl friday , elevator shaft action , train action , and murder .
it is cute , funny , suspenseful
( a little bit ) , sexy ( a little bit ) .
one of the bad guys was a surprise .
the pace is fast enough , there are some " action " scenes .
i think that this is a reasonable family summer movie for families with older kids who have already seen maverick .
julia roberts and nick nolte are fine separately and together .
i really identified with the julia roberts character ( wishful thinking , i know ! ) , but i do have better hair !
her hair , a very dull dark brown , has no color .
she could use some highlights .
they both do fine with their roles : he 's a bored columnist with the chicago chronicle and she 's a hotshot " cub " reporter with the chicago globe .
they have great fun trying to out scoop each other to solve one case throughout this movie .
i like the one story focus
.
other actors include charles martin smith as roberts ' boss , olympia dukakis as nolte 's coworker , nora dunn also with the chronicle , and marsha mason as a congresswoman .
basically this movie is reasonably fun .
there is a serious mystery to solve , and
i enjoyed following a fun couple solving the mystery .
it is a pleasant change of pace from movies that take themselves seriously .
i do give successful comedy high marks .
answer:

P