polsci/sentiment-polarity-dataset-v2.0 huggingface dataset:
august and september are a wasteland when it comes to children's films , and october is a dumping ground for munchkin movies the studios don't want to see slaughtered against family-oriented thanksgiving films . 
last year , the benevolent studio gods gave us digimon , and this year , they bestow max keeble's big move on delighted moviegoers across the country . 
parents will be thrilled because they'll finally have something to drag little austin and kayla to see that doesn't smell nearly as much like ass as digimon did . 
don't get me wrong - keeble , which is actually only a " ment " away from being a fetish film , isn't that entertaining . 
in fact , you'd be better off waiting to blow your disposable income when the real kiddie pics ( monsters , inc . , harry potter ) come out next month . 
but if dubya dubya iii tells you to go out and spend money to stimulate the economy , then you'd better do it ( because gassing up the minivan twice a week just isn't going to cut it ) . 
we first see young max keeble ( alex d . linz , home alone 3 ) as a pint-sized superhero , delivering newspapers with the pinpoint accuracy of a david beckham cross , foiling the diabolical plans of the evil ice cream man ( jamie kennedy , jay and silent bob strike back ) and landing the neighborhood honey ( brooke anne smith ) , who , by the way , is the hottest chick in a disney film since emmanuelle chriqui played claire boner in snow day . 
the scenario is , of course , a dream . 
max is really a doofus and he wakes up on his first day of junior high school with a pessimistic attitude , no luck with the ladies and only two friends , both of whom can kindly be described as social outcasts ( and who were both in snow day ) - the perpetually robed robe ( josh peck ) and a clarinet-playing cutie named megan ( summer catch's zena grey ) , who harbors secret feelings for max . 
things don't get any better for max when he arrives at school . 
he has to contend with , among other things , a red-hot science teacher ( amber valletta , family man ) , a pair of polar-opposite bullies ( noel fisher and orlando brown ) , and an illiterate principal ( larry miller , the princess diaries ) who's secretly diverting the school's last dime into the football program . 
when max's father ( grownup nerd robert carradine ) unexpectedly announces the family is moving to a new town at the end of the week , max decides this is the perfect time to exact revenge on everyone who pisses him off . 
whoa - don't worry , parents . 
he doesn't do it klebold-harris style . 
it's all pretty tame stuff , but max ends up in hot water when dad nixes the move , leaving his son dangling in the wind like so many tampon strings . 
director tim hill ( muppets from space ) adds a few nice touches , like max's voiceover character introductions for the film's main characters and a flashback scene that's pretty funny , but there isn't too much else happening here stylewise . . . unless 
you count some farting , a little puking , and a couple of bizarre cameos from tony hawk and lil' romeo . 
1 : 30 - pg for some bullying and crude humor
there is a rule when it comes to movies . 
a sequel is never as good as the original . 
there are very few exceptions to this rule , and texas chainsaw massacre : the next generation is not one of them . 
now if you also take into consideration that the original chainsaw massacre was a really bad movie , and that this isn't even the first sequel to it , you have a recipe for a very painful viewing experience . 
don't be fooled by the presence of up and coming talents matthew mcconaughey ( a time to kill ) and renee zellweger ( jerry maguire ) . 
they made this movie before they were stars . 
judging by their performances they also made it before they took any acting lessons . 
it's a wonder they ever worked in hollywood again after appearing in this turkey . 
apparently the producers of this film realized just how bad it was , because it sat unreleased for years until someone decided that they might be able to capitalize off the success of mcconaughey and zellweger . 
apparently the two young stars were none too happy about this thing ever seeing the light of day . 
and i don't blame them , they would have been better off if this had been some sort of porno flick starring the two of them . 
unfortunately for them it is a horror film in which zellweger plays your typically stupid horror film character . 
while mcconaughey plays a guy who wears a mechanical brace on his leg that he controls with a television remote control . 
 ( hey , don't say i didn't warn you . ) 
to make matters worse , leatherface , the chainsaw wielding maniac , who was never the scariest of psychopathic killers at the best of times , has now become a full blown cross-dresser , and spends the entire movie in drag . 
there is a plot to this movie but it isn't worth mentioning . 
let's just suffice to say that a group of teenagers are in the typical wrong place at the wrong time and are left to the mercy of remote control man ( mcconaughey ) and his lipstick wearing chainsaw revving half-witted sidekick . 
man , i can't get over just how bad this movie is . 
this film has absolutely no redeeming qualities . 
even the obligatory topless babe shot wasn't enough to hold my interest for more than 2 seconds . 
the writing is bad , the direction is even worse , but both of those things look good in comparison to the acting . 
this is the sort of movie that they should make people in prison watch . 
a guarantee you , if criminals thought that they would be subjected to this film they would never break the law again .
depending on who you ask , the original sin was either the eating of the apple , the act of disobedience against god , or the act of betrayal . 
but in case you didn't know this , don't bother remembering it . . . 
the words " original sin " never come up in the movie of the same name , let alone the concept of it . 
the closest the film even gets to catholicism is in its narrative ( the story is told by angelina jolie to her priest while on death row in cuba , circa 1900 ) . 
regardless of its senseless title , original sin does actually have a plot ( albeit one of the most mangled acts of screenwriting since the art of war , based on the book waltz across darkness ) . 
boy ( antionio banderas ) places personal ad sometime around 1900 , searching for a wife . 
since this is a century ago , we narrowly dodge a remake of green card , only to find that the girl ( jolie ) faked her photo and is actually beautiful . 
skipping a few moderately useless sex scenes ( getting the question out of the way , yes , we get to see angelina jolie's breasts again ) , the girl turns out to be a con artist , swindles boy for his money , and heads for the hills . 
original sin then briefly tries to be a thriller . 
we see boy go whore-chasing , saying he wants to find girl and kill her . 
but as soon as boy actually finds girl , instead of following what might have been a promising ( or at least not completely fucking boring ) thriller , the film degenerates into the worst dissection of the virgin/whore complex since milk money . 
girl toys with the idea of reforming her con-girl past , all the while avoiding the " other man , " a lover that keeps making her start these scams in the first place . 
add insult to injury with some of the worst stylistic choices in cinematic history ( literally half of the film is either in slow motion or uses a strobe effect ) , and acting roughly the caliber of a b . b . gun , and original sin is one of the most torturous films of the summer , definitely front running to make my bottom ten of the year . 
don't even bother with original sin , but if you do go , be honest with yourself and admit its pure sex appeal . 
just keep in mind that although this film may not be the most original on the block , it's much worse than a sin . 
this is sacrilege .
inspired by the 1958 film house on haunted hill starring vincent price . 
directed by william malone . 
starring geoffrey rush , famke janssen , and chris kattan . 
rated r ( contains violence , profanity , and brief nudity ) . 
synopsis : eccentric millionaire price offers $1 , 000 , 000 to each of his guests who appear at a gathering at a former sanitarium . 
the only catch is that they have to survive the night at the establishment , an establishment haunted by its former staff and patients . 
comments : house on haunted hill is based upon the original 1958 film of the same title directed by william castle and starring vincent price . 
in an obvious homage , the millionaire's name is price and he sports a thin mustache like price used to have . 
this is a pretty bad horror film , yet bad horror films sometimes are very entertaining , and house on haunted hill is just such a film . 
it is , surprisingly , better than another recent haunted house remake , the haunting , a film which owes its basis to the classic horror novel by shirley jackson . 
the haunting had literary pretensions and fell flat on it face . 
house on haunted hill owes its lineage to a b-movie 40 years old and makes no illusion that it's a crappy horror movie . 
thus , somehow , it proves slightly more successful . 
i can't think of another recent film which has had such an eclectic cast . 
it is this cast which lifts this ho-hum thriller into a borderline entertaining exercise in camp horror . 
price , the main character , is played by geoffrey rush , the academy-award winning actor of shine . 
rush seems to be making a downward spiral in the movie industry , a spiral reminiscent of ben ( ghandi , schindler's list ) kingsley's ridiculous appearance in the camp sci-fi classic species . 
i don't know why , but sometimes it's entertaining to see " quality " actors in bad movies . 
more surprises ? 
rising star taye diggs plays a stereotypical african american sports figure ( rather lamely too ) , and singer lisa loeb ( ! ) 
appears as a tv news reporter . 
the highlight of the cast , however , has to be saturday night live member chris kattan . 
kattan's comic sense provides several good humorous moments as he plays the hysterical proprietor of the former sanitarium . 
while the first half of the film leaves the audience guessing as to what's exactly going on , the second half dissolves into standard ghost story stuff and loses some of its suspense . 
a disappointingly cheesy ending really mars this movie too . 
house on haunted hill , i suspect , has just about left the second-run theaters . 
it's worth catching on cable next year , if you get a chance . 
if you have a choice , pick this movie over the haunting , it's the better of two evils , you could say . 
though , more appropriately perhaps , it'd be better to say that it's the better of two turkeys .
capsule : liebes meets tod . 
this was a film about sex and death . 
a morgue attendant accidentally revives a dead woman through necrophilia and brings her into his world which is heavy on orgies . 
this film says something obscure about the relationship of sex and death , but imparts no insights . 
to make matter worse this print was poorly subtitled into english from french . 
0 ( -4 to +4 ) 
- an attractive 18-year-old dies on a disco floor and gets sent to a morgue . 
one of the attendants , ben ( jean-marc barr ) is so attracted by her that he attempts necrophilia . 
we see him crawling away after a shock . 
in the middle of sex the dead teen has come back to life . 
- the morgue attendant was just adding a new form of sex to his collection of kinks . 
he was already part of a group that gets together for s/m sex . 
the revived teen , teresa ( elodie bouchez ) joins them . 
- moral dilemma of teresa's father . 
ben has abused his daughter's body , but in doing so has saved her life . 
- part of this opaque allegory is a man saved from suicide who joins in the sexual hijinx . 
also involved is a man in the final stages of dying of aids , a close friend of the morgue attendant . 
he does not get involved in the orgies . 
- the subtitles of our print were white , often on a white background making them often hard to read , but i don't think there was a whole lot of meaning there that was lost . 
- the title means " don't let me die on a sunday . "
adam sandler vehicles are never anything special , but continue to make a load of money . 
which really goes to show the sad state of cinema today . 
while good comedies like rushmore , to choose a recent example , gets limited release and doesn't make a lot of money , big daddy got a huge release and has made a lot of cash . 
it's also nothing special and doesn't deserve the money it's making . 
but i digress . 
sandler plays sonny koufax , a unemployed new yorker with a seemingly low mental age . 
his girlfriend makes a ultimatum to him : either wise up and get responsible , or she's leaving him . 
by a strange set of events , koufax ends up with julian ( played by twins cole and dylan sprouse ) a five year old kid . 
after a failed attempt to impress his girlfriend with the child , koufax decides he wants to keep the child . 
however , social worker mr brooks ( mostel ) finds out that koufax isn't the real father and wants to take julian back . 
koufax along with his new girlfriend layla ( lauren adams ) fight to keep the child . 
big daddy really isn't that good . 
many of the jokes revolve around toilet humour , and supposedly we are meant to find julian and sonny peeing against a wall to be funny . 
there's the occasional good one liner , but these are usually strangely delivered wrong and lose most of the humour . 
the film , after all these silly gags , then suddenly turns sentimental , and this is where big daddy really goes from bad to hideous . 
the court scene at the end of the film is useless and unbelievable , and not helped by the soppy overacting . 
it's a poor attempt to win over the audience . 
adam sandler basically plays the same role he has in his last few films ( except the wedding singer . ) 
joey lauren adams is much , much better , and deserves a far better film than this trash . 
steve buscemi pops up in a funny cameo , and his scenes are pretty funny . 
rob schneider is also funny as a crazy delivery man . 
the two twins who play julian are o . k , they start out rather well , but then becoming annoying and brattish halfway through and finally turn 'all american' wholesome goodness at the end of the film , where the tear juice is turned up high . 
big daddy is really nothing special , and is not even worth it for a few chuckles . 
although it is actually well put together , with nice direction , good production design and even some montages , this professionalism can't help the fact that the script and characters are trash . 
big daddy is for die hard fans of sandler , and that's about it .
deserves recognition for : making this relatively youthful critic feel extremely old and crotchety20 
capsule review : this is what feel-good family entertainment has morphed into in the 90's : an hour-and-a-half commercial , disguised as an unnecessary remake , in which the defining image is that of a grown man launching a volume of green protoplasmic goo out of his ass . 
 ( between this , rocketman , and george of the jungle , disney has recently eclipsed longtime champion troma as the studio most likely to include a fart joke in a film . ) 
as the absent-minded professor who invents the titular computer-generated goop , a listless robin williams manages the difficult task of making original lead fred macmurray seem sprightly . 
the only thing that made this film borderline tolerable for me is my newly-founded but firm belief that writer/producer john hughes is going to spend his eternal afterlife being conked in the noggin by all of the different blunt instruments he's used for comedic effect in films like this and the odious home alone series . 
take your kids to see boogie nights instead .
any movie that kills emilio estevez off in the first fifteen minutes has something going for it . 
unfortunately , this and the familiar theme music are the only worthwhile things about mission impossible , directed by brian depalma . 
the first problem is that this film has absolutely no connection with the tv show whatsoever , aside from the music . 
the tv show was about an impossible mission force whose deft teamwork , orchestrated by jim phelps , allowed them to counfound evil dictators of mythic banana republics from inflicting their sordid schemes upon the world . 
teamwork was the key . 
this film is set up as a cross between james bond and depalma's " blow out , " where the john travolta character was the victim of real and imagined conspiracies from all directions . 
it was travolta's vulnerability that made that film so exciting and claustrophobic . 
in this film , tom cruise is basically omniscient ( believe that ? ) and so there's no fun going on here whatsoever . 
the story is about as contrived as contrived gets , and is full of holes . 
there are basically two memorable sequences : one involves breaking into a kubrickesque computer room -- a task that could have been made much easier had the characters a whit of common sense ( suffice it to say that the alarm system is disengaged when the computer operator is in the room ) ; the second involves a high-speed train , a helicopter , and the chunnel and does not have to be seen to be disbelieved . 
the actors are all miscast , especially emannuelle beart as jim phelps wife , who cannot act , and ving rhames as a computer hacker ( ! ) , who looks lost and embarrased to be in this movie . 
tom cruise is no james bond , and jon voight looks more like bobby " the brain " heenan than jim phelps . 
brian depalma's career has been bafflingly erratic . 
at his best , he beats hitchcock at his own game ( " blow out , " " carrie , " " body double " ) but this is not his best . 
the screenplay was partly written by robert towne , who wrote the best scenario of the seventies in " chinatown , " but this script is perfunctory at best , and terrrible at worst . 
the cinematography has a comic book red/blue emphasis , which is nice to look at , but the suspense sequences are all telegraphed and this movie even features the old " killer who talks too much before shooting thus giving the victim time to think of an escape " trick . 
please don't spend your money on this ; it'll only encourage hollywood to make more .
if you have ever seen fox tv's special car chase programs , you'll have a good idea about the content of ronin , the new action " thriller " from director john frankenheimer . 
the film involves a mysterious briefcase , that several groups of terrorist want to get their hands on . 
an irish women , dierdre ( played by the truman show's natascha mcelhone ) , hires a group of mercenaries to assist her in getting the briefcase . 
among the people she hires are sam ( robert de niro ) , vincent ( jean reno ) , and gregor ( stellan skarsg ? rd from good will hunting ) . 
dierdre's groups assignment is too seize the briefcase while the current owners are transporting it . 
they accomplish this task , but a traitor is in the bunch and the briefcase is soon on the run again . 
the briefcase stays on the run , as the movie leads the viewer through several plot twists that are badly executed . 
the writer seemed to be attempting to make a smart action movie , but failed to understand that just because there are surprises , it doesn't add too the credibility of a senseless script . 
the plot twists get no reaction because they come at a time where no one cares what is going on , after the apparent climax of the film . 
but to add to the excitement , as i mentioned earlier , there are endless car chase scenes . 
they are unrealistic and fail to add anything to the story . 
don't get me wrong , i love car chases , but they were overdone and too long here . 
we never do find out what's in the briefcase , but i doubt anyone cares by the time they finish sitting through this two hour long attempted thriller .
" what is this , a homicide or a bad b-movie ? " 
that is the prophetic question asked by one of the leads in one of the early scenes of this movie . 
let me clear things up for you cupcake , this isn't a bad b-movie , it's a really bad b-movie . 
so bad , it's almost good . 
almost , but not quite . 
the movie starts off in the 1950's with space aliens sending a botched experiment down to earth . 
it is a bunch of slug-like creatures that kill people and take over their bodies . 
the slugs' first and only victim in the fifties is cryogenically frozen where he is of no danger to anybody . 
that is , until two loser university students unfreeze him in 1986 . 
he , and the slugs inside him , promptly begin wreaking havoc and turning more co-eds into slug zombies . 
a slightly crazed cop ( tom atkins ) and the requisite girl with the face of an angel ( jill whitlow ) join these two geeky university students ( jason lively and steve marshall ) to do battle with the slugs . 
it more or less falls on the four of them to make the world safe again from the evil slugs . 
the acting is bad with a capital b . the story is worse . 
and the special effects are somewhere between an old rerun of star trek and what you see in a home movie . 
the only saving grace was the requisite tit-shot courtesy of jill whitlow . 
it had absolutely nothing to do with the story -- but i liked it . 
actually , it was the high point of the movie for me . 
of course , that isn't really saying much . 
the story moves around in a hap hazard fashion . 
which gives it a leg up on some other horror films . 
unlike most movies of this genre , there actually is a story . 
not a great one , but it is there . 
this is one in a long line of movies from the 1980's that were thrown together to capitalize off the success of the friday the 13th , halloween and nightmare on elm street movies . 
you could randomly select a movie out of the horror section of you local video store and probably luck into something just as good if not better . 
but night of the creeps might make a nice addition to a b-movie horror marathon . 
just don't be too upset if you can't find it . 
you really won't be missing that much .
there's a scene early on in " jawbreaker " where a character utters the unintentionally prophetic line , " that is * so * not funny " . 
how right she was . 
this pathetic tale of three high-schoolers who accidentally kill their best friend in a birthday kidnapping prank gone horribly awry is never even remotely funny . 
or fun . 
or original . 
not content with the too-obvious " heathers " heisting , the filmmakers proceed to lift freely from a staggering variety of sources , including " carrie " , " bride of frankenstein " , " blue velvet " , and even shaw's pygmalion , itself recently remade as " she's all that " . 
 " jawbreaker " is a pastiche , and not even an enjoyable one . 
i find it extremely telling that the most engaging part of the film is the credit sequence , a jawbreaker factory montage inexplicably backed by veruca salt's " volcano girls " ; serving as a blueprint for the rest of the film , the song has absolutely nothing to do with the footage we're watching . 
just close your eyes and pretend you're listening to an alt-rock station ; you won't be missing anything . 
the blame for a mess this big has to be spread around among the principals . 
rebecca gayheart , following roles in " scream 2 " and " urban legend " , should have known better than to take yet another role in yet another teen body count movie . 
pam grier has totally wasted any credibility she might have gotten from her role in quentin tarantino's " jackie brown " . 
and rose mcgowan should just quit acting . 
she has no charisma , no presence , and no acting skills other than rolling her eyes and looking disaffected . 
mcgowan manages to be upstaged by her real-life boyfriend , rocker marilyn manson , whose fifteen second role here is far more interesting than anything any of the " real " actors are doing . 
manson , sans trademark makeup & contact lenses , and with an obviously fake moustache , looks eerily like nicholas cage ; who woulda thunk it ? 
that crack about direction by committee wasn't merely a pithy sound-bite . 
stylistically , thematically & narratively , " jawbreaker " is all over the map , varying wildly in tone & content from scene to scene . 
though credited solely to writer/director darren stein , one gets the feeling that no two scenes here were actually guided by the same hands . 
if stein was indeed responsible for the whole of this atrocity , someone needs to get the man some drugs , pronto . 
prozac , lithium , kava , ritalin , something , anything . 
he's quite obviously in desperate need of chemical help . 
 " jawbreaker " is a monumental waste of effort and resources , and quite likely one of the single worst films i've ever seen . 
to call " jawbreaker " garbage would be to insult garbage . 
bad flicks for the rest of the year are safe ; i've already got my pick for worst film of '99 . 
 " jawbreaker " runs approximately 90 minutes , though it feels longer than " titanic " , and is rated r for language , sexual situations and graphic violence . 
not recommended for kids , teens , or anyone else .
can you say " dated " ? 
you can if you've seen rosemary's baby which , like the exorcist , was a thrilling horror film in its time but seems boring and laughable in the decades that have passed since its original release . 
 " mystery science theater 3000 " has skewered the bad films of the past , but let me tell you , it could do a number on the " good " ones too . 
rosemary's baby stars mia farrow ( from the time she was actually good-looking ) as an innocent housewife and her not-so-innocent husband ( john cassavettes ) , an actor who takes an easy , albeit evil , road to success . 
it all seems so harmless in the beginning . 
mia and john move into an apartment where several past murders have been committed . 
 ( there's also a skull in the living room , but it's only for decoration . ) 
their elderly neighbors pop in for a housewarming . 
all's well for about the first hour of this slow-moving film , until mia eats some of the neighbors' chocolate mousse and passes out . 
when she comes to , she finds herself in a darkened room with a bunch of people yelling and dancing like savages and a big , evil man raping her -- a foreshadowing of her future life with woody allen . 
it seems like a dream and , when she finds herself pregnant , she almost forgets about it . 
and everyone's helping with the pregnancy . 
the neighbors have some wonderful vitamin potions for her to drink , a good-luck charm for her to wear around her neck , and the name of an obstetrician who's been in the business 66 . 6 
years . 
meanwhile , mia begins having chronic stomach pains and losing a lot of weight . 
before too long she looks just like the lead singer of the cranberries . 
that's when you know your health's failing . 
the only person in the movie who's the least bit suspicious of all this is an old friend ( maurice evans ) who calls mia up to give her the bad news -- and immediately falls into a coma . 
by about the two-hour mark i felt the same way . 
rosemary's baby is way too long , and leads up to a payoff that's about as boring and laughable as the rest of the movie . 
i guess someone put a spell on this movie .
wow , a film without any redeeming qualities whatsoever . 
i'm amazed that someone thought this was a story that must be told on screen . 
many blacks in hollywood complain that they are not nominated for awards based on their race . 
i think first they need to concentrate their energy on themselves , and stop making movies which makes them look like nothing more than sex-crazed buffoons . 
even i'm offended by it . 
bill bellamy is a " player " which means he sleeps with a lot of women and lies to them . 
what a pleasant main character . 
one day , his friends decide that they want to find out how to be a player . 
why they decide this " one day " i have no idea . 
how many years have they been friends and why all of a sudden would they want to learn ? 
anyway , bellamy agrees to teach , and his wonderful lesson to his friends consists of letting them ride in his car while he rides from house to house having sex with women . 
this is the bulk of the film folks , guys riding from house to house , one keeps getting out to have sex , while the others sit in the car . 
since russell simmons is producer , and since the official title of the film is " def jam's how to be a player " , i was ready to be jumping up and down and stomping my feet and beating the person next to me because of the comedy . 
amazingly , aside from gilbert gottfried's 90 seconds of screen time , there was no comedy in the film for me to express myself in such a manner . 
instead of jokes , there's just an endless stream of profanity and naked breasts ( and naked breasts aren't so bad , but naked breasts alone don't make a good movie ) . 
be sure to bring along your ebonics to english dictionary as well . 
gilbert gottfried's character serves as one in his very brief appearance , asking for explanations as to what is being said . 
they should have brought him along for the entire film . 
[r]
bob the happy bastard's quickie review : 
the odd couple ii 
grumpy old men , it ain't . 
hell , my fellow americans , it ain't . 
walter matthau and jack lemmon team up again for an even more worn out vehicle than any of their films over the past few years . 
odd couple ii feels terribly generic , where in the first movie , made thirty one years ago , feels like a wonderful tale . 
that's like repackaging campbell's soup in a generic food can , really . 
how writer neil simon could've made such a horrible mistake in screen writing is beyond me . 
throughout the movie , i really didn't laugh once . 
honestly . 
i mean , there were dumb situations , yeah , like the cropduster who let these old geezers have it without any notice , but they just really didn't seem funny to me . 
and that car rolling off the cliff ? 
the only way i would've seen humor in that is if they were still in it . 
and the ending gets all super-mushy , too . 
in the final twenty minutes or so , lemmon meets a girl he thinks is the one , then loses her ; matthau talks to his son ( a wasted jonathan silverman ) about his amrriage to lemmon's daughter ; and , of course , lemmon and matthau have another roomie situation on their hands . 
ooh , i really gave a lot away there , i'm sure . 
consider it a hospitable gester , you won't waste your time renting this muck .
what do you get when you rip-off good movies like woody allen's bananas and martin scorsese's after hours ? 
you'd think you'd get the best of both films . 
instead you get woo . 
falling in somewhere between def jam's how to be a player ( which was awful ) and booty call ( which was ok ) , woo is yet another in the embarassing genre of showing african-americans to be nothing more than sexual buffoons . 
the whole film plays out as a black version of after hours , as wild woman woo ( jada pinkett smith ) goes out on a blind date with straight-laced tim ( tommy davidson ) . 
mayhem follows them . 
for some unknown reason ( read : contrived screenplay ) davidson puts up with all of woo's antics for the entire night , which include her destroying his bathroom mirror , stealing things from his house , violently questioning him ( accusing and belittling him actually ) about previous girlfriends , causing a riot in an elegant restaurant , and other various infuriating things that any normal person wouldn't tolerate . 
but for the sake of this bad movie ? 
sure , why not ? 
there are a few chuckles in the film , the best being the scene swiped directly from bananas . 
in this case , davidson is running from thugs , gets into a subway car as the doors are closing , starts to taunt the thugs , then the doors open back up again . 
a good joke , but a stolen one . 
another chuckle is provided by billy dee williams' cameo as himself . 
movies like woo are seemingly released every three months or so , and not one of them has ever been a hit . 
woo won't be one either . 
so why was it made ? 
and more importantly , isn't there anyone else besides me who thinks these films are offensive ? 
everyone involved should really reconsider their careers at this point . 
[r]
capsule : dumb dud of an entry in the body heat sweepstakes , and now something of a landmark for having spawned a jillion clones . 
basic instinct's worst crime is that it's not just a bad movie , but in many ways , an incompetent one as well . 
it's stupid in itself , and stupid to think its audience is as stupid as it is . 
it's supposed to be a thriller , but the plot is dead on its feet , and ultimately arbitrary ; it's only put into the movie to jerk us around . 
it's also supposed to be sexy , but it's instead got the unpleasant rawness of a teenager showing younger kids his collections of dirty pictures . 
it's a ripoff . 
the story opens with a rock star being murdered while in the throes of orgasm . 
the biggest suspect is an authoress , catherine tramell ( sharon stone ) , who wrote a novel in which the murder was eerily presaged . 
or maybe it's the work of a copycat ? 
these and other plot threads get fed to the detective who's on the case ( michael douglas ) , who has a few problems himself . 
like we wonder if his elevator goes to the top floor . 
we can measure with a stopwatch the time from them setting eyes on each other to the moment they are doing the mattress dance . 
joe eszterhas has written the screenplay , and he uses a device that he used before in the much better jagged edge : the killer's identity is kept a secret until the movie's final shot . 
this isn't in itself a problem -- the problem is that up until that point , we've been given nothing to work with . 
every clue in the movie -- every clue -- is ambiguous . 
the whole thriller aspect of the movie is a shill . 
red herrings , dead plot threads , violence , and kinky sexuality litter the movie like potholes in manhattan streets . 
they add up to zip , because they're not happening to people we care about . 
douglas's character is foulmouthed and bitter and that's it ; stone's character has an iron-on smile that never changes ; the rest are forgettable . 
when we don't even have the luxury of giving a damn about anyone in the movie , who cares what happens in it ? 
especially with an ending that is not only unsatisfying , but in many ways inexplicable ? 
 ( a friend of mine once came up with a rule of thumb about movie characters : " if no one in the movie behaves like anyone you know , or would * care * to know , just leave ! " ) 
one of the nastier things about the movie is the way it treats lesbianism not as an integral part of someone's life , but as a kind of kink -- something to thrill men with . 
i despair whenever i encounter this kind of stupidity in mainstream entertainment ; are we still so culturally neanderthal that the only way to include something like that in a big-budget hollywood film is as a hefnerism ?
susan granger's review of " american outlaws " ( warner bros . ) 
thomas edison's " the great train robbery " ( 1903 ) was the first western ever made and " jesse james under the black flag " ( 1923 ) first introduced the outlaw folk hero . 
now , more than 20 similarly-themed pictures later , jesse james and his notorious gang of outlaws ride again in a banal mtv spin on an american legend . 
the story begins as jesse ( charasmatic colin farrell ) and his brother frank ( gabriel macht ) , cole and scott younger ( scott caan , will mccormack ) and trusty comanche tom ( nathaniel arcand ) , after four years of fighting for the rebs in the civil war , return to liberty , missouri - only to discover union troops are occupying their hometown . 
and an avaricious east coast railroad baron , thaddeus rains ( harris yulin ) , is forcing farmers to sell their land at less than true value , aided by allan pinkerton ( timothy dalton ) and his infamous detectives who , back then , were just thugs who provided security . 
but when ma james ( kathy bates ) becomes one of their victims , jesse and the rest of the guys ( gregory smith , ty o'neal , joe stevens ) form the james-younger gang to wreak revenge by attacking the railroad's supply lines , sabotaging track and robbing the banks where the payroll is kept . 
plus there's romance - between jesse and a spunky hometown gal , lee mimms ( ali larter ) . 
working from a politically-correct , clich ? -drenched , sanitized and revisionist screenplay by roderick taylor and john rodgers , director les mayfield keeps the action fast-paced and goes for lightweight laughs when he can . 
the choppy editing hurts but russell boyd's cinematography , luke reichle's designer duds and trevor rabin's music lend authenticity . 
on the granger movie gauge of 1 to 10 , " american outlaws " is a galloping , formulaic 3 . 
it's the wild west re-visited as a date movie .
upon first viewing of this movie , the phrases " been there " and " done that " come quickly to mind . 
spy hard manages to steal almost every joke from the zucker brothers films , the most popular of which are airplane and the naked gun series . 
stealing stuff can be profitable in this industry , but only when you steal the right stuff . 
what little plot there is involves dick steele , aka . 
agent wd-40 ( leslie nielsen ) trying to save the world from an almost deranged madman played by andy griffith . 
along the way to it goal ( goal ? ) , the film manages to spoof mainly the james bond type films , but also manages to hit on films such as home alone and sister act . 
the trick about spoofing is that you have to actually be funny , or at the least , satirical . 
spy hard achieves neither , as it borrows all of the wrong elements from the superior zucker brothers films . 
the " dick , the world is in danger . 
what is it ? 
well , it's a big roundish ball floating in space around the sun . . 
 ( i'm paraphrasing ) " type of exchange is used at least four times in the opening ten minutes of the film , each time getting progressively less funny . 
what they should have stolen were the background sight gags which were so effective in the zucker brother's films while writing their own dialogue . 
director rick friedberg focuses more on the mug shots of his actors ( especially nielsen , who can do this quite well ) than on the delivery and context of their lines , much of the time cutting the punchline short . 
the whole film seems to be in a race with itself to be over , as is evident in the final sequence , where there is no comedic denouement after the climax . 
as was usual in the zucker brothers films and in spy hard , the end credits tend to replace this by being out of context . 
one of the more amusing was , " captain of the enterprise . . . . . . james 
t . kirk " . 
overall , i thought this was a very weak effort . 
while all of the right films to spoof were chosen , they used none of the right spoofing methods . 
next time they should " spy " a little bit harder . 
 * * * * = excellent . 
one of a kind . 
must see . 
 * * * = entertaining . 
worth the price of admission . 
 * * = fair . 
nothing much special . 
 * = what were they thinking ? ?
first impressions : critically , a close-to-awful film , but money-wise , it has been doing ( and will continue to do ) great . 
a sometimes-funny film that sags and lags and oftentimes gets boring . 
an orginal plot that grows old real fast . 
one of the only 90 minute films that i've gotten bored through . 
men in black has defied the odds . 
when i first saw that the flick was 89 minutes long , i thought maybe that this was a poor attempt at an independence day type film that just ran out of gas . 
however , i now realize that not only did men in black run out of gas , but the film in 90 minutes manages to show off a very original idea ( which summer audiences have embraced ) that becomes old about 25 minutes into the movie . 
tommy lee jones and will smith play two " government " agents who are responsible for keeping order in alien society . 
the ridiculous plot begins when an alien " bug " , played weirdly by vincent d'onofrio , who was so great in full metal jacket , lands on earth to retrieve a galaxy that's somewhere on " orion's belt . " 
anyway , the basic plot revolves around jones and smith to stop this bug from getting the galaxy , or a higher power will blow up the earth . 
the premise is ridulous , but that is not why i didn't like this film . 
i love original plots . 
this one had an original one . 
but director barry sonnenfeld did something to this film that ruined its plot : he made the film drag and also put in unncessary elements in it that are found in romance films . 
whenever i saw d'onofrio's bug stomp and eat people in the film , it got terribly boring after a while . 
while smith's wise-cracks did fill in the gaps , it wasn't enough . 
and also , i cannot believe the screenwriters elected to have a sub-plot where tommy lee jones missed his former lover because as an alien agent , they can't have contact with any humans really . 
and here i see jones , at a satellite computer , watching his lover plant the garden ? 
a sentimental moment in an alien movie ? 
nice try , but i don't think so . 
it doesn't work here . 
it just makes the movie even more ridiculous and even more boring : we don't only have aliens to worry about , but now we have jones's conscience . 
i came into the movie not wanting to see jones's conscience , but wanting to see a real action movie that had lots of aliens in it . 
maybe it's unfair that i partly judged this movie on what my expectations were . 
nevertheless , even though some parts are indeed funny , the plot in this movie grew old and boring -- quick .
there are movies that pose a question in its first five minutes and spend the rest of the time trying to answer it . 
then there are movies that spend the whole time posing questions and try to answer it all in the last five minutes . 
writer-director john herzfeld's two days in the valley falls into the latter category . 
weaving together a grabbag of seemingly unrelated characters , herzfeld's tries very hard to keep the audience guessing with a altmanesque series of parallel stories . 
hitmen lee ( james spader ) and his partner dosmo ( danny aiello ) pop a guy in bed while leaving his drugged wife becky fox ( teri hatcher ) lying next to him showing the audience where on her behind she got nicely pricked . 
an understandeably shocked becky runs out of the house the next morning before hailing down a couple of vice cops , ( jeff daniels ) and wes ( eric stoltz ) . 
a murder is not vice territory , flirting with asian prostitues is , but wes would rather play inquisitive detective . 
meanwhile , washed-up director , teddy ( paul mazursky ) is about to end his life . 
but before he can do that , he must find a good home for his dog . 
enter nurse audrey ( marsha mason ) , who takes the dog and teddy for a ride . 
stuffy art dealer , allan hopper ( greg cruttwell ) has kidney stones . 
while struggling about his fancy house , he switches between moaning in self-pity and dropping condescending hints about his loyal secretary's ( glenne headly ) plain appearance . 
don't be surprised if you find yourself asking more than once just what the hell is going on . 
you might like that feeling of cluelessness . 
herzfeld does answer all the questions in the course of time and pieces it all rather neatly in the last five minutes . 
the jigsaw puzzle assembled isn't stunning by any means though . 
the characters lack the stature or moral complexity of altman's real-life heroes in short cuts , even though they are interesting and funny . 
funny , that is if you aren't comparing them to the likes of tarantino's pulp chcaracters . 
the tie-up is tidy but nowhere near the squeaky clean resolution of ( director's name ? 
guy who also did last seduction ) red rock west . 
two days isn't a bad movie but there isn't much else to it than the screenplay novelty of the linkage of seemingly unrelated characters . 
it'll keep you guessing alright but you won't remember the answers five minutes after the credits . 
the flying inkpot rating system : * wait for the tv2 broadcast . 
 * * a little creaky , but still better than staying at home with gotcha ! 
 * * * pretty good , bring a friend . 
 * * * * amazing , potent stuff . 
 * * * * * perfection . 
see it twice .
" my name is jack carter , and you don't want to know me " says our brooding anti-hero ( sylvester stallone ) . 
take his advice ! 
to know this guy is as rewarding as being thrown over a terrace . 
and to watch this film is almost as painful . 
 " get carter " is a gloomy looking , unimaginative film that offers no joy . 
jack carter is as tough as tough guys come . 
he works out of vegas as a self-described 'financial adjuster' . 
explaining his duties , he says , " people make promises and break them . 
i help them remember . " 
he has a chiseled body full of tattoos . 
he has the weathered look indicative of a man who has seen his share of hard times . 
he speaks in a hushed but menacing tone of voice . 
in other words , this is sylvester stallone acting like . . . sylvester 
stallone . 
and like most of his previous roles , his character is a shallow , one-dimensional thug whose modus operandi is to talk tough , hassle a few hapless people , find out what he needs to know , and then dispense his own kind of justice . 
with the charisma of a pit bull , being tough is all that jack carter knows . 
yet , even tough guys know when to put family first . 
as the story begins , we learn that jack's little brother has died in a car accident . 
the police attribute it to heavy drinking . 
however , jack is suspicious , believing that he was 'taken out' . 
he takes a break from his vegas duties and tries to see if he can find the truth . 
as he pokes around , he runs into several lowlife characters . 
they include a shady business partner , a prostitute , a dweebish millionaire molded after bill gates , and an oily owner of a porn website . 
any one of them may know something about his brother's death . 
all of them have the means of carrying out the deed . 
but don't expect an exercise in sleuthing where well-placed clues lead carter to the truth . 
he's all brawn and no brains , so there are no epiphanies during his investigation . 
instead , he uses intimidation to muscle his way forward , cycling through this circle of suspects . 
flustered with his lack of progress , he cycles through them again and again . 
this all gets tiring fairly quickly . 
by the time the film launches into its final act , we're numb from its pedestrian pace . 
oddly , as a tough-guy thriller , it starves us for action . 
admittedly , there is one nifty chase sequence , but this is related to a tangential and needless plot ( carter's vegas ties send thugs to retrieve him ) . 
the story also fails to generate any kind of emotion . 
stallone has the personality of a slab of stone . 
and the look and feel of the film is perpetually downcast . 
the weather is constantly overcast or rainy . 
meanwhile , most shots take place at night , in dimly lit rooms , or in dark alleys . 
it's just impossible to get stirred about that kind of atmosphere . 
as a result , " get carter " amounts to nothing more than a flat thriller , bereft of clever moments and devoid of any excitement . 
you're better off leaving this guy alone .