polsci/sentiment-polarity-dataset-v2.0 huggingface dataset:
sydney lumet is the director whose work happens to be of varied quality . 
he is praised for some of the most important films of the previous decades , like twelve angry men , serpico or the verdict . 
but , in the same time , almost any of such pearls is followed by stinkers that hamper lumet's reputation . 
a stranger among us , 1992 rip-off of peter weir's witness , belongs to the latter category . 
the heroine of this movie is emily eden ( melanie griffith ) , tough lady cop who sometimes shows too much enthusiasm in battling bad guys on the streets of new york . 
during one of such actions , her partner nick ( jamey sheridan ) got hurt and as a result , she becomes depressed . 
in order to help her recover , bosses give her rather easy task of locating missing jeweller who belonged to hassidic jew community . 
emily starts investigation and soon realises that the case involves murder . 
concluding that the perpetrator belongs to community , she decides to go undercover . 
that isn't easy , because her modern manners are colliding with traditionalist ways . 
things get even more complicated when she develops feelings for young cabalistic scholar ariel ( eric thal ) . 
using peter weir's formula isn't the greatest flaw of this film . 
even the lame and unispiring crime mystery subplot works to the certain extent . 
but the worst insult to viewer's audience is terrible miscasting of melanie griffith . 
the author of this review never liked this actress very much , but she was at least tolerable in some of her roles . 
role of emily eden , unfortunately , isn't one of them . 
first of all , she can't pass for tough nypd street fighter , and her attempt to pass for orthodox jewish woman isn't much better . 
screenplay by robert j . avrech makes things even worse with some formulaic red herring subplots ( scene involving two italian gangsters was almost too painful to watch ) . 
but , on the other hand , other actors are more convincing ( lee richardson as an old rabbi , thal as ariel and charming mia sara as his intended bride ) , and the photography by andrzej bartkowiak very effectively creates atmosphere of warmth when the scenes take place in hassidic community . 
also , the film might educate viewers about hassidic culture . 
that is the only thing that prevents it from turning into total waste of time .
my giant is two movies for the price of one , but neither is worth the cost of admission , even if you get in free . 
as lamely directed by michael lehmann , the picture tries to be a comedy by using and reusing every giant joke in the book . 
 ( " without goliath , david is just some punk throwing rocks . " ) 
languidly paced throughout , the movie becomes increasingly lugubrious as the screenplay by david seltzer ( the omen ) meanders toward its sad ending . 
since it's rarely funny or convincingly dramatic , what the filmmakers thought they were doing remains a mystery . 
other than a few nice visuals , there's nothing to recommend the picture . 
with great film comedies under his belt from when harry met sally ? to the original city slickers , billy crystal has shown that he's more than the world's best oscar host . 
he does , however , have a propensity for choosing hopeless material as in last year's father's day and this year's my giant . 
one wonders if he reads the script before agreeing to go ahead with a project . 
surely reading the one for my giant would have shown that there was nothing there . 
perhaps he thought he could ad lib it into success . 
or maybe he wants to be a dramatic actor and thought he could do something serious with the movie's somber tone . 
the most charitable thing that could be said about it is that it is so ineffectual that people will probably forget they saw it by the next day . 
this one-joke movie's single idea is to place real-life basketball player gheorghe muresan , who stands seven and a half feet tall , into as many visually striking situations as possible . 
sammy ( crystal ) , an agent currently without clients , is rescued after a car accident by a sweet romanian giant named max ( muresan ) . 
after throwing out constant one-liners ( " either god is in the salvage business or big foot just took my car . " ) , 
sammy decides to get serious , seeing max as his meal ticket . 
and although he doesn't like it , he's willing to sign max up to do disgusting events like a wrestling match with a half-dozen dwarfs . 
 ( the movie itself knows no bounds as it contains one of the most putrid and lengthy vomiting scenes ever . ) 
after a series of missed opportunities , the comedic part of the movie is over , and it turns into a cheap and maudlin disease movie . 
we learn that max's condition is terminal , and he will soon die . 
to be fair , the movie does contain a few good scenes - all of which you can see in the trailers . 
let's hope billy gets himself a pair of reading glasses before he signs up for another movie . 
my giant runs too long even at just 1 : 37 . 
it is rated pg for violence and profanity and would be acceptable for kids around ten and up . 
my son jeffrey and his friend matthew , both 9 , gave the movie a single star and had nothing good to say about it . 
matthew pointed out that it " is not as good as it could have been or should have been . " 
 ( amen . ) 
he went on to comment that he did not like the way the movie changed completely in the middle . 
jeffrey complained particularly about how gross the movie was .
talk about a movie that seemed dated before it even hit the theaters ! 
spice world is the feature film debut of the pre-fabricated pop band , the spice girls . 
it's intended as a sort of hard day's night , but ends up simply hard to watch . 
when watching the spice girls , i'm reminded of an old saturday morning cartoon trick ( such as from the smurfs , the snorks , or teenage mutant ninja turtles ) in which identically animated creatures are differentiated into characters merely by one personality quirk and a different name . 
the spice girls are themselves as interchangable as pringles , and about as talented . 
there's ginger ( geri halliwell ) , the brainy one , sporty ( melanie chisholm ) , the athletic one , baby ( emma bunton ) , the childish one , posh ( victoria adams ) , the fashion-conscious one , and scary ( melanie brown ) , the one with a tongue pierced back so far you're almost certain the post sticks out her throat . 
the film itself doesn't really have a plot . 
it follows the girls as they travel here and there , culminating at their " first live performance " at albert hall . 
the action , however , seems more like a hodgepodge of mismatched ideas . 
the various misfires include : an alien encounter , a fiendish tabloid editor scheming to wreck the spice girls , the shooting of a spice girls documentary , a movie producer ( george wendt ) trying to pitch various ideas for a spice girls movie ( nearly all of which , though incredibly far fetched , seem more plausible than the mess with which they ended up ) , a meeting with a pregnant friend ( whose sole purpose seems to be to maintain the film maxim that all pregnant characters must give birth before the movie ends ) , a boating adventure , a bus race , club-hopping ( wherein apparently no one notices the famous spice girls among the crowd . . . even 
when they start to sing ) , and an assorted number of musical performances , press conferences , and general all-around celebrity stuff . 
whew . 
for some reason , the film is littered with star cameos . 
from elton john to elvis costello , from bob hoskins to meat loaf . 
heck , even roger moore shows up , though he can't decide if he's parodying himself as james bond , or if he's lobbying to be the reincarnation of ernst stavro blofeld . 
richard e . grant has the largest secondary part , a thankless role of the band's manager , clifford . 
the celebrity spotting is partially amusing , and a decent way to pass the time when confronted with the rest of the film . 
neither amusing or spontaneous , when the spice girls are between songs they are deadly boring . 
their songs are alright , but they play like lifeless adaptations of the music videos . 
my advice to fans is : stay home and watch that video collection , or at least spin that cd a couple of more times . . . either 
option will be more enjoyable than the film . 
non-fans should know to stay well away from this one .
this feature is like a double header , two sets of clich ? s for the price of one . 
not only do we get the usual tired sports chestnuts , but the banal rich girl-poor boy love story is tossed in for good measure . 
an original moment in this loser is as rare as a chicago cubs world series appearance . 
the screenplay by kevin falls and john gatins , based on a story by falls , merely lobs its plotline at the audience . 
this is a story that needed sent down for seasoning and more coaching . 
summer catch centers around ryan dunne ( freddie prinze jr . ) , a cape cod youth chosen to participate in the prestigious cape cod baseball league , supposedly a showcase for the best young amateur and college players in the country . 
ryan is a blue-collar kind of guy . 
he works with his dad taking care of the lawns of cape cod's rich and famous . 
he also , as we are informed early , his own worst enemy . 
he has the potential and the talent , but always seems to self-destruct at the crucial moment . 
so , ryan tries to remained focused on baseball . 
then he meets tenley parrish ( jessica biel ) , daughter of one of the blue bloods whose lawn he manicures . 
tenley , a name only a hack screenwriter could invent , is unlike her snobbish counterparts and falls for ryan . 
if you can't figure out where all this nonsense leads , then you need a remedial course in film viewing . 
as always prinze is pretty to look at , but his performance mainly consists of facial expressions : puppy dog love , heartbreak , frustration , self-loathing or determination . 
biel cries a lot , while bruce davison merely acts smarmy as her class-conscious father . 
the only beacon is matthew lillard's fun-loving billy brubaker , the team's catcher . 
summer catch borrows situations and stylings from other baseball movies , such as bull durham and the natural . 
no curve balls here , no sliders . 
every pitch is predictable . 
a blind umpire could call this movie . 
summer catch is strictly rookie league moviemaking . 
it has as much chance of making the movie hall of fame as the dodgers have of moving back to brooklyn .
funny how your expectations can be defeated , and not in good ways . 
the ghost and the darkness promised ( at least , it seemed to me to promise ) a hemingwayesque showdown between men and nature . 
what it delivered was mystery science theater 3000-level material -- an inadvertently hilarious story that made me scream advice at the characters . 
 " get new jobs ! " 
was one line , if i remember correctly . 
at the end of the 19th century , col . patterson ( val kilmer , whose irish accent comes and goes like an african zephyr ) is an engineer who has been hired to build a british railway bridge across the tsavo river in uganda . 
he is having immensely stereotypical problems : the natives are restless , his boss is a jerk , and now two man-eating lions are stalking the work camp and killing people off . 
patterson tries to handle the situation himself , incompetently , and then turns to charles remington ( michael douglas ) , a hunter of world reknown ( or something like that ) . 
the movie stacks the deck so heavily in favor of the lions , they should have gotten top billing and co-starred with siegfried and roy . 
they are nigh-invulnerable , as one comic book put it , and this is of course just the excuse the movie needs to have one native after another stepping forth to solmenly recite lines about the power of nature . 
give me a break . 
the movie hasn't got the wherewithal to even begin to exploit such ideas ; it's just trying to find convenient ways to stall us . 
even the lion hunts themselves are idiotic . 
get this : remington's big plan is to build a large scaffold-like structure in the middle of the savannah , sit on it , and wait for the lion to show up . 
he does this , and then gets knocked off by a bird . 
by the end of the movie , the blood vessels in my palm were all broken open from me pounding my forehead with my hand . 
the acting is forgettable . 
douglas does a good job of portraying a relatively cracked fellow , but it's nothing he hasn't done before . 
kilmer looks like he wishes he were someone else , somewhere else , and the rest vanish into the cinematography . 
the camera , by the way , sometimes behaves so stupidly all by itself that most of the lion attacks are incoherent . 
what did i expect from this movie ? 
i dunno . 
some real excitement , i suppose . 
a sense that there were formidable forces on both sides of this equation . 
no such luck . 
i dug out my tattered copy of hemingway's " the short happy life of francis macomber " and read that to get the taste of this movie out of my mind .
unfortunately it doesn't get much more formulaic than one tough cop . 
there's the renegade cop with the loser partner who has to many problems to explain . 
the renegade has to prove his good name and is trapped between the good guys , the bad guys and some woman who really has nothing to do with the story other than being there for the purpose of providing sex for the hero in the middle of the film . 
bo dietl ( pronounced deedle , baldwin ) is one tough cop , a guy who is being investigated by hardass fbi agents due to his association with the ny mafia . 
on top of that problem , he has a drunk , gambling addicted partner ( penn ) who has a penchant for collecting parking tickets ( i guess cops aren't immune ? ) . 
then , throw into the mix the femme fatale ( gershon ) . 
right there you have plenty of ammo for a decent cop drama . 
but right in the middle of the film , they throw in a completely un-related plot point . 
dietl and his partner duke try to solve a case that they have been warned to stay away from . 
the film spends over half an hour tracking the case of a nun who was beaten and raped to near death . 
once the case is solved , the film shifts focus back to the mafia issue . 
whatever neat mesh the screenwriter wanted to create between the two stories failed miserably . 
aside from being asked to accept michael mcglone as a mafioso ( an insult if you ask me ) the performances were pretty good . 
baldwin , though he occasionally slips into an impression of his brother alec , does a fine job as one tough cop . 
penn , who also slips into an impression of his brother sean , is even better as a loser tough guy cop . 
what one tough cop lacks is originality . 
this film offers nothing new . 
nothing that you can't get from any cop film . 
it screams sidney lumet all over the place , perhaps because it was produced by marty and michael bregman , producers of lumet's dog day afternoon and serpico . 
but even the masterful sidney would not have been able to make one tough cop into a good film . 
too much else is lacking . 
i also saw the boom mic pop into the top of the frame twice early on in the picture , something that i almost never notice . 
but once i saw that , i had it in the back of my mind every time i saw a medium or long shot . 
at times , i was hoping to see it . 
one tough cop isn't laughable , nor is it a terrible film , but it just isn't unique . 
it is a classic example of a film that didn't need to be made . 
but one thing is for sure , it could really use a better title .
supposedly based on a true story in which the british drive to build a rail bridge deep in africa grinds to a halt after a pair of lions start killing off the workers in 1898 . 
john patterson ( val kilmer ) , the bridge building expert set to oversee the operation , tried to rid his operation of the lions , but fails . 
a world renound hunter , remington ( michael douglas ) , is called in and the battle , man against lion , begins . 
this film has a great soundtrack , and wonderful scenery . 
the acting is not too bad except the characters are all so thin . 
we only see one side of each character . 
kilmer is a bridge builder and that's all we see him as . 
these lions kill dozens of his men and he doesn't even appear to be too upset about it . 
and the plot ? 
it's jaws , but with lions . 
again we're presented with an animal that behaves not at all as it should . 
it appears to kill men because it just likes too . 
why ? 
who knows . 
i guess there wouldn't be much of a story if it didn't . 
the problem is that there isn't much of a story even though it does .
of course i knew this going in . 
why is it that whenever a tv-star makes a movie it's always a romantic comedy , and then they say on entertainment tonight or something , that they were " attracted to the characters . 
they were really original . " 
original ? ! let me give you a run-through of picture perfect : character a ) kate ( jennifer aniston , from tv's friends ) , a smart , beautiful , professional woman wants two things she can't have : a new job-title and the love of her co-worker kevin bacon . 
her boss will only give her the job if she gets married and gets a mortgage and gets a lease on a german sportscar , and kevin bacon pnly sleeps with married or involved girls . 
what does she do ? 
she invents a fiance ! 
then when everyone wants to meet him , she tells some poor schmoe she met at a wedding that she will pay him $1000 to pretend to be in love with her for a company dinner , and pick a fight with her at the end , thus breaking the engagement but still being able to keep her job , since the guy ends up looking like a jerk and she is the poor , defenceless female . 
he , of course , goes along with it . 
gee , i wonder if they get together in the end . 
i've seen more original stuff on the wb . 
and better stuff too . 
picture perfect also makes the mistake of being _wayyyyy_ too long at 100 minutes , and expecting us to like aniston's character , who comes off as a cold , spoiled bitch .
louie is a trumpeter swan with no voice . 
in order to woo his lady love serina , louie makes friends with a young boy , sammy , who persuades teacher mrs . hammerbottom ( carol burnett ) to allow louie to attend class . 
louie learns to read and write and returns to his flock , but is laughed at once again when no other swans can understand his message of love for serina . 
to make matters worse , louie's father feels he's lost his honor because of the trumpet he stole for his son in this animated version of e . b . 
white's " trumpet of the swan . " 
as jane austen and henry james have become popular sources for adult filmmakers over the past decade or so , e . b . 
white is being returned to for children's films . 
the animated " charlotte's web " has become a minor classic since its release in 1973 and 1999 brought us a live action version of " stuart little . " 
 " trumpet of the swan , " directed by richard rich ( 1999's animated " the king and i , " the " swan princess " series ) , is unlikely to be remembered along with those two . 
 " trumpet of the swan " is receiving a regional theatrical release , but is sure to quickly appear on home video . 
boston is one of the targetted cities because our hero louie becomes famous playing his trumpet in beantown . 
he encounters a gypsy-like con man in the public gardens who pitches louie and his trumpet as an added attraction to boston's swan boats . 
louie stays at the ritz carlton before giving a concert at the hatch shell along the banks of the charles river . 
at this point , louie's earned enough money so that dad can pay for the trumpet and become musically capable enough to win over serina's father . 
 " trumpet of the swan " features flat background art , some poor sound syncing and insipid , sugary songs . 
this effort would be better suited to saturday morning television than the big screen , but may be ok for the real small set .
one of the most respected names in american independent filmmaking is john sayles . 
he has built a strong reputation with films like matewan and the secret of roan inish , and one of his best was his last film , lone star . 
after sayles gave us this complex and unconventional look at ethnic tensions on the us-mexico border , expectation ran high for his next film . 
unfortunately , his men with guns is not the film anyone was hoping for . 
we are essentially told in the first reel where the film is going to go and what it is going to do . 
then the film does exactly what it promised , a painful as that is . 
the plot of men with guns can be summarized " in a central or south american country things are really bad for everybody in the mountains where the army clashes with the guerrillas . 
dr . fuentes did not believe how bad things were so he went . 
and he found out again and again and again . " 
of course it is perfectly true that in many places in that region armed conflicts have turned life into a living hell . 
a guerrilla war is always bad for civilians . 
but the film talks down to the viewer . 
dr . fuentes ( played by federico luppi ) teaches medicine in the capital city of his country . 
he has , as a great humanitarian gesture , trained and inspired some of his best students to go into the mountains and make the world a little better for the poor indios . 
fuentes believe the students to be up there doing humanitarian service . 
then he discovers one of his best students has instead returned to the city and runs a squalid private pharmacy . 
in shame and disappointment fuentes asks the student what has happened to the others . 
the student tells him the others are still in the mountains , but suggests that it may not be a good place to be . 
fuentes goes off to find and visit the doctors , ignoring the advice of his family and a patient who happens to be an army general . 
the results are little different than one would expect . 
dr . fuentes starts out incredibly naive . 
even some american tourists , present in the film mostly for comic relief , seem to know better than dr . fuentes that things have gotten pretty bad in the mountains . 
but fuentes has to go from one scene of barbarity to another and discover how wrong he was . 
sayles certainly could have used 126 minute of screen time to tell us something more profound than that nasty things are happening down there and most of the worst happens to the unarmed civilians . 
the cast is mostly unknowns to american audiences . 
federico luppi is the good mexican actor who played the antique dealer torn by mysterious forces in cronos . 
damian delgado makes a late appearance as an army deserter . 
mandy patinkin has a small role made to look bigger in the trailer .
note to screenwriters and self : when you hit the big time , and the studios come knocking for those scripts that are sitting in your bottom drawer , tell ? em all to hit the road . 
gilligan wrote the arbitrarily-titled home fries ten years ago ; it was shelved until he found success as one of " the took a second look at gilligan's " comedy " - they read it again wearing rose-tinted glasses . 
drew stars as sally , a dim ( but sweet ) , pregnant waitress at a small town burger joint located somewhere in the southern united states . 
the father of her child is dead , the victim of a severe heart attack brought on by sadistic torture from his two stepsons - these flyboys scared him with their low-flying helicopter . 
dorian ( wilson ) and angus ( busey ) were getting even for his philandering ways on behalf of their anguished mother ( o'hara ) . 
trouble is , sally picked up some interference on her drive-thru headset , and angus worries she may have heard conversations that took place in the helicopter prior to the accidental killing . 
so dorian goes undercover as a burger-flipper ; before you can say " with cheese " he falls for the mother-to-be . 
too bad mom and angus have homicidal plans for sally . 
does this sound like a movie you want to see ? 
without a doubt , the best thing about home fries is barrymore ; at the risk of sounding sexist , she's never looked better than here , as a curly redhead with twinkling eyes . 
she is winning in a role that requires her to do absolutely nothing except look apple-cheek cute and gawk at wilson , her real-life boyfriend . 
but the plot and the situations are so off-putting that nothing could save it . 
this movie desperately wants to get mentioned in the same breath as the coen brothers , but home fries' brand of laboured hipness would be foreign to geniuses like ethan and joel . 
it's raising arizona without babies , without charm , without laughs , without human characters , and without intelligence ; worst of all , it's creepy . 
what's funny about threatening to gun down a pregnant woman with a machine gun ? 
 ( unless the woman in question is a spice girl . ) 
take out the helicopters , the quasi-incestuous relationship between the mother and her sons ( it is absolutely illogical , within the movie's framework , that dorian still lives with his mother and brother ) , and the scenes of murder ( attempted and otherwise ) , and what are you left with ? 
the story of a single woman with child who works at a fast food joint ( but dreams of becoming a country singer ) . 
that could turn out to be the most boring movie ever made , but it'd be better than home fries .
for better or worse , the appearance of basic instinct in the movie marketplace gave the greenlight to a whole slew of overheated , oversexed , underwritten thrillers . 
apparently not having joe eszterhas as the writer doesn't change a thing , since body of evidence wasn't written by him , but has a puzzling eszterhas-ish presence all over it . 
in other words , it's a ) really dirty and b ) really , really stupid . 
madonna ( first warning sign ) stars in body of evidence as a woman who has piles of money and no apparent job ; she lives on a houseboat and likes to parade around semi-naked , presumably for the edification of the shrimp . 
she's been accused of having murdered an older man who was her lover . 
already two classic examples of hollywood sexism are in effect -- the first being that any woman in a movie cannot be sexual unless she's under thirty ( or at least looks it ) , and that they usually only exist for the sake of studs or filthy rich older men . 
what's worse is that the movie confirms all the above , and wallows in them as well . 
madonna's character is accused of forcing sex on the old goat when she knew darned well he had a heart condition . 
 ( and yes , there are the obligatory cracks from the cops about how at least he died happy . 
this movie leave no scummy stone unturned . ) 
anyway . willem dafoe ( very good but completely wasted ) also stars as the lawyer who is doomed to run afoul of madonna's sexuality . 
how do we know this ? 
because his character is set up with the token wife and kids . 
how obvious is it that he's gonna cheat on her and have to fess everything up ? 
and get kicked out of the house ? 
and get welcomed back anyway ? 
don't skip to the end yet ; we're just getting warmed up . 
dafoe and madonna have a lot of sex in this movie . 
most of it is about as erotic as open-heart surgery , since it involves such goodies as hot candlewax ( always the kink of choice among screenwriters who don't know the first thing about * really * kinky sex ) and smashed light bulbs . 
don't ask . 
another thing that people are starting to realize about explicit sex in movies is that unless it is critically important to the story , it's insanely dull . 
what's worse is that body of evidence is dull * everywhere * , not just in the sex scenes . 
the stuff in the courtroom is recycled ninth-hand from other bad courtroom drama scenes . 
the thriller business itself is ridiculous -- it involves nasal spray bottles and drugs , and juergen prochnow as a surly doctor . 
and the ending -- another homage to eszterhas , maybe ? 
-- is one of those endings where you can almost see the exact * frame * where one of the five or six various endings to this mess was spliced in . 
the director is uli edel , all the more disappointing since he also directed the elegiac and powerful last exit to brooklyn and christiane f . everyone has to eat , i guess , but this isn't a meal ticket , it's leftovers .
it was with great anticipation that i sat down to view braveheart last week as it premiered on american cable . 
the academy award winning film had been highly acclaimed . 
it also featured the music of one of my favorite film composers , james horner . 
what i was in for was a disappointing and overlong film which was anything but the best picture of 1995 . 
what drags braveheart down is its screenplay . 
it abounds with high production values : john toll's award-winning cinematography ( which also graced edward zwick's 1994 legends of the fall ) , a gorgeous score by horner , and the sort of logistics that make you wish assistant directors were household names . 
but this does not save a misguided script . 
the film wishes to paint its central character as a hero , but the viewer's only response to his " heroism " is intellectual : william wallace ( producer-director mel gibson ) is fighting for freedom and against tyranny , so we have to root for him . 
but wallace's actions paint a different story . 
he speaks of freedom and acts of vengeance . 
though one intellectually realizes wallace is on the right side , the film paints an unconvincing emotional portait , in which wallace is just not as bad as the english king . 
wallace speaks of freedom , but his acts point toward vengeance . 
after kicking the english out of scotland , he decides to invade england . 
this is evident of a " spartacus complex " , and this example applies both historically and cinematically . 
the historical spartacus at one point moved from liberating slaves to sacking roman cities ; the film spartacus , like braveheart , has high production values and competent performaces and is dragged down by an awful screenplay . 
it is a shame that such an excellent score is part of such a terrible film . 
horner's score tries to make emotional connection , but the performances and the script do not help . 
gibson portrays wallace in such a way that the audience cannot relate to him or identify with him . 
this drags down any emotional connection to the film's plot , and turns three hours into a total waste of time .
susan granger's review of " the watcher " ( universal ) 
just what we need : another lurid , trashy serial killer saga . 
this time , keanu reeves plays an elusive homicidal maniac who engages in a gruesome ticking-clock cat-and-mouse game with james spader , a burnt-out fbi agent who has suffered a traumatic nervous breakdown after too many years on the job with the lapd . 
to taunt spader , who has relocated to chicago , reeves packs up his trusty piano wire and moves too . 
before long , he starts mailing photographs of the lonely , unsuspecting young women who are his intended windy city victims , challenging spader , along with the chicago police department , to stop him within 24 hours before he strikes again . 
in the midst of this murderous frenzy , there's spader's psychologist , played by marisa tomei , who is even less convincing as a medical professional than jennifer lopez in " the cell . " 
writers david elliot , clay ayers and darcy meyers , along with first-time director joe charbanic ( helmer of music videos for reeves' band dogstar ) , dwell on the warped thrill of the methodology and the chase , revealing , early on , exactly whodunit since the killer says he and the cop " need each other to give meaning to our lives . " 
plus , as reeves explains , " we're all stacked right on top of each other , but we don't notice each other any more . " 
after that , it's all sound effects and tricky camera-work , along with a muddled , discordant soundtrack . 
james spader's acting technique can be described as 'wooden deadpan' while keanu reeves maintains his perpetually monotone 'dude' persona which sometimes works , sometimes doesn't . 
chris ellis , as spader's self-important colleague , is the only cast member who manages to be convincing . 
on the granger movie gauge of 1 to 10 , " the watcher " is an appallingly awful , amateurish 2 . the real torture is watching it .
before the remake of psycho appears , we've got to suffer through this remake of an earlier hitchcock film , dial m for murder . 
as usual , hollywood has filled it with glitz and big name stars , and it all amounts to a loud sounding nothing . 
the film opens with emily ( paltrow ) and david ( viggo mortensen ) 'having fun' in an loft apartment . 
the problem is , paltrow is married to stephen ( douglas ) , who is not too happy when he discovers this affair . 
if i was paltrow , though , i'd definitely go with mortensen . 
less wrinkles . 
anyhow , stephen approaches david with an interesting proposition : he'll pay him to kill his lovely wife . 
mortensen agrees , but the murder goes awry , and the twists keep on coming as the film progresses . 
unfortunately , the film dosen't progress very fast . 
in fact , it moves like a tortoise with arthritis ( read : very , very s-l-o-w . ) 
the plot moves nowhere fast , and only becomes exciting in very short bursts . 
not too good for a 'thriller . ' 
also , the performances , apart from douglas , are below par . 
paltrow , showing immense talent in se7en ( 1995 ) and sliding doors ( 1997 ) is strangely stilted , even unconvincing , in this movie . 
mortensen is a little bit better , coming across as a younger douglas , but his role isn't meaty enough to show all his talent . 
which leaves douglas to waltz away with the film , which is does . 
however , i doubt douglas finds it very hard to play a stogie smoking , drinking womanizer with a creepy underside . 
also popping up in the film is david suchet , playing a shifty looking detective . 
again , it's not a character we're seeing on the screen , it's david suchet . 
the director , who bought us the fugitive , piles on all the flash techniques , such as zoom-in's , quick cuts , etc . the lighting is also interesting . 
however , looks can't save this film from the depths of mediocre , and the film seemed to work better in a single set anyway . 
the screenplay is o . k , but there's some hackneyed sub-plot about douglas being a ruthless player on wall street ( again ) and the ending is surprisingly stupid and cliched . 
the characters also make incredibly dumb moves , especially paltrow , and stephen appears to lose all intelligence in the last reel . 
with a combination of no tension , drama , or decent characters , a perfect murder is a failure all round , and an incredible disappointment . 
there are a few bright moments , but they are far and few between . 
the last thing a thriller should be is boring , and although the film just barely manages to keep your interest thanks to michael douglas , you wouldn't be missing anything if you decided not to watch a perfect murder . 
overall rating= 
review by david wilcock ? 1998 
 " you know , for kids " - norville barnes
coinciding with the emerging popularity of movies that deal with anything related to serial killers , relentless , 1989 low budget thriller about lapd detective sam dietz , played by character actor leo rossi , spawned three more sequels . 
relentless 3 , third in the row , features sam dietz again , but this time detective , who had to catch vicious serial killer in his very first case , doesn't want to deal with similar line of work . 
divorced , demoralised and transferred , he reluctantly returns to his old post when los angeles becomes a hunting ground for another serial killer , and evidence indicate connection with one of dietz's old cases . 
to make things even more interesting , it seems that the killer deliberately stages murders in order to bring dietz to the investigation . 
fans of the british tv films and mini-series like prime suspect or cracker would probably see a lot of similarities relentless series of movies . 
they both feature vicious psychopathic killers , yet also give a lot of , usually depressive , details about chief investigator's private lives . 
this one isn't an exception , but similarities with british television are only in content . 
the execution and style is different , which makes this film mediocre piece of entertainment at best . 
useless , gratuitous erotica also doesn't help either , obviously making this film longer than it should be . 
the actors are good , though - leo rossi is fine as usual , and william forsythe plays one of more compelling villains in his career . 
signy coleman as dietz's love interest , is , on the other hand , quite miscast . 
but she won't have to worry about it in the future career , since relentless 3 wasn't supposed to be anybody's finest moment anyway .
edward burns tackles his third picture with no looking back , and like his previous two , it is a working-class relationship picture . 
however , unlike his previous work , the film dwells on a more personal story , and with a female protagonist . 
and in no looking back , he stumbles , making a slow , boring film without the spark that enlivened his previous work . 
claudia ( lauren holly ) is a small town waitress who is feeling stifled by her life . 
she's at a turning point in her life , and feels as if she's going nowhere . 
her boyfriend , michael ( jon bon jovi ) , is broke and in a dead end job . 
if she were to marry him , she'd never get a chance to escape this town . 
enter charlie ( edward burns ) , claudia's old flame . 
he skipped town several years before , without any explanations . . . even 
for claudia . 
he has come back to town to see her , and suddenly she is torn . 
should she stay with stable michael , and never escape her hometown . . . or 
should she ignore her instincts and fall for charlie again . 
part of the answer lies in the character of her mother ( blythe danner ) , who fell for the wrong man . . . and has spent her life pining for claudia's father to return . 
now it seems that claudia is about to make the same mistakes . 
at only a little past ninety minutes , no looking back is rather short for its genre . 
unfortunately , it seems much much longer . 
the storyline is simple and uninspired , and there's a lack of energy to the whole proceedings , which makes the entire drama rather tedious . 
edward burns makes a misstep by casting himself in the crucial role as the egomaniacal old flame . 
there's no one to restrain his ego , which reigns unchecked . 
he walks into the room and lauren holly swoons . . . yeah , 
right . 
lauren holly does what she can with her central character . 
but we never understand why her character makes such pathetically bad decisions . . . and 
we never really care . 
bon jovi is the only sympathetic character in the whole movie . 
his acting talents are much greater than they might seem , but he is given a mostly bland and ineffective role to work with . 
there's not much to recommend in no looking back . 
it's not that the film is bad . . . it's 
simply boring . 
there's no zest in any aspect of the film , and no reason to spend ninety minutes watching it .
brian de palma , the director who bought us carrie , dressed to kill and mission : impossible is back , and has bought all his technical expertise with him . 
sadly , he forget to bring a good story and believable characters . 
nic cage plays rick santaro , a fast talking cop who is watching a boxing match with his friend commander kevin dunne ( sinise . ) 
an assassination takes place , and santaro tries to peace together how it took place , trying to work out the roles of the people involved in this conspiracy . 
the film uses flashbacks and video cameras to bring the mystery together . 
however , the film doesn't keep the mystery for long , and once the big 'secret' is out concerning kevin dunne , the film is at a dead end . 
although there are some fantastic shots by de palma , including a 15 minute steadicam shot at the start of the film , halfway through the film drops dead . 
the problem is that de palma doesn't have a strong story or characters to work with . 
he tries to offshoot this with flashy camera techniques , but pretty soon this has no effect on the audience , and i quickly got bored . 
nic cage and gary sinise try to inject some life into some poorly realised characters , but it's no use . 
they are boring , faceless , and completely unlikeable . 
yes , another problem with the film is that there's no-one to root for . 
we're supposed to be on cage's side , because his character becomes nicer throughout the film . 
however , his change is sadly unbelievable . 
poor gary sinise's character is terrible , who completely changes throughout the start , the middle and the end , in an appalling way . 
the film's use of flashback quickly gets boring . 
while clever and interesting the first few times , it quickly becomes apparent that flashbacks are being used because the film has nowhere to go . 
they certainly don't increase the tension or suspense of the movie . 
there is small thread of suspense running through the film , but it certainly doesn't make this film a powerhouse thriller , rather just a slightly below average one . 
the script is lousy and contrived , the characters flat and two dimensional . 
certainly not good factors for a film passing itself off for a thriller . 
the most depressing aspect of the film is that it had potential . 
there's a good story buried in snake eyes , it's just bogged down in razzle dazzle and flashbacks . 
it also gives itself away far too quickly , rather than leaving the big twist for the end . 
while the performances are intriguing , especially by newcomer carla gugino as a sexy 'number cruncher' wrapped up in the case , there's no way of altering the fact that snake eyes is a terminal case of style of substance , and unless you're a big fan of either cage or flash directing , should be avoided . 
a david wilcock review ? 1998 
 " you know , for kids " - norville barnes
it's now the anniversary of the slayings of julie james' ( jennifer love hewitt ) best friends . 
still besieged by nightmarish memories of the man responsible for it all , she seems to be on the verge of a nervous breakdown . 
she can't concentrate on her schoolwork , can't get a good night's sleep , and is even frightened by the shadows and the blinking strobe lights at a local dance club . 
everywhere she looks , she sees visions of the man in a rubber slicker with the hook on his hand . 
in the first movie , `i know what you did last summer' , julie and three of her friends accidentally kill a man , running him down while driving down a dark mountain highway . 
to cover their misdeed , they dump the body into the ocean . 
however , he never quite died and returned to hunt down julie and her friends . 
julie and one other , ray ( freddie prinze jr . ) , survived only to make this dismal sequal . 
needing some desparate rest and relaxation , she is elated to learn that her college roommate , karla ( brandy ) , has won a trip for four to a secluded tropical island . 
accompanying these two girls are karla's overbearing boyfriend , tyrell ( mehki phifer ) and a potential beau for julie . 
but was this contest too good to be true ? 
the resort is filled with a skeleton staff that seemed like love boat rejects . 
meanwhile , the hotel is practically deserted as the storm season is about to begin . 
this presumably creates a venue where they will be secluded and will have no possible means off the island . 
eventually , they will be hunted down during power outages and chased around during intense lightning storms . 
as you might have guessed , somewhere in the shadows lurk a mysteriously strange figure that is wearing a rubber slicker and wielding a hook . 
julie tries to convince her friends that the killer is on the island ( an eerie touch is when she is singing " i will survive " at the karaoke bar and the words scroll " i still know . . . " ) , but her friends chalk it up to paranoia . 
but the body count soon starts to rise , and for julie , it's going to be the worst vacation of her life . 
the funny ( yes , i used the word 'funny' ) thing about this movie is that i heard more chortling and giggling ( maybe it was my giggling ) than i heard screaming . 
this movie boils down to a mindless slashfest that never conjures up any amount of wry wit or even a quirky campiness . 
there isn't even any suspense that leads up to the deaths . 
here's an appropriate example . 
knock-knock . 
 " housekeeping " , says the diminuitive cleaning lady . 
the door suddenly opens up . 
slash . 
next victim ! 
is there any reason to go and see this movie ? 
not unless you want to see four uninteresting college kids run around in circles for about 90 minutes . 
but i do want to say one thing about this movie that satisfied me . 
i was thoroughly irritated with tyrell , who incessantly ranted and raved about his sexual libido . 
i secretly wished for him to get filleted . 
did he get 'hooked' ? 
well , let's just say that if he didn't , i would give this film a grade of " d " .
the first film produced by adam sandler's happy madison production company ( clever title eh ? ) is essentially a one joke movie , much like the movies sandler stars in himself . 
however the difference here is that this one joke just isn't very funny . 
rob schneider stars as the title character , a scruffy fish tank cleaner who ends up becoming a " man-whore " to raise enough money to replace a wealthy client's custom made fish tank , which deuce destroyed while staying in his home . 
deuce goes on numerous " dates " , and each woman he goes out with has a " humorous " quirk about herself . 
one has narcolepsy , one has tourette's syndrome , one is a man . . . 
etc . etc . 
my problem is that we see all of these women in the film's trailer , so why do i need to watch the movie ? 
seen the trailer . . . 
seen the film . 
only a quick cameo from norm macdonald ( and a follow up joke during the closing credits ) generates any chuckles . 
deuce bigalow : male gigolo is available on dvd from touchstone home video ( a division of di$ney ) . 
the disc includes the film in its original theatrical aspect ratio of 1 . 85 : 1 , and features the original theatrical trailer ( as well as trailers for mystery alaska , happy texas , and outside providence ) , an extremely brief production featurette ( which contains footage not used in the film ) , and storyboard-to-scene comparisons . 
yep , you read that right . . . 
there are storyboard comparisons on this dvd . 
two scenes are storyboarded . . . 
neither of which are particularly exciting . 
there are fight scenes in this movie , so why aren't we seeing storyboards of those segments ( especially the parody moments from the matrix ) ? 
i wonder what's funnier : the fact that any moment in this film required storyboards or that di$ney thought fans of this film would want to see them ? 
deleted scenes ? 
sure . 
audio commentary ? 
you betcha . 
but storyboards ? 
come on . 
[r]