Problem: Write a positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: Ok, so it borrows a little from "It's a Wonderful Life", but that was 44 years prior to this film, so why not a new attempt. Belushi is having a rotten 35th birthday. He didn't get his Wheaties, his coffee, and has lost his job. The capper is when his self described "big blue piece of sh**" car breaks down at the end of the day. He heads into an empty bar to call for a tow. While waiting, he's recognized by the bartender (Caine) as the kid who lost the town's championship baseball game 20 years earlier. This gets him to thinking how life would've been if he had won the game. He finds out when, unbeknownst to him, Caine serves up a motion potion in a glass that gives him a mansion, the prom queen (Russo) as his wife, and makes him president of the sporting goods company he's been canned from. Caine later reveals himself as the one who's responsible for this change, but Belushi is not entirely on board. He never fully adjusts, and in a plot development that doesn't kill the movie but is still odd, he tries to court his wife (Hamilton) from his real life, who is now married to someone else. The good move is that they don't spend too much time on it, as basically they rip of "Ghost", with Belushi constantly telling Hamilton things only she could know. It also brings in a hokey dramatic element, as two of his lovers kevetch in the shadows, new wife Russo, and his unbalanced lover Cox. But the keys to the film are the somewhat lengthy beginning, and cheery end. Also good work from the big and recognizable cast, as Belushi is very likable, VERY attractive ladies chosen, and Caine is perfectly easy going as the title guy. Strange that this was Belushi's second film of 1990 dealing with him getting an alternative lifestyle of riches, which was found in "Taking Care of Business". Though similar, both films are on the same level of laughs provided. So check this out for a fun exploration of "what if?"

Problem: Write a negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: They're showing this on some off-network. It's well crap. While it is not as bad as the B-movies they show on the Sci-fi network on Saturdays but still a fairly large pile of crap. The acting is passable. The plot and writing are fairly sub-standard and the pacing is entirely too slow. Every minute of the movie feels like the part of the movie where they're wrapping things up before the credits - not the peak of the movie, the denouement. Also, large portions of the cast look way to old for the age range they're playing. The whole thing is predictable, boring and not worthy of being watched. Save your time. It's not even worth the time it takes to watch it for free.

Problem: Write a negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: I saw one of the stage performances in Denver and have never been less impressed. The word "vagina" says it all. A body part. Nothing shocking here. I could say to my doctor, "My left arm has been hurting a bit after tennis" or "My vagina hurts after cycling" with equal or more social commentary. It could be the "Tricep Monologues" for all the entertainment or radical comment I heard. The monologues were dull but delivered with drama, the topics were outdated, and I was alternately bored and annoyed. Once I think I laughed but apparently it wasn't when I was supposed to. Surely this isn't really a hit. Oh, and spoilers: there was a LESBIAN! - oh, wait, maybe not, come to think of it. And Inappropriate Fondling! And a Crack Mama! That about covers it.

Problem: Write a positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer:
This is a documentary that came out of the splendid work of a Canadian landscape photographer whose interest has long been in the ravages left on earth by the excavations or buildings of man. It begins with a vast factory complex crammed with people making a great variety of little things, parts of high-tech equipment presumably; it isn't really made very clear. The emphasis is on how big the place is and how many people are there and how they're herded around outside in little yellow jackets. The film also shows the photographer working on a tall structure to do a still of the array of these people outside the factory, and talking with his crew as he does so. This is a world of relentless industrialization. It's a relief at least to know these soulless images aren't going to be presented without a human voice, as is the case in Nikolaus Geyrhalter's gleefully cold documentary about the food industry, 'Our Daily Bread.' 'Manufactured Landscapes' contains images of people scavenging e-waste and a town (many towns, really) being wiped out by the biggest dam ever, with a single plangent trademark shot of a little girl in the rubble of her own neighborhood eating out of a bowl using a pair of chopsticks almost bigger than she is. Some of these scenes, the ones with miserably underpaid workers slaving in dangerous and toxic places, might have been shot memorably by the premier engage photographer Sebastiao Salgado. But this photographer isn't as interested in seeing people up close. His orientation places him somewhere in between Salgado and the cold, neutral modern landscape photographs of Lewis Baltz.

All this happens in China, of course, though there is earlier footage in black and white of the photographer working around a large shipbuilding site in Bangladesh. It is backed up by music in a New Age industrial style that is alternately soothing and oppressive. There are a good many stills of the photographer's work--or were some of them made by the film crew? It isn't made clear.

Edward Burtynsky is the name of the photographer. We see people wandering through exhibitions of his beautiful work-- big dramatic prints of carefully composed view camera color images with a handsome glow. The irony is that Burtynsky makes such unique and glorious pictures of places that are essentially blighted, and to the ordinary eye are dispiriting and boring. He admits himself that he takes no political stand. When we are able to compare his images with those caught by the roaming eye of the film's cinematographer Peter Mettler, Burtynsky's work almost amounts to a kind of glorification, and hence falsification. But he is showing us places that, if we look closely, reveal their full dark story of ravage and neglect no matter how finely crafted the photographs of them may be.

Logically, but not entirely fortunately, it is Burtynsky whose voice-overs narrate most of the film as it ranges over various sites. Burtynsky's "epiphanies" may have inspired his decades of fine work, but they amount to nothing but truisms about how we're changing the planet irreparably; are dependent on oil, which will run out; that China has come into the game of massive industrialization late, and so may burn out early with the depletion of fossil fuel. The interest of 'Manufactured Landscapes' would be much greater if there were perceptive new ideas to accompany it. The reasons for watching it are two: to see glimpses of Burtynsky's work and the raw materials, the spaces he visits and chronicles so beautifully; and to observe scenes from the vast, awesome, daunting, and rather horrifying industrialization of modern China.

Because of the limitations of the narration, the idea of the title 'Manufactured Landscapes' feels insufficiently developed. It even seems a misnomer. New landscapes they are, but they are the byproduct of manufacturing rather than "manufactured." 'Landscapes of Waste' or 'Wasted Landscapes' might be better titles. There is much room left by this documentary for more intellectually searching work on film about this intriguing subject; and those who want to know more about Edward Burtynsky might do better to peruse his books or exhibitions.