Teacher: In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
Teacher: Now, understand the problem? If you are still confused, see the following example:
plot : two teen couples go to a church party , drink and then drive .
they get into an accident .
one of the guys dies , but his girlfriend continues to see him in her life , and has nightmares .
what 's the deal ?
watch the movie and " sorta " find out . . .
critique : a mind - fuck movie for the teen generation that touches on a very cool idea , but presents it in a very bad package .
which is what makes this review an even harder one to write , since i generally applaud films which attempt to break the mold , mess with your head and such ( lost highway & memento ) , but there are good and bad ways of making all types of films , and these folks just did n't snag this one correctly
.
they seem to have taken this pretty neat concept , but executed it terribly .
so what are the problems with the movie ?
well , its main problem is that it 's simply too jumbled
.
it starts off " normal " but then downshifts into this " fantasy " world in which you , as an audience member ,
have no idea what 's going on
.
there are dreams , there are characters coming back from the dead , there are others who look like the dead , there are strange apparitions , there are disappearances , there are a looooot of chase scenes , there are tons of weird things that happen , and most of it is simply not explained .
now i personally do n't mind trying to unravel a film every now and then , but when all it does is give me the same clue over and over again , i get kind of fed up after a while , which is this film 's biggest problem .
it 's obviously got this big secret to hide , but it seems to want to hide it completely until its final five minutes .
and do they make things entertaining , thrilling or even engaging , in the meantime ?
not really .
the sad part is that the arrow and i both dig on flicks like this , so we actually figured most of it out by the half - way point , so all of the strangeness after that did start to make a little bit of sense , but it still did n't the make the film all that more entertaining .
i guess the bottom line with movies like this is that you should always make sure that the audience is " into it " even before they are given the secret password to enter your world of understanding .
i mean , showing melissa sagemiller running away from visions for about 20 minutes throughout the movie is just plain lazy ! !
okay , we get it .
. .
there are people chasing her and we do n't know who they are .
do we really need to see it over and over again ?
how about giving us different scenes offering further insight into all of the strangeness going down in the movie ?
apparently , the studio took this film away from its director and chopped it up themselves , and it shows .
there might 've been a pretty decent teen mind - fuck movie in here somewhere , but i guess " the suits " decided that turning it into a music video with little edge , would make more sense .
the actors are pretty good for the most part , although wes bentley just seemed to be playing the exact same character that he did in american beauty , only in a new neighborhood .
but my biggest kudos go out to sagemiller , who holds her own throughout the entire film , and actually has you feeling her character 's unraveling .
overall , the film does n't stick
because it does n't entertain , it 's confusing , it rarely excites and
it feels pretty redundant for most of its runtime , despite a pretty cool ending and explanation to all of the craziness that came before it .
oh ,
and by the way , this is not a horror or teen slasher flick . . .
it 's just packaged to look that way because someone is apparently assuming that the genre is still hot with the kids .
it also wrapped production two years ago and has been sitting on the shelves ever since .
whatever . .
. skip it !
where 's joblo coming from ?
a nightmare of elm street 3 ( 7/10 ) - blair witch 2 ( 7/10 ) - the crow ( 9/10 ) - the crow : salvation ( 4/10 )
- lost highway ( 10/10 ) - memento ( 10/10 ) - the others ( 9/10 ) - stir of echoes ( 8/10 )
Solution: N
Reason: The phrases used in the review convey a negative sentiment (e.g. "presents it in a very bad package").

Now, solve this instance: capsule :
the much anticipated re - adaptation of the pierre boulle novel comes to the screen as a dark and a little dreary film with lots of chases and fighting , but very little intelligence .
visually there is much to like about this version , but the approach is to take an adventure after the style of gulliver 's travels and treat it as an action film .
that makes it a film without much center . , 0 ( -4 to +4 )
pierre boulle , author of the bridge on the river kwai , wrote planet of the apes ( a . k . a . monkey planet ) , the novel , as a social satire .
it reads a lot like a fifth book of gulliver 's travels .
humans discover a planet in which the roles of apes and humans have been reversed , not unlike the roles of horses and humans on jonathan swift 's island of the houyhnhnms .
the novel moves somewhat slowly to create some suspense in revealing all the things most film fans know to be true about the nature of the planet .
it seems to me there is also a statement about human cruelty to animals , but perhaps i was just looking for that .
when rod serling adapted the novel into a film released in 1968 , he added a number of serling touches , familiar from episodes of the twilight zone and changed the ending to make it more serling - ish .
the final irony of the original version has become film history .
without it there could never have been a " planet of the apes " film series .
i can surmise only that serling ran into serious script problems in how to handle the tricky question of language .
in the book the apes had their own language and the human eventually learned that language .
that could have been done in the film , but that would have required the entire film to be subtitled for the non - ape - speaking .
serling avoided this by having the apes speak english and , of course , there is some justification for that by the end of the film .
justifying why the apes spoke english may have even been the inspiration for his surprise ending .
but serling never tackles the all - important question of why a supposedly intelligent human never shows any curiosity or even surprise that the apes speak his own language , a language they had no opportunity to ever hear .
few viewers questioned this serious plot hole , however , and the film has become well respected in cinema history .
partial credit at least should go to jerry goldsmith whose extremely inventive score is one of goldsmith 's best if not his best .
when the film 's success called for sequels , the filmmakers turned up the violence and they added well - intentioned , though not very subtle , political messages about what was happening in the united states of the 1960s and 1970s .
while the first film had a little shooting of guns and what was there seemed a little half- hearted , by the second film , beneath the planet of the apes , there was a good deal more violence and from that point on the series had a lot of violence and chases .
the series concluded with battle for the planet of the apes in 1973 .
now director tim burton tries his hand at adapting the original book again .
for those who thought that the 1968 version was not very faithful to the book , burton 's new version is even less faithful .
first , he does not really reverse the roles of the humans and the apes .
he has them both be intelligent , articulate races battling for a dominance of the planet currently in the hands , uh , make that paws , of the apes .
that could be a good story too , but it is not planet of the apes .
as with the mission impossible films and so many other cinematic homages to the third quarter of the last century , the title makes promises that the filmmakers have no intention of honoring .
in 2029 leo davidson ( mark wahlberg , not this world 's most expressive actor ) works on a space station increasing the intelligence and usefulness of apes .
then a convenient time storm sweeps him up wizard - of - oz - fashion and drops him on an alien planet .
( yes , he survives this storm , but then no storm is perfect . )
he quickly finds , not greatly to any surprise he shows , that on this planet apes rule and humans drool , but everybody talks .
and the language they talk is earth- english .
apparently it does not even occur to leo that there is a mystery that needs to be explained about that .
the fact it does not occur to leo and apparently did n't occur to tim burton either is the heart of the real horror of this film .
both just assumed that if apes were going to talk the language they would speak would be english .
in any case having one talking race dominating another makes this not a look at human - animal relationships and more one of the master - slave relationships .
outside of sudan and a few other countries this is a less relevant topic .
leo is captured to be used as a slave but also is discovered by ari , played by helena bonham carter .
ari is an attractive ape with close ties to high political power .
she is bent on making the world a better place .
perhaps in a previous draft of the script she was called hil - ari .
in any case with makeup that stifles her usual pout , carter is just about as attractive as she has ever been in a film .
she may want to consider this to become her standard look from this point forward .
it is not long before leo escapes with some human and only a couple of sympathetic apes .
this is a further abandonment of the source material .
the chase severely limits the interplay of ape and human and the examination of each 's place in this reversed society , each important in the book .
we can not see how the society works because most of the screentime society has broken down .
we see the humans either separated from the apes or fighting them .
burton chooses visceral thrills over cerebral ones at almost every turn .
this is a miscalculation , as characters so lacking in empathy value are difficult ones to place much emotional investment in .
they are basically chess pieces and the viewer has little reason to root for them to win .
the 1968 script had little subtlety , with lines like " i never met an ape i did n't like , " but at least we cared for what happened to taylor , the main character .
most of what this film has to offer is in the visuals .
the visual work is spotty but generally nicely done except that so much of the film takes place in the night or in fog .
this tends to limit close looks at the makeup .
in general it seems much improved from 1968 .
the makeup team is led by rick baker instead of john chambers , who did it for the 1968 version .
in 1968 chambers makeup was a jaw - dropper .
it was realistic enough to almost be believable but flexible enough to show emotion .
chambers is good , but if anyone had a chance to best him it would have to be baker .
today audiences have higher expectations ; baker 's visualization is really an improvement .
these visuals work nicely .
what does not work is the wire- assisted leaps some of the apes make .
they look like they were inspired by the physics- defying leaps of crouching tiger , hidden dragon .
apes spring incredible distances .
some of the best scenes are apes running into battle looking like they have ape posture , but when they start flying through the air
the effect is lost .
one final visual problem is that the film frequently shows its budget in what should be spectacular battle scenes the camera shows us only a small group of people close - up . since the days of lon chaney and boris karloff few actors have crossed over to stardom in a role that required heavy make - up .
the one actor who has a shot is paul giamatti .
it is not that his lines are so good , most are silly jokes .
but he delivers them very well .
he was always a watchable actor , but has not yet made stardom .
as the ape - trader limbo he over - emotes to overcome his ape make - up , but does it very well .
in doing
so he makes himself the most interesting thing on the screen .
he is probably the best thing in the film and conjures up memories of peter ustinov 's performance in spartacus .
as an in - joke there are several lines in the script borrowed from the 1968 film and an old ape played by charleton heston becomes an allusion to the first film by itself .
danny elfman 's score has a nice primitive feel , but jerry goldsmith 's 1968 tour de force score is a real classic .
that score and the whole film will be remembered when the 2001 film is forgotten .
i rate the remake 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale .
Student:
N