TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
PROBLEM: pitch black is a sheep in wolf 's clothing .
it is full of darkness , danger and violence and if you buy into the marketing hype , an unsettling and scary film going experience .
do n't be fooled .
pitch black is a morality play masquerading as a scare - fest .
it starts off with blistering intensity .
a cargo spaceship crash lands on a planet apparently leeched of life by the scorching heat of three suns .
among the survivors is fry ( mitchell ) , the ship 's pilot , who spends the film wrestling with the fact that she tried to jettison the other passengers in her effort to land the craft safely .
there is imam ( david ) , an islamic leader whose faith in his god is tested repeatedly throughout the film .
there is a law enforcement officer in the form of johns ( hauser ) , who attacks every situation with square jawed authoritarian zeal .
and there is riddick ( diesel ) , a menacing , muscle - bound convicted murderer who 's being brought back to justice by johns .
the group quickly sizes up the situation and each other .
confident in their assessment of matters , a plan is set in motion to escape their hellish environment .
those plans are shredded by the appearance of one of the planet 's wildlife , a predatory , sometimes winged , species that enjoys the taste of blood and flesh .
fortunately , the creatures are light sensitive and are forced to live in networks of catacombs under the planet 's surface .
unfortunately , the group has managed to land on the planet moments before an eclipse is about to occur , taking away their one protection from the monsters .
the group 's savior comes in the form of johns , whose decisive leadership looks to deliver them from purgatory .
or does it ?
pitch black deviates from the standard sci - fi fare by avoiding some of the stock " escape the boogieman " conflicts the genre typically serves up .
just as the planet gave a false facade of lifelessness , first appearances given by the survivors proves to be just as false .
the excitement of the film comes not from the danger posed by the creatures , but rather from watching the shifting allegiances and emotional growth of the characters as the planet serves as a deus ex machina of sorts to catalyze emotional growth .
a recurrent theme runs throughout the movie of faith , whether it be religious or in a person , and how that powers their motivations .
i found it telling that an accidental death occurs early on due to the misperception of a self professed atheist .
conversely , imam constantly contributes any good fortune to allah .
one by one , his perceived heaven sent blessings are taken away and crushed .
imam is forced to reassess his faith .
another character expresses belief in god , along with a life long hate .
yet another character makes a decision that echoes the sentiments of christ about selflessness and has lasting repercussions for several of group .
it is a fascinating character study hiding under the guise of a scare flick .
special mention should be made of vin diesel , who intriguingly conveys feral menace combined with a truly mesmerizing presence .
his character could have easily slipped into a parody of the baddass killing machine , but twohy and diesel add surprising depth to riddick .
they can be excused for the two or three shwarzenegger - like catch phrases that growl their way out of diesel 's mouth .
the movie has its flaws that can be nitpicked .
the creatures do look derivative of the ones in alien .
the dialogue is n't the freshest at times , reminiscent of a bad comic book .
yes , the appearance of riddick 's vision skills are more than a little timely considering the situation .
these trappings are on the periphery of the story twohy is really trying to tell .
twohy may have lured you in under the pretense of scaring you with film fabricated boogieman , but he shows the real boogieman to be the prejudices and beliefs we use to direct decisions in our lives .

SOLUTION: P

PROBLEM: vegas vacation is the fourth film starring chevy chase and beverly d'angelo as the heads of the hapless griswold family .
as with the other three films , their two children , rusty and audrey , are played by a revolving series of actors .
this time ethan embry and marisol nichols fill the roles .
also back , is cousin eddie ( randy quaid ) , the slob relative who seems to bring problems wherever he goes .
in vegas vacation clark griswold ( chase ) decides to take the family on vacation to las vegas so that he and wife ellen ( d'angelo ) can renew their wedding vows .
it is at this point when comedy is supposed to ensue .
apparently the filmmakers thought that putting the griswolds into las vegas would be so funny on its own that they would n't bother to write any jokes into the script .
at least that 's the way it looks when watching this turkey .
about half way through vegas vacation i began to have serious doubts as to whether there would actually be a single laugh in the entire film , since there had been none up to that point .
by the end of the movie i had actually snickered a couple of times , and i had smiled at a couple of gags .
i might add that none of the funny ( and i use the term loosely ) moments came as a result of anything chase , d'angelo or quaid were involved in .
they might as well have stayed home for as much as they contributed to this film .
the two best things in this movie were ethan embry and marisol nichols as the griswold kids , who manage to have a couple of their own adventures .
rusty becomes a vegas high roller , providing most of the film 's best moments .
every time chase and quaid were involved in a gag , it just made it more and more apparent that they should have stopped this series after the third film .
which brings me to the best moment of the film .
the griswolds are driving down the highway and holiday road ( the theme from the original vacation ) begins to play .
christie brinkley and her red ferrari ( also from the first movie ) drive by .
it was a cute moment , but all it really did was remind me just how funny the first film had been , and just how far that this series has fallen . too bad .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: " with all that education , you should know what happiness is .
" starring sylvia chang , teresa hu , hsu ming , li lieh ,
mao hsueh - wei ; directed by edward yang ; written by yang and wu nien - chen ;
cinematography by christopher doyle and chang hui - kung every country has , eventually , its new wave .
france had its nouvelle vague , brazil its cinema novo , china its fifth generation , and on and on .
some waves just take longer than others , before they wash over us , cleansing us with the balm of discovery .
taiwan 's new wave came in the 1980s , in the work of directors like hou hsiao - hsien , wan jen , and edward yang ; that day , on the beach -- yang 's first feature -- is central .
it created a new language for young taiwanese directors , even if the first attempts to speak that language were hesitant and faltering .
later works refined the techniques that yang first explored here , giving taiwan a distinctive international presence .
that day itself is long and frustrating , the document of a nation 's attempt to find a voice .
it does not lack ambition .
it anatomizes urban life in modern taiwan , in the manner of antonioni , elaborating the alienation that the westernized white - collar middle - class feel as their lives are shaped by old - fashioned roles -- dedicated career men , loyal housewives -- that they find unfulfilling .
jia - li ( sylvia chang ) is the focus , but the film brings others into its compass -- her husband , her brother , friends from her college days -- as it charts her discontents .
no one is happy .
jia - li married her husband , we - lei , at a young age .
at the time , her brother had been urged into an arranged marriage , despite his affection for another woman , and so jia - li 's marriage seemed , in comparison , a good one : she chose we - lei of her own free will , they loved each other .
but it goes wrong .
that day dutifully presents all the clich ?
s :
we - lei becomes absorbed in his career , indulges in an affair with a co - worker ; jia - li feels restless and trapped , bound by a choice she made while young , but which no longer seems wise .
the film never redeems these clich ?
s
by conveying the feel of authentic experience , the intensity of lived pain , and much of it seems trite and belaboured .
it unfolds , awkwardly , as a series of flashbacks , told during a luncheon in vienna , where jia - li meets her brother 's old flame ( teresa hu ) , now a concert pianist , whom she has not seen since college .
both women seem rather sad , and resigned to their sadness .
their circumstances ( and those of jia - li 's brother and a college friend ) suggest not so much that they have made the wrong choices -- married the wrong man , chosen the wrong career path , etc .
--but rather that the choices available to them were inadequate .
it is not that jia - li married the wrong man ; she did n't .
the problem is that she needed to marry at all -- and that if she did not marry , she would still be just as unhappy .
for a woman in modern taiwan , that day tells us , the cards are stacked , the dice are loaded : she can play the game , but the house always wins .
the film 's sympathetic feminist implications are presumably the reason it caused such controversy upon its release in taiwan .
seen now , it does not seem provocative .
indeed , it 's hard to imagine anyone having felt passionate enough about the film to generate any controversy : it may be ambitious , it may be innovative , but it is also terribly , terribly dull .
and what was new for taiwan was not necessarily new for the rest of us : yang adopts methods established years before by antonioni and others , and his use of those methods is fumbling , uncertain , undisciplined . nor does he bring anything new -- other than the locale -- to the material .
there are moments when that day takes on some of the emotional richness it strives for -- in a young couple 's first kiss , in the awkward meeting of a woman and her husband 's mistress -- but they are brief .
too often , yang devotes needless time to mundane scenes -- grocery shopping , flower - arranging -- in which nothing happens , little is said , no emotion imparted .
perhaps , if the film were content to focus on such reflective , inward moments , leaving us to guess at thoughts and feelings , it might have been ambiguous , suggestive , insinuating .
but jia - li and her disaffected companions do not only brood in silence
: they talk about their problems , at length , in detail , redundantly , and eliminate all subtleties .
at two hours and forty - five minutes , it all seems exorbitantly long , indulgently long - winded . consider the defining moment for jia - li , the titular day on the beach .
the thrust of the whole film explains , easily enough , what we are to think of that moment , what it means when she walks away from a particular situation .
even so , the film has not one but two characters explain it for us verbally , in case we may have missed the point .
needless time is devoted to expressing what should have remained unexpressed , and that is the problem throughout .
the look of the film is as tedious as the drawn - out narrative .
it was the first feature shot by christopher doyle -- at least , it 's his name in the credits -- who is now rightly regarded as one of the world 's leading cinematographers .
in the freewheeling expressionism of his work with directors like chen kaige and wong kar - wai , he seems incapable of fashioning a boring image .
you would never know it from watching that day , which , due either to doyle 's inexperience or yang 's humdrum direction , is almost perverse in its insistence on making the physical environment seem as drab and banal as possible .
in scrutinizing the long decay of a marriage , that day manages to capture the ennui of the experience , but none of the damage , none of the heartbreak .

SOLUTION:
N