In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.

[Q]: if you want some hearty laughs , then rat race is the movie for you .
this unpretentious little comedy , which sneaks into theaters today with very little hype ,
will have you bouncing in your theater seat .
and while the film fits neatly into the low - brow , slapstick school of comedy , one refreshing aspect is its lack of mean - spiritedness .
the plot follows a group of people chosen at random by an eccentric las vegas casino owner ( john cleese ) who must race from vegas to a bus station locker 700 miles away in silver city , n .
m .
inside the locker is a duffel bag containing $ 2 million .
the first one to open the locker , gets the bag and the money .
what the group of participants does n't know is that cleese 's donald sinclair ( " i can do anything i want -
i 'm eccentric ! " ) is staging the race as a betting game for a group of high rollers at the hotel .
the participants include vera ( whoopi goldberg ) and merrill ( lanai chapman ) , a newly reunited mother and daughter ; disgraced pro football referee owen templeton ( cuba gooding jr . ) ; italian tourist mr .
pollini ( rowan atkinson ) ; randy pear ( jon lovitz ) and his family ; the bumbling con men duane and blaine cody ( seth green and vince vieluf ) ; and cynical young lawyer nick shaffer ( breckin meyer ) .
various amusing encounters and mishaps befall the participants en route to silver city .
screenwriter andy breckman adds a nice touch by not having the racers try to sabotage one another .
the most side - splitting situations involve vera and merrill 's encounter with the squirrel lady , a nice nutsy cameo by kathy bates ; owen 's commandeering a charter bus full of lucille ball look - alikes on their way to a lucy convention ; the cody brothers misadventures with a hot - air balloon , a flying cow and a monster truck ; and the pear family 's stopover at a barbie museum , which turns out not to be what they think it is .
the pear family situation is a fine example of the way breckman 's script builds the laughs .
without going into detail , this bit segues from the museum to hitler 's touring car , to eva braun 's dark lipstick , to lovitz burning his tongue , culminating at a ceremony honoring world war ii veterans .
rat race 's cast is first rate .
cleese is wonderfully devilish and madcap ; lovitz is , at first , a bit whiny , but his character grows on you ; gooding is having a fine romp ; and dave thomas almost steals the show as cleese 's deadpan assistant , a man " born without a personality .
"
the film is directed by jerry zucker , who knows something about comedy
.
along with his brother , david , and friend jim abrahams , he was responsible for such hits as airplane ! and ruthless people .
a throwaway subplot , which is good for some laughs , features cleese and his buddies , betting on a series of outlandish situations , including one dealing with a hooker and pepto - bismol .
this is a fun little feature .
the only letdown comes at the finale , which is too touchy - feely and sweet , almost negating what came before it .
rat race is a summer sleeper , but it will keep you awake , as will the laughter of those watching around you .
[A]: P

[Q]: weighed down by tired plot lines and spielberg 's reliance on formulas ,
_ saving private ryan _ is a mediocre film which nods in the direction of realism before descending into an abyss of cliches .
there ought to be a law against steven spielberg making movies about truly serious topics .
spielberg 's greatest strength as a director is the polished , formulaic way in which every aspect of the film falls carefully into place to make a perfect story .
but for a topic of such weight as combat in the second world war ( or the holocaust ) this technique backfires , for it creates coherent , comprehensible and redemptive narratives out of events whose size , complexity and evil are utterly beyond the reach of human ken .
in this way spielberg trivializes the awesome evil of the stories he films .
_ saving private ryan _ tells the story of eight men who have been detailed on a " pr mission " to pull a young man , ryan ( whose three other brothers were just killed in fighting elsewhere ) out of combat on the normandy front just after d - day .
ryan is a paratrooper who dropped behind enemy lines the night before the landings and became separated from his fellow soldiers .
the search for him takes the eight soldiers across the hellish terrain of world war ii combat in france .
there 's no denying spielberg came within shouting distance of making a great war movie .
the equipment , uniforms and weapons are superbly done .
the opening sequence , in which captain miller ( tom hanks ) leads his men onto omaha beach , is quite possibly the closest anyone has come to actually capturing the unendurably savage intensity of modern infantry combat .
another pleasing aspect of the film is spielberg 's brave depiction of scenes largely unknown to american audiences , such as the shooting of prisoners by allied soldiers , the banality of death in combat , the routine foul - ups in the execution of the war , and the cynicism of the troops .
the technical side of the film is peerless , as always .
the camera work is magnificent , the pacing perfect , the sets convincing , the directing without flaw .
hanks will no doubt be nominated for an oscar for his performance , which was utterly convincing , and the supporting cast was excellent , though ted danson seems a mite out of place as a paratroop colonel .
yet the attempt at a realistic depiction of combat falls flat on its face because realism is not something which can be represented by single instances or events .
it has to thoroughly permeate the context at every level of the film , or the story fails to convince .
throughout the movie spielberg repeatedly showed only single examples of the grotesque wounds produced by modern mechanized devices ( exception : men are shown burning to death with relative frequency ) .
for example , we see only one man with guts spilled out on the ground .
here and there men lose limbs ; in one scene miller is pulling a man to safety , there 's an explosion , and miller looks back to see he is only pulling half a man .
but the rest of the corpses are remarkably intact .
there are no shoes with only feet in them , no limbs scattered everywhere , no torsos without limbs , no charred corpses , and most importantly , all corpses have heads ( in fairness there are a smattering of wicked head wounds ) .
the relentless dehumanization of the war , in which even corpses failed to retain any indentity , is soft - pedaled in the film .
ultimately , _ saving private ryan _ bows to both hollywood convention and the unwritten rules of wartime photography in its portrayal of wounds and death in war .
rather than saying _ saving private ryan _ is " realistic , " it would be better to describe it as " having realistic moments .
" another aspect of the " hollywoodization " of the war is the lack of realistic dialogue and in particular , the lack of swearing .
anyone familiar with the literature on the behavior of the men during the war , such as fussell 's superb _ wartime : understanding and behavior in the second world war _ ( which has an extensive discussion on swearing ) , knows that the troops swore fluently and without letup .
" who is this private ryan that we have to die for him ?
" asks one infantrymen in the group of eight . rendered in wartime demotic , that should have been expressed as " who is this little pecker that we have to get our dicks shot off for him ?
"
or some variant thereof .
conversations should have been literally sprinkled with the " f " word , and largely about ( the search for ) food and sex .
this is all the more inexplicable because the movie already had an " r " rating due to violence , so swearing could not possibly have been eliminated to make it a family film . however ,
the most troubling aspect of the film is the spielbergization of the topic .
the most intense hell humans have ever created for themselves is not emotionally wrenching enough for steven spielberg .
he can not just cede control to the material ; he has to be bigger than it .
as if afraid to let the viewer find their own ( perhaps unsettled and not entirely clear ) emotional foothold in the material , spielberg has to package it in hallmark moments to give the war a meaning and coherence it never had : the opening and closing scenes of ryan and his family in the war cemetary ( reminscent of the closing scene from _ schindler 's list ) , the saccharine exchange between ryan and his wife at the close ( every bit as bad as schindler 's monologue about how his car , tiepin or ring could have saved another jew ) , quotes from abraham lincoln and emerson , captain miller 's last words to private ryan , and an unbelievable storyline in which a prisoner whom they free earlier in the movie comes back to kill the captain .
that particular subplot is so hokey , so predictable , it nigh on ruins the film .
nowhere in the film is there a resolute depiction of the meaninglessness , stupidity and waste which characterized the experience of war to the men who actually fought in combat ( imagine if miller had been killed by friendly fire or collateral damage ) .
because of its failure to mine deeply into the terrible realities of world war ii , _ saving private ryan _ can only pan for small truths in the shallows . .
[A]: N

[Q]: this has been an extraordinary year for australian films .
" shine " has just scooped the pool at the australian film institute awards , picking up best film , best actor , best director etc .
to that we can add the gritty " life " ( the anguish , courage and friendship of a group of male prisoners in the hiv - positive section of a jail ) and " love and other catastrophes " ( a low budget gem
about straight and gay love on and near a university campus ) .
i ca n't recall a year in which such a rich and varied celluloid library was unleashed from australia .
" shine " was one bookend .
stand by for the other one : " dead heart " .
> from the opening credits
the theme of division is established .
the cast credits have clear and distinct lines separating their first and last names .
bryan | brown .
in a desert settlement , hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town , there is an uneasy calm between the local aboriginals and the handful of white settlers who live nearby .
the local police officer has the task of enforcing " white man 's justice " to the aboriginals .
these are people with a proud 40 , 000 year heritage behind them .
naturally , this includes their own system of justice ; key to which is " payback " .
an eye for an eye .
revenge .
usually extracted by the spearing through of the recipient 's thigh .
brown , as the officer , manages quite well to keep the balance .
he admits that he has to ' bend the rules ' a bit , including actively encouraging at least one brutal " payback " .
( be warned that this scene , near the start , is not for the squeamish ) .
the local priest - an aboriginal , but in the " white fellas " church - has a foot on either side of the line .
he is , figuratively and literally , in both camps .
ernie dingo brings a great deal of understanding to this role as the man in the middle .
he is part churchman and part politician .
however the tension , like the heat , flies and dust , is always there .
whilst her husband - the local teacher - is in church , white lady kate ( milliken ) and her aborginal friend tony , ( pedersen ) have gone off into the hills .
he takes her to a sacred site , even today strictly men - only .
she appears to not know this .
tony tells her that this is a special place , an initiation place .
he then makes love to her , surrounded by ancient rock art .
the community finds out about this sacrilegious act and it 's payback time .
the fuse is lit and the brittle inter - racial peace is shattered .
everyone is affected in the fall out .
to say more is to give away the details of this finely crafted film .
suffice to say it 's a rewarding experience .
bryan brown , acting and co - producing , is the pivotal character .
his officer is real , human and therefore flawed .
brown comments that he expects audiences to feel warmth towards the man
, then suddenly feel angry about him .
it was n't long ago that i visited central australia - ayers rock ( uluru ) and alice springs - for the first time .
the wide - screen cinematography shows the dead heart of australia in a way that captures it 's vicious beauty , but never deteriorates into a moving slide show , in which the gorgeous background dominates those pesky actors in the foreground .
the cultural clash has provided the thesis for many a film ; from the western to the birdcage .
at least three excellent australian films have covered the aboriginal people and the line between them and we anglo - saxon ' invaders ' : " jedda " , " the chant of jimmie blacksmith " and " the last wave " .
in a year when the race ' debate ' has reared up in australia , it is nourishing to see such an intelligent , non - judgemental film as " dead heart " .
the aboriginal priest best sums this up .
he is asked to say if he is a " black fella or white fella " .
[A]:
P