An example of a movie review. negative.

A: I'm not looking for quality; I'm just trying to get through the 74 famous video nasties that were banned in Britain. This one was initially banned and re-released in 2001 with a whole 10 seconds cut.

Some college kids spend their Christmas vacation preparing a dorm for renovation. There are some creepy characters lurking about along with the four kids. Which of them is the slasher? The actual killings are not very gory, so this video nastie is not really nasty. There is the requisite flashing of the boobies, but it has nothing to do with the college kids.

I had a suspect very quickly and I turned out to be right. Maybe I've seen too many of these. The end twist was clever; I have to give the writers credit for that bit of originality.

An example of a movie review. negative.

A: The plot certainly seemed interesting enough. How can a real-life brutal murder be turned into a truly boring movie? Well, you can watch "Wonderland" and find out.

I had heard of the Wonderland murders before this film was released and found it to be an interesting true story of some genuinely sadistic people. Unfortunately, there is zero character development, so we never get a chance to understand why any of this was done or get a good sense of the interrelationships between the characters. The pace of the direction was very tedious. This all leads to an extraordinarily boring movie.

Given that Dawn Schiller - a central character as Holmes's girlfriend - was an associate producer and that Holmes's wife was a consultant on the film, we should have had the opportunity to gain some real insight into the characters.

An example of a movie review. positive.

A:
My abiding love of Italian actress Lucianna Paluzzi, who helped jump-start my puberty with her performance in 1965's "Thunderball," has led me to some fairly unusual places. Case in point, this British curiosity from 1959, "Carlton-Browne of the F.O.," which features Lucianna in one of her earlier roles. She plays a princess in this one, although the picture is actually a showcase for the talents of Terry-Thomas and Peter Sellers, both of whose stars were certainly on the rise at this point. In this cute, often very funny film, we learn of the Madeira-like island nation of Gaillardia, which had been a British colony until 1916 and then universally forgotten. Forty-three years later, however, it becomes the center of worldwide attention and international espionage when valuable cobalt deposits are discovered there, and Her Majesty sends the bumbling Carlton-Browne of the Foreign Office to take charge. Terry-Thomas underplays this part nicely, as does Sellers in his role as Prime Minister Amphibulos of the tiny country. (This was Sellers' second film of 1959 concerning a tiny country matching wits with the world, the other being "The Mouse That Roared," of course.) Ian Bannen almost steals the show here as Gaillardia's suave king, and my girl Lucianna is as appealing as can be in her minor role. The film exhibits much in the way of very dry humor, although there ARE some belly laughs to be had (the reception at the Gaillardian airport, for example, and especially that May Day-style parade of Gaillardian strength). And Sellers' seedy prime minister, with his cracked English and seemingly perpetual sweat stains, is yet another memorable character in this great actor's pantheon. Despite the occasional instance or two of indecipherable, stiff-upper-lip British gibberish, I found this picture to be a winningly modest entertainment, and well presented on this crisp-looking Anchor Bay DVD.