Detailed Instructions: In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
See one example below:
Problem: 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
Explanation: The phrases used in the review convey a negative sentiment (e.g. "presents it in a very bad package").

Problem: ingredients : man with amnesia who wakes up wanted for murder , dark science fiction city controlled by alien beings with mental powers .
synopsis : what if you woke up one day , and suspected you were not on earth , and instead were part of an experiment in a giant space terrarium manipulated by intergalactic alien zookeepers ?
in dark city john murdoch ( rufus sewell ) has this problem .
dark city starts out like a 1940s noir amnesia detective mystery .
poor john wakes up with amnesia in a hotel room with a dead dame in one corner .
a mysterious phone call tells him to get the heck out of there , and soon enough john is chased all over town by a murderous army of pale people in black trench - coats , as well as by the police , and the dogged inspector bumstead ( william hurt ) . is john a murderer , and what can his missing memories tell him ?
he searches through his own wallet for possible contacts and clues .
but when the clues do n't fit , it does n't just confuse him ; it causes john to go so far as to question the whole nature of reality in the dark city .
to john , something is fishy , and very unreal about this city .
how come
it 's always dark , and nobody seems to remember what they did this morning ?
and how come nobody seems to remember how to leave the city , or how to get to nearby shell beach ?
every night , around midnight , john notices that the whole city enters a state of suspended animation , and at this time , creepy alien experimenters known as the ' strangers ' come out and do nasty things like inject fake memories into people 's heads with big hypodermic needles .
the strangers have the ability to ' tune , ' or warp reality using telepathic powers .
turns out , the city is not on earth at all .
and the reason why john does n't fall victim to the nightly suspended animation , is because he is a human mutation that possesses the same god - like reality - warping abilities as the strangers .
even with the help of scientist dr .
daniel schreber , can john take back the dark city ?
opinion : director alex proyas ( he also directed the crow )
mentions this in the dark city press kit : in films , science fiction is always " used to have big spaceships blow up cities .
i think we 're a little tired of that .
"
according to director proyas , probably the most interesting thing about dark city is its layers .
it 's designed so that you can watch the film over again , and examine it from the perspective of a main character other than murdoch .
it 's a philosophical piece .
cinematic science fiction is basically a thinly disguised shootout between the good humans and the bad aliens ( whether they be klingons , giant bugs , or proponents of the dark side of the force ) .
but science fiction in books reaches beyond the ' shoot - em - up ' level and targets the big questions , questions like who are we ?
what is the human condition ?
what is ethical ?
what would a true human being do ? far from comic book style on the order of spawn , batman , or the mutant ninja turtles , dark city not only features the showdown between good humans and powerful aliens , but it also asks questions worthy of films such as brazil or blade runner .
dark city is what philosophers would call an existentialist screenplay .
a little more than 200 years ago , the world was filled with unhappy peasants - - unhappy because nearly every aspect of their lives was controlled by totalitarian , military , conformist , medieval regimes .
the people took refuge in religion , the idea being that earthly life was a time of suffering , but after death , heaven would be available .
meanwhile , the state used these same ideas to prop up their regimes ; the king was often head of the religion and therefore sanctioned by heaven .
when science finally overturned religion , the medieval dictatorships came tumbling down and were replaced by democratic governments .
but the new fear was that the power of science and experimentation would be used to create a world order as darkly totalitarian as the old .
this is the time period when writers and philosophers such as freud , kant , kafka , nietzsche , and dostoevsky pondered what society should be , and what place the individual had in it .
the existentialists ' in particular wrote about the power of the lone individual against what may be a hostile , indifferent , or alienated universe .
in dark city , when the last dying , defeated alien asks john murdoch why the aliens ' scientific experiments on the human beings ' brains failed , murdoch replies , pointing to his head , " because the human condition is n't located in here .
"
Solution:
P