An example of a movie review. negative.

A: I will admit that I did not give this movie much of a chance. I decided pretty early on that this just wasn't my kind of movie.

For the most part, it has an excellent look in terms of its cinematography. The scenes of early 70's Manhattan look very good, as does the lead actress. It is a very crisp black and white, which could almost make the movie feel undated and fresh. However, some of the other techniques the filmmakers employ shoot that prospect all to hell. The disjointed editing is VERY late-60's, somewhere between surrealism and new wave. The story also feels like it came from a very specific time, somewhere between free love idealism and artsy experimentation.

The film follows a young girl around the city as she looks for a man who she had anonymous phone sex with. As she meets other odd characters, she reveals her quirks and they reveal theirs. The movie seems to be meant as an off-the-wall, irreverent comedy, but adds an avant-garde feel. I would expect that if you like Andy Warhol movies, you would be very excited to discover The Telephone Book.

Some problems I had: Near the end of the movie, one character tells a rambling anecdote that lasts over twelve minutes-brutal to sit through. Also, there is a very explicit animation sequence that I found gross and juvenile that serves as the film's climax. I did laugh out loud four or five times, and I liked the ending (minus the flat-out disgusting animation). And when the film switched to color for the final phone-booth-at-night sequence, I actually liked the way it looked even better. It ended up being one of those experiences where I felt like I could have really liked it if it been a little different. But this is what the filmmakers gave us. It is obscure, artsy, and way left of the dial, but none of those are reasons to recommend it on their own. I didn't find it to be unique or creative so much as forced and pretentious.

An example of a movie review. negative.

A: The saddest part of this is the fact that these are 87 minutes I'll never get back. I knew this was terrible from the get-go, with the guy dressed as a lunatic Indian chief on top of the roof. (See if they could get away with that in 2008). My 10-year-old boy is really into baseball right now, so we decided to rent it on a rainy day. Even though he seemed to enjoy parts of it, I had to cringe when I heard all the needless foul language. Bad, bad movie. This was an awful ripoff of Bad News Bears. Completely shameless and completely predictable. I don't mind a predictable movie if it's done well, but this one absolutely was not.

An example of a movie review. negative.

A:
Joe Don Baker is...Thomas Jefferson Geronimo, a pudgy, sweaty murderous oaf in a stupid cowboy suit that Roy Rogers would have laughed at. Somehow he still has a badge, probably because he lives in Texas and they'll let ANYTHING be law enforcement there.

This greasy loser is a deputy sheriff near the Texas border. Not surprisingly, he was once a Texas Ranger but got kicked out because he seemed to think that the law was his own personal bouncing ball to be played with at his discretion. This includes shooting suspects who are over the international border into Mexico, beating up on suspects, cheating in gun fights, threatening women, starting gunfights that could have been avoided AND managing to get the life of a child threatened in the process, letting women he promised he would help and protect get killed just so that he could get out of jail, etc, etc. This guy makes L.A. cops look like saints in comparison.

When his partner is killed by a pair of wandering Italian assassins, Joe Don's character hunts them down and kills one of them. Then he takes the other to Italy at the behest of a Mr. Wilson, who rightly thinks that Joe Don will screw up big time. In record time, he loses the Italian and gets a Maltese cabby blown up in the process. This is just the first of the many deaths and major destruction that Joe Don leaves in a trail behind him as he rampages across Malta looking for Palermo(the Italian assassin).

Thus begins the mobius strip part of the movie, in which our hero gets arrested, lectured by the Maltese chief of police, goes out and causes more trouble, gets arrested, gets lectured by the chief of police...and so on, and so on. Until you want to blow your brains out with Joe Don's ivory handled pistol and be done with the horror.

Joe Don proves his uselessness not just in the first time Palermo escapes, but in the subsequent boat chase in which he goes down in just one punch. Then he gets taken by Palermo after he threatens a woman with a coat hanger. You hope that Palermo will actually get to torture him in the basement cell he's put in, but no-the stripper he threatened came and got him out, because he promised to protect her. Her throat promptly gets cut(big surprise) and Joe Don escapes into the night.

And here you hope he might have been drowned in the (yet another) boat chase. But even the ocean doesn't want him, and spits him up on a shore where he's nursed by a poor Maltese family(what did they ever do to deserve that?) he returns to the city, where he's arrested by the police, lectured by the police chief...arrrgghhh! The female police officer who's been escorting him around frees him so that they can go get Palermo. Why she would do anything so brain dead as to destroy her career for this great slob is beyond me. It's just head scratchily puzzling.

They go out to the villa where Palermo is hiding, and start a shoot out. Joe Don blithely cheats, and kills Palermo. He then utters the great and dazzling last line of the movie: "The big one has my badge. Can you go get it for me?" Thank you for that immortal line, Mr. Baker. That will go down in the annals of movie history as the most literate, amazing, wondrous last line ever uttered by a character in a film. It certainly falls into line with everything else about the character. Bravo.