In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
One example is below.
Q: 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 )
A: N
Rationale: The phrases used in the review convey a negative sentiment (e.g. "presents it in a very bad package").
Q: it was a rainy friday afternoon in columbus when i persuaded a friend to see a matinee performance of mst3k : tm .
he had never seen any episodes of the show , and i have watched a scant few , due to its unsocial airtime on comedy central and the uneven nature of many of the episodes .
for those of you not familiar with the premise , dr clayton forrester ( beaulieu ) wishes to take over the world by finding the worst film ever made and unleashing it upon an unsuspecting public .
to achieve this , he ( in the words of the tv series ' theme , which is missing in the movie ) " bumped [ mike nelson ( nelson ) ] on the noggin and then shot him into space " , and is monitoring nelson 's reactions to the movies he is forced to endure . rather than succumb to the sheer awfulness of many of the movies , nelson spends his time making wisecracks with the help of his two robot companions , tom servo and crow t . robot .
the format of the show consists of nelson , servo and crow making their comments while silhouetted against the movie being watched , and breaks every 20 minutes or so for segments set on the satellite of love , the ship on which our heroes are marooned .
only two things are different in the movie : the absence of forrester 's sidekick , tv 's frank , and the slower pace of the jokes .
this latter change is presumably deliberate to avoid the viewing audience missing some of the best lines while laughing from the previous joke .
for their big screen outing , the producers have chosen " this island earth " , a 1954 classic , and one of the first sf films to have a special effects budget larger than the average grocery bill .
unfortunately for that film ( but making it ideal mst3k fodder ) , acting and dialogue appear to have taken a back seat to the effects which , by today 's standards , are less than impressive .
nelson & co .
make jokes about everything from japan 's dominance in the world market , to star trek , to the state of disrepair of seattle 's kingdome , and most of them work .
unfortunately , the segments set outside the satellite 's movie theater seem out of place and are n't particularly funny , but at least they 're fairly short .
the big question about this movie though is : why ?
i presume it was an attempt to gain a larger following to keep support behind the series ( rumours of its impending demise circulated for some time before the plug was eventually pulled a few months ago ) , but the format gains nothing from its transition to the big screen -- there are no special effects to dazzle you , no action sequences to keep you on the edge of your seat , and no use of digital surround sound .
so , it seems pointless to spend $ 8 per person to see this movie when in a few months it will be out on video and you can watch it for $ 3 , and not have to sit in a room full of popcorn addicts .
nevertheless , mst3k : tm provides more laugh - out - loud opportunities than any film you 're going to see this year , and i thoroughly recommend it to anyone with a pulse .
given its uniqueness
, i hesitate to grade it against other films , but it fulfils its claims and so in the class of " unsubtle comedy films whose laughs come at the expense of bad b - movies
" it does well .
A:
P