Part 1. Definition
In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
Part 2. Example
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 )
Answer: N
Explanation: The phrases used in the review convey a negative sentiment (e.g. "presents it in a very bad package").
Part 3. Exercise
a cop with a troubled personal life .
a ruthless villain .
a friend of the cop .
a _ dead _ friend of the cop .
a quest for vengeance .
a new partner .
a romantic interest .
a chase scene .
a chase scene
_ in san francisco _ .
a woman in peril .
a confrontation .
an explosion .
the end . yawn .
yawn .
yawn .
the preceding has been the plot of approximately twelve thousand and six action films ; this one just happens to be called metro .
i have learned to expect little from films like metro , and consequently i am bored by them more often than i am genuinely disappointed . with eddie murphy on board , however , you hope for something extra , some kind of spark .
when a film makes watching eddie murphy a tedious experience , you know it is doing something terribly wrong .
murphy stars as scott roper , a hostage negotiator for the san francisco police department who is exceedingly good at his job .
with his personal life , he is considerably less successful , facing an unhappy ex - girlfriend named veronica ( carmen ejogo ) , a gambling problem and a mountain of debt .
then his professional life gets a jolt as well when a friend and colleague ( art evans ) is murdered while investigating suspected jewel thief michael korda ( michael wincott ) .
finding korda becomes very personal to scott , and he joins with new partner kevin mccall ( michael rappaport ) to foil korda during an attempted heist .
but all is not well even with korda in jail , as scott , veronica and kevin all continue to face life - threatening danger .
metro ( the title , in case you are wondering , means absolutely nothing ) is so badly put together that even the most casual viewer may notice the miserable pacing and stray plot threads .
in the first place , korda 's rage over being discovered before he can make his big score is rendered completely pointless when he proceeds to hit the target anyway ( and , incidentally , to screw it up ) .
a reference to payoffs in the police department , followed by a conspicuous decision to keep scott off the korda case and a couple of pointed glances , is dropped abruptly with no resolution after about forty - five minutes ; even the relationship between scott and new partner kevin is so perfunctory , with kevin disappearing entirely after taking a bullet for scott , that you may yearn for bickering buddies .
worst of all is a plot structure which places the main villain ( the always menacing michael wincott ) behind bars for far too long , leaving a lot of time to kill with the tedious reconciliation of scott and veronica .
you ca n't blame murphy for being unable to muster any enthusiasm for the scenes with his bland leading lady , but he should have known better than to take this role at all .
scott roper exists in an uncomfortable middle ground between the kind of street - wise fast - talker murphy has built a career on and an actual three - dimensional character , and murphy is never able to reconcile the two .
the script seems to have been doctored for him , with a gambling problem turned into a bit of character color and his supposed inability to form relationships turned into a cause for gags rather than actual conflict , yet there is still too little comedy for murphy to work with .
for much of the film , he walks around with an intense frown , and it is over 90 minutes into metro before you hear that trademark laugh for the first time .
murphy is stranded with too few solid punch lines , and nearly all of the ones he does have bounce of ejogo and fall to the ground limply
.
i suppose i should give director thomas carter credit for taking the obligatory san francisco car chase ( how much do you want to bet on the likelihood of seeing a car soar over a hill ? )
and doing a few interesting things with it .
as vehicles are sent flying and passengers sent sprawling by a runaway cable car , it is possible at least for a moment to take some pleasure in a goofy spin on a familiar situation .
carter does an even better job by taking that old suspense stand - by -- the medicine cabinet mirror which will close to reveal a killer standing behind someone -- and using it to defuse tension not once , but
_ twice _ .
the fact that carter was able to demonstrate even that much recognition of cliches , and a willingness to subvert them , makes his involvement in the rest of the disaster
that is metro all the more puzzling .
an action film like this plods so relentlessly and obviously from point a to point b to point c that you might find yourself shouting out " point c ! " while they 're still getting to point b , or getting up with the rest of the audience after the big explosion which signals that nothing else of any consequence is going to happen .
Answer:
N