In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.

[Q]: " idle hands " is distasteful , crass and derivative .
if an original thought found its way into this horror - comedy it would die of loneliness .
plus , you have to question the judgment and sensitivity of studio executives who would green light the release of a movie dealing with the slaughter of innocent teen - agers the week after the tragedy in littleton , colo .
the movie is insulting to horror film fans and teen - agers .
the plot , what little there is , deals with anton ( devon sawa ) , a high - school slacker who 's hand goes on a murderous rampage after becoming possessed .
along the way the hand kills anton 's parents and his two best friends .
the friends , also slackers , are so lazy that they return from the dead because the walk into the light was too far for them .
that is the level of this 's atrocity 's humor .
the movie treats death as a joke .
" idle hands " is gruesome and morbid .
the performances are stereotypical and cartoonish .
i realize this is supposed to pass for comedy , but recent events have surpassed what is on the screen .
it is not the fault of the filmmakers that real life has overtaken reel life .
and i can only presume that the writers of " idle hands , " terri hughes and ron milbauer , were trying to make some statement about today 's young people and their values in a satiric vein .
however , it 's hard to laugh at death these days , especially ones involving young people .
with the real horrors of the world put before us on television ,
a stale pastry such as " idle hands " should be held from release for a few weeks or months to give us time to catch our collective breaths .
" idle hands " is bad , no matter the circumstances in the world outside .
but the context of recent events only heightens its shortcomings .
the time is not right for this type of movie .
and as far as " idle hands " goes , the time may never be right .
this is a movie that shoud be consigned to the trash bin of cinema .
[A]: N

[Q]: much ballyhoo has been made over this new version of " lolita , " made in a time when one would think that a faithful adaptation of the infamous novel could be made , over its use of pedophilia , and as such , it 's important to address it straight - forwardly , before any other ideals such as goodness and themes can be discussed , as this film has been in film limbo for a number of years , lying around in vaults san a distributor , and having critics waiting to either hail it
a masterpiece or call it anticlimactic horseshit .
when seeing this film , after all the hoopla , keeping in mind that there are people , namely me , who are fans of the novel , who have been eagerly awaiting this flick since its creation . . .
well , you just have to wonder why no one really picked it up for distribution .
what 's even worse is that seeing this " lolita , " especially the first time and if you 're familiar with anything " lolita , " is admittingly very anticlimactic .
this is a real pity because when you really sit down to watch this film , ignoring all the crap that has preceeded it , it 's really quite a film , perhaps the best film by director adrian lyne ( although , really , look at its competition : " flashdance , " " fatal attraction , " and " indecent proposal " ) , at least besides " jacob 's ladder .
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i 've seen this " lolita " twice : the first time , i was n't so blown away .
it seemed overly dramatic and surprisingly unaffecting .
the second time , not really thinking about how i 've waited for what seems like forever to see it and how i 'm seeing it on a tv set on a premium cable channel and not a giant movie theatre ,
it really affected me emotionally .
the story itself is a surprisingly heartbreaking one , which is why it 's such a good novel , and why this is such a good film .
the story of a pedophile obsessed with a young 14-year old girl named dolores a .
k .
a . lolita is great because it 's not trash for the perverted
but because it 's about human obsession with things that are out of one 's reach .
its protagonist , the comically - named humbert humbert , is not your average pedophile , but a seriously wounded human being who embodies how we are all destroyed by our sick obsessions and idosyncrasies .
the character of lolita is almost a symbol of the forbidden apple in christian mythology , something that will destroy us but that we ca n't live without .
these ideas are all worked into this film nicely , but done in a way that is not heavy - handed at all , but instead lyrical and emotionally devastating .
the focus of this film , and the reason for making it , it seems , was to really penetrate the emotional depths of the novel and bring them to life on the screen in beautifully dramatic images , and scenes which are blatantly over - stylized .
the tone of the book is a comical one , but it 's also a tragic one , and humbert , telling the story from his perspective , blows every single thing out of perspective .
humbert exists in a fantsy world of his obsessions and desires , and this reflects the way the entire film has been designed .
we get a sense that perhaps it 's by doing this that humbert has really trapped himself into a fate that will ultimately leave him haggard and destroyed .
he weeps uncontrollably and never lets himself get over his original 14-year - old love , and allows himself to embody her as lolita .
he lets his feelings for her navigate all his decisions , and by the end , he has nothing but overly - dramatic feelings for her .
the story recognizes the extreme of this , almost out of a test , seeing if the readers will really sympathize with someone who is socially deemed a pervert , and one almost wonders while reading the book if the author , vladimir nabokov , wrote the book as a means to bring into focus his own sick obsessions , and perhaps bring them to peace .
the weirdest thing about this film is that by the end , when humbert has reached the finale of his obsessional journey , we can easily sympathize and even identify with him .
the opening and final images of the film are the same , and who has n't done a similar action , that is wandering about without any sense of reality or anything else but a deep sadness in us ?
this is the second time the novel has been adapted for the screen , the first time being filmed in - shock - 1962 , by stanley kubrick , who could n't possibly have brought the novel to the screen with as much faithfulness as lyne has been able to do , but did the next best thing : he economized for everything and came up with a droll black comedy about obsession in general .
in that film , he used the traps of society as benefits .
the studio demanded the final scene , that of a heinous murder , come first in the film so to portray humbert first as a murderer and second as a pedophile . . .
and when you see it , it gives the film depth of a man trapped by obsession .
the censors would n't allow anymore than a couple glances and subtle dialogue to show the , um , relationship between humbert and lolita , so kubrick decided to play it as comedy , but still allow the tragedy to seep through . looking at these two versions , especially after reading the novel ( and we all know that when we 've read a novel and see a film adaptation , we are bound to be angered by any size differences ) , it 's really impossible to compare them .
they both go for different things , and one has a lot more room to be as sexually frank as the novel was .
and although it 's true that several scenes are similar , and are thus up for comparison , overall it 's unfair to say which one is better and which one is worse .
i have never been one for saying the level of greatness of a film adaptation of a novel is deemed by how faithful it is , and i wo n't say that here . however ,
this film is pretty amazing , mostly because hey , i loved the book , and this film nearly reminded me of it .
it does n't have nearly as much wit ( a couple comical scenes , and even a lot of good chuckles , but just not totally witty ) , but it does have the same emotional toll that the novel had .
some of that is in the casting of the two leads .
jeremy irons , with his deep , soft british voice and gentle look , is an amazing humbert .
he 's droll in a very unique way , and , well , no one can look distraught the way he does .
he brings a wonderful sympathy to the role that goes beyond pathos and really comes up as being easy to identify with the audience .
and when he looks at lolita with love , and she looks at him with lust , you know that he 's her prisoner for as long as he lives .
and dominique swain , who plays the title character , is rather incredible .
she pulls off the tough role even better than sue lyon did in the original , wonderfully balancing the qualities of seduction , bratiness , and self - centeredness that marks the character .
it 's easy to see why she surrenders to humbert : she loves the attention , and knows that she can have her way with him at any time .
when he denies her something , she blackmails him effortlessly ( a scene involving a rocking chair and a little foot action is damn near classic ) , and when he stands up to her , she weeps and runs away , leaving humbert to follow her .
there are two other minor characters in the film , one who 's a road block in the beginning , and the other who 's a reappearing threat to the relationship .
the former is charlotte , lolita 's mother , played by melanie griffith .
in the book , charlotte is a monster of a woman : overbearing , constantly scolding her child , overly - religious , and ultimately selfish .
and she 's the one obstacle humbert
has to overcome to obtain his goal , at least in the beginning .
as played by shelly winters in the original , she represented all these qualities ; as played by griffith here , she 's about half of them .
it 's annoying to watch a film and play a game where you try to see who could have done the role way better than the one on screen without mentioning the actor who played them first .
and even though griffith is not really bad , persay , she 's nothing more .
the other is clare quilty , the writer who is also trying to seduce lolita , and succeeds , but at a price .
langella takes a totally different direction than the one peter sellars took in the original .
quilty was a comic character in the original :
a threat in the form of many forms , popping in states of rambling , german , proning , and eventually drunk .
langella takes the other route , allowing all of the creepiness to be unearthed , and the result is a character who exists in shadows and low shots , and who meets a wonderfully ironic ending , the exact opposite of what we thought of him .
as you can see , most of these are not improvements or mistakes done on the part of lyne and his screenwriter , stephen schiff , but just parts of a whole new look at the novel , at least cinema - wise .
this version is beautiful , and perpetually saddening .
the camera movements are stylized , and each shot is breathtakingly rich .
the acting is for the most part wonderful , and when we watch it , we really get a sense that for humbert , who is telling the story , the only two people on earth most of the time were humbert and lolita .
more importantly , it takes us right up the brink of emotion , then jumps right over it .
by the end , with humbert sadly driving recklessly in his car , following what he says is the only part of his life he does n't regret , we feel that we all lose to something we can never have .
[A]: P

[Q]: in 1989 , director edward zwick began his career with the powerful civil war drama , " glory , " but since then , he has made continuous disappointments , to me at least , with 1994 's " legends of the fall , " and 1996 's " courage under fire .
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those two films were n't bad , just not very good , but with zwick 's latest film , " the siege , " he has finally made one .
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the siege , " is a modern - day action - thriller that focuses on terrorism that is sweeping through new york city .
investigating the matter is fbi agents anthony hubbard ( denzel washington ) and frank haddad ( tony shalhoub ) , who are first hit by the ordeal when a city bus explodes with several innocent people on it .
later , a bomb goes off in a broadway theater , killing even more .
they soon meet cia operative elise kraft ( annette bening ) , who may very well hold the key to the identity of the arab terrorist .
there are some movies that simply do n't need to be made , and , " the siege " may very well be one of them .
oh , sure , zwick thinks he is making a " meaningful " action film , since he has added lots of exposition scenes in which the audience is basically lectured on the horrors of terrorism , but what he really has made is actually no more substantial than , say , " die hard , " which also starred bruce willis .
this time , willis is horribly wasted as a general of the u . s . army , who puts a state of martial law over nyc during the climax .
whatever points , " the siege , " earnestly tried to make , were obviously lost in the translation from page to screen , or maybe , zwick never really had anything serious to say in the first place .
the role of the arab community is offensively stereotypical , just as women were in the recent , " john caprenter 's vampires , " by placing them all in the category of " bad guys .
"
" the siege , " contains three fine actors --- washington , bening , and shalhoub --- but washington is stuck with a character that contains not an ounce of even remote development .
bening has slightly more to do , and has an intriguing character to work with , while shalhoub pretty much steals the show , even though , again ,
he has no real character .
by the climax of , " the siege , " with washington giving a sermon to willis on the so - called " message " of the story , i felt like i had wandered into a sequel to , " on deadly ground , " in which steven seagal gave a 10-minute speech at the end about preserving the environment .
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the siege " is constantly heavy - handed , not entertaining or insightful , and just goes to prove that not even the best actors can save a film that lacks a satisfactory screenplay .
[A]:
N