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: capsule : where are you tonight ,
leni rienfenstal ?
starship troopers is an expensive , hateful and unenjoyable piece of violent pornography -- and bad pornography , at that .
it is not good cinema , not good storytelling , and not even stupid fun
: it 's so cynically , calculatedly bone - headed that even the least demanding members of the audience i was with were alternately bored and revulsed
.
it 's one of the worst movies
i 've seen in a long time .
why am i calling this movie pornography ?
pornography , in the abstract , is anything which is calculated to appeal to the baser instincts .
i remember reading a review of full metal jacket which described the climact moment at the end of the movie , where private joker has to shoot the downed vc sniper , as " a near - pornographic eternity " .
i did n't agree with that assessment , but i could see what was being implied : the reviewer felt as if the audience was being incited to stand up and pump their fists and shout " do ' er , man , do ' er ! " that sentiment is echoed ad nauseam throughout starship troopers .
it 's * literally * like a giant recruitment film that has gone berserk .
it tries frantically to enlist our emotions but it winds up only being dull or sickening .
the film takes place in our future , when earth has come under attack by some alien species that does n't appear to have intelligence .
to counterattack , humankind does the single stupidest thing imaginable : instead of nuke the planet from orbit , which they 're clearly capable of , they send down grunts with m-16 rifles .
this is n't heinlein , it 's a bad wwii movie , one where all the most obvious points of satire are ever poked and prodded in combat scenes that are noisy , repetitive , and ultimately tiresome .
( one scene has a journalist on a battlefield , filimg soldiers being slaughtered , and ends with groaning predictability : said cameraman gets skewered , too . )
the soldiers and their commanders are consistently idiotic .
they do not possess a germ of tactical intelligence or even common sense .
they do n't even behave like soldiers in a bad * movie * , and therefore we do n't care about them .
we hated the tom berenger character in platoon , but he * mattered * , and therefore we were curious to learn about his fate .
here , we do n't even hate the bugs -- what 's there to hate ?
hating them would be like cursing a hurricaine .
if there 's anything really hateful there , the movie does n't know how to give it to us .
the screenwriter ( ed neumeier -- perhaps a better appelation would be " screen typist " ) and director ( the increasingly talent - impaired paul verhoeven ) have not found any way to make the characters or the story serve each other .
one of the subplots concerns a woman pilot who 's great at getting out of tight situations , and does it again and again and again .
once or twice is fine .
by the fifth or sixth time , it 's worn out its welcome .
there 's never any sense that these people are really thinking their way out of anything , or really being tested to show their mettle .
also , the movie is irritatingly selective with how effective the bugs are to earthling weaponry .
if a bug has one of the humans screaming in its grasp , then five guys can stand around it and blast away on full auto without doing a damned thing .
but if one human gets cornered , he lays waste to whole platoons of bugs with one clip .
uh - huh .
the very worst feature of the movie is its repulsive quasi - fascist flavor .
i say " quasi- " because while the movie uses many of the trappings of fascism ot eroticize its action -- the gear , the uniforms , etc . -- the movie does n't have the nerve ( or the brains ) to be genuinely fascist , or intelligent about the subject .
the bumpers between scenes , which are apparently intended to parody wartime recruitment propaganda are propaganda -- just so clumsy and oafish that they wind up making the bugs look relatively innocuous in comparison .
like the rest of the movie .
there 's more , i suppose , but it 's not worth it .
the acting is bland
, neither arsenic nor gravy ; the music disposable ; the camerawork turgid
.
the heartbreaking thing is that it makes independence day look like a masterpiece .
Solution:
N