In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
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Question: whether or not i would be considered a trekker probably depends on whom you would ask .
i have been a fan of both the original series and its recently retired follow - up , as well as the even- numbered entries in the film series .
however , i have never been one of those folks who store away trek minutiae and get into debates over the relative merits of spock vs .
data .
somewhere along the line , the " star trek " film series began to seem more and more directed at those in the latter category , and star trek :
generations may be the natural conclusion of this direction .
its production values may be high , but the writing is frequently appalling , and instead of a script has a collection of references , in - jokes and ill - defined characters .
generations opens in the late 23rd century , where members of the original enterprise crew , including captain james t .
kirk ( william shatner ) , are present for the christening of the latest ship to bear that name .
no sooner is it out on its maiden voyage than a distress signal brings them to the nexus , a mysterious ribbon of energy .
among those rescued from the nexus is long - lived alien
dr .
soran ( malcolm mcdowell ) , but he is none - too - pleased at being back in the real world .
seventy - eight years later , soran is still trying to get back to the nexus , and again encounters an enterprise ,
this one led by captain jean - luc picard ( patrick stewart ) .
soran 's plan involves destroying a star with an inhabited planet , and the only hope for saving 230 million people is the historic meeting of two enterprise captains .
i do n't think it is an insult to fans of " star trek " to suggest that to a certain extent , the particulars of a plot are not really the most important elements in a " trek " film .
it 's about a chance to visit with old friends , and if they are involved in a truly interesting story it can be considered gravy .
but even that interpretation assumes that characterization has to be consistent , and in generations that just does n't happen .
data ( brent spiner ) is particularly victimized by this sloppy writing .
in the film 's major sub - plot , data decides to use a chip which will give him human emotions , a chip he has had in his possession for over a year .
what is his motivation for taking this drastic and perhaps dangerous step ?
he does n't get a joke .
once the chip is in place , spiner gets to have a lot of fun with data 's new emotions , but the point is that he 's no longer the data we know .
if the rest of the " next generation " cast fares any better , it 's only because they 're on the screen
so little that they 're simply window dressing .
but then again , this story is n't really about the new crew .
it 's about kirk and picard , the cowboy and the politician , sharing the screen .
the huge surprise is that william shatner blows patrick stewart away .
perhaps because he knows this is his last go - round in the part that made him a legend , shatner looks like he 's having the time of his life ; stewart , on the other hand ,
borders on the deferrential , and is saddled with the same lackluster motivations as everyone else in the cast .
stewart 's edginess is indicative of what may be a very bad sign for paramount 's hopes to turn the new cast into the same kind of franchise the original cast was : these are clearly the not ready for big screen players .
by contrast , the prologue which features scotty ( james doohan ) and chekhov ( walter koenig ) is the highlight of the film .
these characters have become part of the popular mythology , and when they take over the enterprise in a moment of distress , it 's a moment of high energy .
only thirty years of history can create a moment like that , and that 's time this new crew does n't have .
it certainly does n't help that the plot they are stuck in is so convoluted and badly constructed that you need to leave a trail of bread crumbs to find your way out again .
it 's also loaded with little gags all aimed at those who are familiar enough with the series to turn to all their friends in a shared nudge of recognition .
i wonder whether anyone who is coming in cold to the " trek " universe at this point would be anything but
baffled and bored
by what is going on .
and what a waste of malcolm mcdowell , who could have been a great monomanical villain but should have been given a much more compelling reason for his obsession .
there are plenty of details both scientific and of continuity to pick at , but to do so would be to ignore generations ' major flaws .
however , i would like to make one recommendation : seatbelts .
not just for the enterprise crew , although you 'd think by the 24th century space travel would n't involve rolling around on the floor during a battle .
no , i think the audience might need them more .
this journey is one bumpy ride .

Answer: N

Question: 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

Question: after 1993 's " falling down , " i hoped that joel schumacher would mature into a great director .
since then he has offered us two so - so adaptations of john grisham novels ( " the client " and " a time to kill " ) and two batman movies that lowered the standards of that franchise .
although these disappointments dampened my enthusiasm for schumacher 's potential , the publicity for his latest release , " 8 mm , " raised new hope .
it promised to be something unusual .
it was n't .
the plot goes like this : tom welles ( nicolas cage ) is a private eye who is hired by a wealthy woman , allegorically named mrs .
christian ( myra carter ) , to investigate an 8 mm movie found among her late husband 's belongings .
the movie appears to be a snuff film in which a teenage girl is raped and murdered by a man in a leather mask ( who reminds me of bane in schumacher 's " batman & robin " ) . because murders can be realistically simulated in movies , mrs .
christian wants tom to discover if the girl is alive or dead .
by combing through missing persons reports , tom finds the girl 's name and tracks her to los angeles .
with the aid of max california ( joaquin phoenix ) , a video store clerk ( and another symbolic name ) , tom wanders through the underworld of pornography in search of snuff .
the plot bears an obvious resemblance to paul schrader 's " hardcore , " in which a father goes deeper and deeper into the industries of porn and sex to find his missing daughter .
both films are modeled on dante 's " the inferno , " of course ; " 8 mm " makes that connection overly obvious by casting max as virgil and having him constantly tell tom that they were heading toward a meeting with the devil .
" hardcore " is a much more subtle and meaningful film .
"
8 mm " had a lot of promise .
in its better moments it 's an examination of violence as entertainment and of the beast within even a nice guy like tom .
one moment of the first sort : when we first meet max he 's reading truman capote 's " in cold blood " underneath the cover of a porn novel .
" in cold blood " was the father of the true - crime genre , which is the literary equivalent of snuff films .
max promises that we will see examples of the second theme when he tells tom , " dance with the devil and the devil do n't change ; the devil changes you .
" tom does change - i'll
let you discover the specifics for yourself - but not permanently .
schumacher and screenwriter andrew kevin walker
did n't have the guts to take tom so far down the dark tunnel that he could n't come back .
( walker 's " seven " did a much better job on that theme by refusing to compromise ) .
cage tries hard to pull it off , but the script does n't give him enough to work with .
phoenix walks away with the movie - he 's smart , charming , and funny .
other cast members include " fargo " 's peter stormare camping it up as porn auteur dino velvet and " the sopranos " 's james gandolfini as a soulless porn merchant who pushes tom too far .
in the last analysis , since " 8 mm " falls short of its pretensions and its promise , its just another private eye story in the raymond chandler / ross macdonald tradition of having the detective uncover the depravity behind the glossy facade of wealth and privilege .
however , unlike other predictable fare in the genre - last year 's " twilight , " for example- " 8 mm " is especially disappointing because it could have been much more than it is .

Answer:
N