An example of a movie review. negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive).

A: Having read during many years about how great this film was, how it established Ruiz among the french critics (specially the snobbish Cahiers crowd), when I finally watched it about a year ago, I found it pretty disappointing (but then, I guess my expectations were sky-high). Shot in saturated black and white, this deliberately cerebral film (made for TV, and mercifully, only an hour long) is told in the form of a conversation between an art connoisseur and an off-screen narrator as they ponder through a series of paintings (which are shown in the style of tableaux vivants) and try to find if they hold some clues about a hidden political crime. (The awful Kate Beckinsale film Uncovered has a similar argument). Borgesian is a word I read a lot in reviews about this movie, but I would say almost any Borges story is more interesting than this film.

An example of a movie review. positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive).

A: I've seen this movie twice with my teenagers who love it. This one ought to be a cult fave! The best line, "Your dress is deeply cool!" says the Prince to Cinderella. Kathleen Turner shines as the stepmother. I also like the 1950's era cars and motorcycles. The melancholy prince is a great departure from the typical swashbuckler. He tries to stay cool, but fails to hide his love for the fairy-tale princess-to-be. Her slipper is not glass (truer to the original story), but Cinderella loses is nonetheless but gets it back from the heir to the throne. My only complaint is that it is not shown more and seems to be almost impossible to get. Hopefully Blockbuster or Amazon will start stocking this one sometime soon.

An example of a movie review. positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive).

A:
The production quality, cast, premise, authentic New England (Waterbury, CT?) locale and lush John Williams score should have resulted in a 3-4 star collectors item. Unfortunately, all we got was a passable 2 star "decent" flick, mostly memorable for what it tried to do.........bring an art house style film mainstream. The small town locale and story of ordinary people is a genre to itself, and if well done, will satisfy most grownups. Jane Fonda was unable to hide her braininess enough to make her character believable. I wondered why she wasn't doing a post doctorate at Yale instead of working in a dead end factory job in Waterbury. Robert DiNiro's character was just a bit too contrived. An illiterate, nice guy loser who turns out to actually be, with a little help from Jane's character, a 1990 version of Henry Ford or Thomas Edison.

This genre has been more successfully handled by "Nobody's Fool" in the mid 90s and this year's (2003) "About Schmidt." I wish that the main stream studios would try more stuff for post adolescents and reserve a couple of screens at the multi cinema complexes for those efforts.

I'll give it an "A" for effort.