Teacher: In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
Teacher: Now, understand the problem? If you are still confused, see the following 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 )
Solution: N
Reason: The phrases used in the review convey a negative sentiment (e.g. "presents it in a very bad package").

Now, solve this instance: all feature film directors who cut their teeth on music videos , please raise your hands .
thank you for identifying yourselves ; now would you all please go away .
your influence has to rank as one of the most annoying trends in filmmaking in the last decade , and it shows no sign of abating any time soon .
it is n't just the strobe light quality of your twenty - cuts - per - minute editing , or the numbing over - use of popular music artists on the soundtracks which makes me suspicious of any film advertised " featuring the music of . . .
"
no , it is a kind of cynicism you have perfected , banking on the idea that no one will care about the lack of a story if you include enough bells and whistles .
welcome to the club , scott kalvert .
your adaptation of the basketball diaries is loud and one - dimensional , serving only as the vehicle for a performance by leonardo dicaprio that is better in pieces than it is as a whole .
dicaprio stars as jim carroll , the new york poet / songwriter/ performer on whose autobiographical writings the film is based .
as the film opens , jim is a budding high school basketball star given to petty thievery and getting drunk with buddies mickey ( mark wahlberg ) , pedro ( james madio ) and neutron ( patrick mcgaw ) .
one night , jim graduates from inhalants to cocaine , and shortly thereafter to heroin .
jim 's addiction to the drug starts him on a downhill spiral , as he is kicked off the basketball team by his coach ( bruno kirby ) , kicked out of his home by his mother ( lorraine bracco ) , and drops out of school .
along with mickey and pedro , jim becomes a victim of the street , living from fix to fix and sinking lower and lower .
the basketball diaries has been bouncing around as a project for years , but the sticking point has always been that jim carroll as a character was too unsympathetic and too much a loner .
screenwriter bryan goluboff created the three characters who act as carroll 's posse , resulting in a jim carroll who is just as unsympathetic , but now with equally unsympathetic friends .
as a film , the basketball diaries may be intended primarily as a cautionary tale , a 100 minute long " just say no " public service announcement , but
as drama it is monumentally ineffective because it is impossible to care much about anyone in the movie .
jim is sort of a jerk even before he becomes a junkie , but i suppose that his pseudo - sensitive poetry and his devotion to his terminally ill friend are intended to balance that out .
perhaps we are expected to see jim as one of those " good kids who falls in with the wrong crowd " that every parent believes his or her troubled child to be ; i saw him simply as part of the bad crowd .
without a character who changes in any appreciable way , the basketball diaries rapidly degenerates into a collection of crimes committed by jim and his strung - out cohorts , all choreographed to an oppressively loud soundtrack .
director scott kalvert does n't have many scenes with intrinsic dramatic impact with which to work , so
he substitutes silly slow - motion photography , self - consciously funky camera angles and choppy editing . on only one occasion , when a steady pan around a room where jim is trying to detox makes it appear that the walls are closing in , are any of the gimmicks effective .
mostly , they just draw attention to how hollow the story is .
they also do n't allow leonardo dicaprio 's performance to be as strong as it could have been .
for every impressive moment , like his desperate attempt to get his mother to give him money , there is a scene where kalvert pulls too much of the focus to his own camera theatrics .
dicaprio is most effective when he is playing off other actors , particularly a fine sequence featuring ernie hudson as an ex - junkie who tries to help jim straighten out , but kalvert wo n't let character interaction define this story .
he wants to turn dicaprio into a rock star , shooting him in dramatic fashion but denying him the opportunity to do much acting .
at isolate moments , the basketball diaries is a fine showcase for dicaprio 's talents .
far more frequently , it looks like kalvert is trying to imagine what a long form velvet underground video might have looked like .
Student:
N