TASK DEFINITION: In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
PROBLEM: synopsis : a mentally unstable man undergoing psychotherapy saves a boy from a potentially fatal accident and then falls in love with the boy 's mother , a fledgling restauranteur .
unsuccessfully attempting to gain the woman 's favor , he takes pictures of her and kills a number of people in his way .
comments : stalked is yet another in a seemingly endless string of spurned - psychos - getting - their - revenge type movies which are a stable category in the 1990s film industry , both theatrical and direct - to - video .
their proliferation may be due in part to the fact that they 're typically inexpensive to produce ( no special effects , no big name stars ) and serve as vehicles to flash nudity ( allowing them to frequent late - night cable television ) .
stalked wavers slightly from the norm in one respect : the psycho never actually has an affair ; on the contrary , he 's rejected rather quickly ( the psycho typically is an ex - lover , ex - wife , or ex - husband ) .
other than that , stalked is just another redundant entry doomed to collect dust on video shelves and viewed after midnight on cable .
stalked does not provide much suspense , though that is what it sets out to do .
interspersed throughout the opening credits , for instance , a serious - sounding narrator spouts statistics about stalkers and ponders what may cause a man to stalk ( it 's implicitly implied that all stalkers are men ) while pictures of a boy are shown on the screen .
after these credits , a snapshot of actor jay underwood appears .
the narrator states that " this is the story of daryl gleason " and tells the audience that he is the stalker .
of course , really , this is the story of restauranteur brooke daniels .
if the movie was meant to be about daryl , then it should have been called stalker not stalked .
okay .
so we know who the stalker is even before the movie starts ; no guesswork required .
stalked proceeds , then , as it begins : obvious , obvious , obvious .
the opening sequence , contrived quite a bit , brings daryl and brooke ( the victim ) together .
daryl obsesses over brooke , follows her around , and tries to woo her .
ultimately rejected by her , his plans become more and more desperate and elaborate .
these plans include the all - time , psycho - in - love , cliche : the murdered pet .
for some reason , this genre 's films require a dead pet to be found by the victim stalked .
stalked is no exception ( it 's a cat this time -- found in the shower ) .
events like these lead to the inevitable showdown between stalker and stalked , where only one survives ( guess who it invariably always is and you 'll guess the conclusion to this turkey ) .
stalked 's cast is uniformly adequate : not anything to write home about but also not all that bad either .
jay underwood , as the stalker , turns toward melodrama a bit too much .
he overdoes it , in other words , but he still manages to be creepy enough to pass as the type of stalker the story demands .
maryam d'abo , about the only actor close to being a star here
( she played the bond chick in the living daylights ) , is equally adequate as the " stalked " of the title , even though she seems too ditzy at times to be a strong , independent business - owner .
brooke ( d'abo ) needs to be ditzy , however , for the plot to proceed .
toward the end , for example , brooke has her suspicions about daryl .
to ensure he wo n't use it as another excuse to see her , brooke decides to return a toolbox he had left at her place to his house .
does she just leave the toolbox at the door when no one answers ?
of course not .
she tries the door , opens it , and wanders around the house .
when daryl returns , he enters the house , of course , so our heroine is in danger .
somehow , even though her car is parked at the front of the house , right by the front door , daryl is oblivious to her presence inside .
the whole episode places an incredible strain on the audience 's suspension of disbelief and questions the validity of either character 's intelligence .
stalked receives two stars because , even though
it is highly derivative and somewhat boring
, it is not so bad that it can not be watched .
rated r mostly for several murder scenes and brief nudity in a strip bar , it is not as offensive as many other thrillers in this genre are .
if you 're in the mood for a good suspense film , though , stake out something else .

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: it seems like i 'm reviewing cheeseball horror movies on a monthly basis now .
scream revitalized a genre the studios are now intent on burying into the ground again - the serial killers in these new slasher movies have nothing on sony and miramax in the " relentless " department .
i still know what you did last summer is a terrible film in many respects , but in the wake of the stupefyingly bad urban legend , it 's citizen hook .
jennifer love - hewitt reprises her role as buxom teenager julie james - who apparently escaped certain doom at the end of the last movie by . . . waking up .
she lives in fear of ben willis , the vengeful fisherman - victim of a hit and run by julie and her pals .
paranoid and beat , she accepts a free trip to the bahamas from her friend karla ( norwood ) , winner of the local radio station 's 4th of july getaway giveaway .
bikini - ready julie invites
boyfriend ray ( prinze , jr . ) , who - and here 's the movie 's biggest mystery - turns her down , but changes his mind and plans to surprise her before take - off . until he gets a roadside visit from captain hell - liner himself , that is .
unaware of this and feeling shunned , julie goes on vacation , anyway , with karla , karla 's boyfriend ( pfeiffer ) , and will ( matthew settle ) , a real boy - next - door type who 's sweet on julie .
to make a long story short - i ca n't believe it took a paragraph to describe the set - up for this gratuitous sequel - the trip is a disaster .
not only is it storm season , not only is the desk clerk ( the frighteners ' jeffrey combs ) a jerk , not only are the few island residents and our heroic vacationers getting picked off by the resourceful willis one - by - one , but the karaoke machine is n't working properly !
( you think killing is hard ?
try reprogramming a laserdisc so that gloria gaynor 's " i will survive
" now contains the lyric
" i still know what you did last summer ! " )
all is not lost - ray is on his way to save the day , and a helpful witch doctor is saying little prayers for julie and co .
this picture is really about breasts : two of them .
julie , like a good horror heroine , never does up her shirt to the collar , always wears white in the rain , and keeps sexy underwear on in case of a sudden desire to tan .
based on the hormonal charge i got out of the movie , i ca n't imagine what it was doing to the ten year old boy who sat next to me
- he gets jennifer love - hewitt , and my generation got heather langenkamp !
lucky bastard .
i did n't like
i know what you did last summer
and i ca n't say i liked this continuation any more or less .
the pacing in both films is languid-
how is it that so much time passes with neither murder nor character development ?
i still know what you did last summer has a better sense of humour than the first one , though , and at least it explains away willis 's random selection of victims .
( i do n't think the hotel maid or the stoner dude had the slightest idea
what julie did last summer . )
director cannon ( judge dredd ) is a competent filmmaker but not a particularly imaginative one - if there is a part three ( what on earth would they call it ? ) , and the fun denouement suggests there will be , here 's my suggestion : hire a filmmaker with flair , someone who can really energize this stillborn series - someone who wo n't rely on so many shock notes .
and let that person run wild with the camera .
( aside : if blandy [ sic ] must appear in the next one , try to keep the number of times she says " baby " to a minimum .
thanks in advance . )

SOLUTION: N

PROBLEM: the soldiers of three kings have taken their cue from movies about vietnam .
( fitting , since the media - saturated gulf war became a pop entertainment . )
while driving through a long , flat iraqi desert ( in a humvee with a bart simpson hood ornament ) , one of the men under special forces sgt .
maj .
archie gates ' ( who 's steering )
command requests a beach boys tune .
these men want their apocalypse now moment , only instead of surfing , they bop to the music and skeet
shoot out the back of the vehicle , armed with automatic rifles .
our three kings ( okay , four ) are good fighters , but they do n't necessarily take operation desert storm seriously - it 's a reprieve from their hellish day jobs .
they are gates , new father sgt .
troy barlow ( wahlberg ) , sgt .
chief elgin ( cube ) , and pvt .
conrad vig ( music video director jonze ) .
at story 's start , president bush has declared a ceasefire , and american troops are tying up loose ends .
barlow , elgin , and vig discover during a round up of iraqi captives an " ass - map " that points to a bunker filled with gold bullion .
gates leaves his jurisdiction to commandeer the situation ; he proposes - demands - that barlow , elgin , and vig join him on a treasure hunt .
ditching his escort , a relentless reporter named adriana cruz ( nora dunn ) , is easy .
so is finding the treasure , until the four men realize the magnitude of discord still breathing in iraq : saddam 's men are threatening the dictator 's detractors ( citizens of his own country ) with violence .
when gates and company arrive at the bunker with a stolen truck , ready to loot , the unarmed rebels want help .
( bush encouraged them to rise up against the government , but provided no military support for such cause . )
gates convinces the vault 's guards that this is a post - war mission , and even accepts their assistance in loading the truck .
the situation could go off without a hitch : the former enemies bear no grudges .
but the money hungry gates has a conscience , and when one female bystander is shot by a sadistic grunt before these americans have left the scene , he orders barlow , elgin and vig to open fire on the surrounding arab forces .
the result : barlow is kidnapped , and the filmmakers imply that these would - be kings are seeing more action than they ever did during wartime .
barlow is eventually locked in a dank room and wired up to a shocking device .
his interrogator lost his family to the bombs , and he wants barlow to imagine the demise of his own wife and child .
( he does , in chilling , lasting images . )
i liked these scenes best , because the political became personal .
it 's one thing to champion the plight of thousands ; it 's another to see a ceiling cave in atop a baby in a crib .
russell has shocked us before : his first film , spanking the monkey , is about a young man 's affair with his bedridden mother .
( it 's great . )
his second , flirting with disaster , features a character who has an armpit fetish .
one could argue that it 's easier to make an audience react to such sexual deviance than explosions , though ; russell disturbs us in three kings by being no - nonsense about the violence .
when barlow conjures the detonation of his suburban home , russell mutes
the sound - we're paying attention to the debris instead of thx bombast .
three kings is russell 's first visually arresting picture .
stylistically , it stands apart from other war dramas .
newton thomas sigel 's cinematography of the exteriors is overexposed and extremely grainy , which is , of course , entirely appropriate .
one practically breaks out in sweat staring at the screen .
( a friend enthusiastically added , " it 's like having sand in your eyes . " ) this also helps to blur the fact that the actual locations are far removed from the persian gulf facade .
( three kings was shot in arizona , california , and mexico . )
russell throws plenty at sigel 's camera for it to observe -
as was the case with russell 's previous efforts , the most absurd moments are also the film 's most realistic , even the most poignant .
( we watch a bullet puncture an organ from the inside . ) if anything , three kings settles down and stops surprising us .
its climax is pure hollywood , no doubt the answer to why a major studio felt comfortable getting into bed with the indie - minded russell .
subsequently , the characters become more cartoonish - barlow 's post - torture revelry felt phony , and chief , a strong presence in the first third , fails to escape the god - fearing - ultra - serious - anti - racist - black - man - of - power clich ?
-so much for cube avoiding token status .
( the arab players , on the other hand , duck stereotype . )
clooney , too , transforms into a blandly heroic protestor - marching with the rebels , i waited for him to shout , " let my people go !
"
hayseed vig notwithstanding , the protagonists are very intelligent , and self - serving , too ; i had a glimmer of hope , based on russell 's filmography , that our antiheroes would revert to their greedy selves at some juncture .
( it 's not spoiling much to write that . )
then again , what historical importance would such nastiness serve ?
( there 's already enough cynicism in the film 's mentioning of kuwait 's oil - infested waters . )
russell offers the masses a primer on the oft - dismissed gulf conflict , and pulled off a neat trick : a war tale full of battles that takes place after a truce has been declared .
if he set out to make something socially / culturally / politically / globally significant , he succeeded . with flair .

SOLUTION:
P