input question: Select the correct sentiment of the following review: One of the silliest movies of the 1940s, an unbearable haunted house comedy with music starring Kay Kyser. Kyer, orchestra leader and radio-star (and eternal college fraternity goof-off), was sort of the precursor to Spike Jones, hamming it up for his guests and backed up willingly by his merry troupe of musicians. He's hired to play a birthday party in a gloomy mansion, the kind where poison darts imported from Africa are framed and hung on the wall. The shindig is beset with a creepy judge, a scary professor, an ominous swami, lots of giggly females, and enough bad jokes to fill three Bob Hope pictures. The songs (by Jimmy McHugh and Johnny Mercer) are nothing to brag out, and neither is over-confident Kyser, yukking it up with elbow-in-the-ribs material that turns 1940 back ten years. * from ****
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output answer: negative

input question: Select the correct sentiment of the following review: North Africa in the 1930's. To a small Arab town on the edge of the Sahara comes a beautiful woman looking for meaning to her life & a handsome Trappist monk fleeing from his crisis of faith. They will meet and passions will be stirred, but not even the Sand Diviner knows if they will find happiness or sorrow, here, in THE GARDEN OF ALLAH.

The plot is pure hokum, but the film is still great fun & beautiful to look at. Marlene Dietrich & Charles Boyer are a superb screen couple. She is, to put it simply, gorgeous, and Boyer gives a most effective, understated performance, letting his sensitive face do much of his acting for him.

The supporting cast is excellent: Basil Rathbone, in a sympathetic role as a Count who loves the desert; Joseph Schildkraut as a friendly, talkative guide (all the "Arabic" he & others speak in the film is pure gibberish); Lucile Watson as a gentle Mother Superior; Alan Marshal as an honorable young French officer; Tilly Losch as a dangerous dancer; Henry Brandon as a comic porter; John Carradine as the mysterious Sand Diviner; and magnificent Sir C. Aubrey Smith as a wise old priest.

Movie mavens will recognize Helen Jerome Eddy as a nun; Marcia Mae Jones & Bonita Granville (peeking over the nun's shoulder) as convent girls; gaunt Nigel De Brulier as a monastery lector; and Ferdinand Gottschalk as a hotel clerk, all uncredited.

Color films of the 1930's are both rare & lovely to look at, and this movie is no exception - the cinematography is as colorful as the desert itself. THE GARDEN OF ALLAH was the first Technicolor film to be shot on location. Yuma, Arizona gave the film makers all the sand dunes they could desire, but contaminated drinking water & 135 degree heat soon had the company in revolt. When the daily rushes showed Boyer's face had burned a bright tomato red, producer David O. Selznick finally gave in. The remainder of the film was shot on a Hollywood sound stage.
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output answer: positive

input question: Select the correct sentiment of the following review: THE NIGHT LISTENER (2006) **1/2 Robin Williams, Toni Collette, Bobby Cannavale, Rory Culkin, Joe Morton, Sandra Oh, John Cullum, Lisa Emery, Becky Ann Baker. (Dir: Patrick Stettner)

Hitchcockian suspenser gives Williams a stand-out low-key performance.

What is it about celebrities and fans? What is the near paranoia one associates with the other and why is it almost the norm?

In the latest derange fan scenario, based on true events no less, Williams stars as a talk-radio personality named Gabriel No one, who reads stories he's penned over the airwaves and has accumulated an interesting fan in the form of a young boy named Pete Logand (Culkin) who has submitted a manuscript about the travails of his troubled youth to No one's editor Ashe (Morton) who gives it to No one to read for himself.

No one is naturally disturbed but ultimately intrigued about the nightmarish existence of Pete being abducted and sexually abused for years until he was finally rescued by a nurse named Donna (Collette giving an excellent performance) who has adopted the boy but her correspondence with No one reveals that Pete is dying from AIDS. Naturally No one wants to meet the fans but is suddenly in doubt to their possibly devious ulterior motives when the seed is planted by his estranged lover Jess (Cannavale) whose sudden departure from their New York City apartment has No one in an emotional tailspin that has only now grown into a tempest in a teacup when he decides to do some investigating into Donna and Pete's backgrounds discovering some truths that he didn't anticipate.

Written by Armistead Maupin (who co-wrote the screenplay with his former lover Terry Anderson and the film's novice director Stettner) and based on a true story about a fan's hoax found out has some Hitchcockian moments that run on full tilt like any good old fashioned pot-boiler does. It helps that Williams gives a stand-out, low-key performance as the conflicted good-hearted personality who genuinely wants to believe that his number one fan is in fact real and does love him (the one thing that has escaped his own reality) and has some unsettling dreadful moments with the creepy Collette whose one physical trait I will leave unmentioned but underlines the desperation of her character that can rattle you to the core.

However the film runs out of gas and eventually becomes a bit repetitive and predictable despite a finely directed piece of hoodwink and mystery by Stettner, it pays to listen to your own inner voice: be careful of what you hope for.
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output answer:
positive