In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.

my first press screening of 1998 and already
i 've gotten a prime candidate for my worst ten of the year list .
what an auspicious beginning !
welcome to the dog days of winter when the only film openings of merit are those oscar contenders that the studios opened in late december in new york and l . a . and which are just now beginning to appear elsewhere .
firestorm , the directorial debut of dances with wolves 's academy award winning cinematographer dean semler , is the first of the new year 's crop of movies .
as our story opens , the movie pretentiously informs us that of the tens of thousands of firefighters only 400 are " smokejumpers .
"
we then cut to a plane load of smoke jumping cowboys and one cowgirl , where one of the gung - ho guys is taking a romance quiz from " cosmopolitan .
" having the time of their lives , they then jump into the middle of a burning forest .
when , even in the beginning , the director ca n't get the small parts right , you can sense the movie is in trouble .
with the noisy fire roaring all about them and with the trapped people huddled near their gasoline - filled cars , smokejumper monica ( christianne hirt ) tells them to get away from their soon - to - explode vehicles .
not bothering to shout nor even get close to them , she announces her warning without raising her voice much or approaching the people .
miraculously , they manage to hear her and move away .
in a movie that specializes in cheap shots , the camera locates the proverbial young girl trapped in a nearby burning building .
as it does throughout
, overly dramatic cinematographer stephen f .
windon from the postman uses extremely fast zooms right down to the endangered girl 's face .
our show 's two heroes , the crew 's chief , wynt perkins , played laconically by scott glenn , and his second - in - command , jesse graves , played by howie long in a weak attempt to be the next steven seagal , enter the burning house looking for the little girl .
in a panic they have difficulty in locating her before they are engulfed in flames .
the manipulative script has her hidden in her own dollhouse .
this mawkish show cuts back to monica , who has a life - or - death decision to make .
the chopper with the fire - retardant chemicals has only enough to save one group .
will it be the large group near the cars or the helpless little girl and monica 's two firefighting buddies ?
she has only seconds to decide who will be saved .
yes , she goes for the majority , but , miracle of miracles , the other three come out alive anyway .
not content with a traditional firefighting story , chris soth 's screenplay attempts to jazz it up by having william forsythe from palookaville play a vicious killer named randy earl shaye who sets a forest fire so that he can join the crew to put it out and then escape .
( " hoods in the woods , " is what the " ground - pounders " yell out when the convicts are bused in to help them fight the fire . ) along the way , shaye picks up an ornithologist hostage played by suzy amis , who turns out to have been trained in warrior ways by her father , who was a marine drill instructor .
most of the highly predictable movie is a long chase in which poor howie long is
given one ridiculous stunt after another to look silly performing .
he flings a chain saw backwards over his head while riding a speeding motorcycle so that the saw can hit the windshield of the pursuing truck .
arguably
the low point is when he escapes from a locked burning building by riding a motorcycle conveniently parked inside .
using a ramp , he shoots straight out of the top of the building 's attic , and when he hits the ground , he just rides off in a cloud of dust .
when the film is n't using some stock footage of actual forest fires , the simulated ones look hokey .
editor jack hofstra cheapens the action even more by his use of burning flames in scene transitions .
the ending , with its sick twists , manages to be even worse than the rest of the movie .
perhaps the best that can be said for the picture is the faint praise i heard afterwards in the lobby , " it 's not as bad as some of the television sitcoms .
" firestorm runs mercifully just 1 : 29 .
it is rated r for violence and language and would be acceptable for teenagers .
N

one of the 90s ' most unwelcome thriller trends returns from the grave : it 's the " _ _ _ from hell " movie !
starting in the early nineties , we were subjected to nearly every conceivable combination of relationships - from - hell !
there were boyfriends from hell , friendly neighborhood cops from hell , nannies from hell , and even secretaries from hell .
but hush has found an old standby that somehow was forgotten in the rush : the mother - in - law from hell ! ! ! ! !
the mother - in - law in question is martha , played by jessica lange .
she has been single - handedly running the family horse farm , kilronan .
her son , jackson ( johnathon schaech ) and his girlfriend , helen ( gwyneth paltrow ) , live in new york , and have no intention to move back down south to the rural kilronan .
but those intentions are about to change .
you see , martha lives by manipulation .
she has used it in years past to breed many championship horses .
now , she believes she can use it to breed herself a grandson .
though at first , helen finds martha charming , soon she is caught in the domineering martha 's web of deception .
it 's hard to understand why nobody ever wises up to martha ' schemes .
as written , most of the characters in the film must be very slow witted .
but then , the film even treats the audience like idiots .
it tries to get away with things ( like leaving a critical piece of evidence in a rather unlikely place ) without even batting an eye .
then again an audience which accepts characters as shallow as these is n't one that 's likely to question details .
jessica lange 's martha is the only semi - developed character in the film , and she applies her talents to redeem it as much as she can .
a character that could have been simply awful is merely groan - worthy .
gwyneth paltrow does n't have much to build upon , as helen 's only character trait seems to be " daughter - in - law " .
still , she fares better than johnathon schaech , whose character is so nonexistent , he 's inexplicably missing for much of the film .
still , there have been much worse
" _ _ _
_ from hell " films .
even with its paper - thin characters and ludicrous setups , hush manages to create a few thrills in a color - by - numbers fashion .
you know what 's coming , but occasionally the film will deliver a shock or two .
the old formulas are around for a reason , but that does n't mean they taste fresh .
N

ladies and gentlemen , payback is the most expensive episode of " the equalizer " i 've ever seen .
gibson plays porter , a burglar shot and left for dead by his wife ( deborah kara unger , in an all - too - brief cameo ) and partner ( henry ) after a successful heist .
as a morgue attendant sets about removing the bullets from porter 's back , porter miraculously springs back to life .
he makes it his mission , as a walking dead man without a conscience , to exact revenge on those who screwed him and reclaim his share of the loot .
( in a running gag , porter demands $ 70 000 , but everybody mishears him and assumes he 's after the entire $ 130 000 haul . ) in his travels ( or travails ) , porter encounters several other one - named villainous cretins like fairfax ( james coburn as a white - haired , millionaire thief ) and carter ( kristofferson , as a brown - haired , millionaire thief - the kingpin of the obligatory " operation " ) .
helgeland 's film ( which was recut by mel the producer ) is devoid of an imperative dime store charm .
the novelty of seeing a big movie star mercilessly dispatching criminals wears off quickly : a ) because the bad guys can only be differentiated by their coifs , and b ) because mel 's schtick does n't evolve from act one - he 's the terminator stranded in a plot without a sci - fi hook to keep us interested after the initial sadistic thrill is gone .
payback should have been called playback : it 's a 102-minute loop of the same short sequence .
( mel : " i want my money .
" anonymous villain : " no .
" mel shoots gun .
anonymous villain dies .
mel meets up with his hooker friend ( bello ) .
second verse , same as the first . )
it 's not porter 's single - mindedness that robs the film of snap , crackle , and pop ; as a character who has already " died " once , he has nothing to lose and so much to gain .
the movie lacks danger .
the only thing porter is in jeopardy of is putting the audience to sleep .
payback has a gritty , metallic look to it that also becomes monotonous
; its cinematography would be more appropriate in one of those bleak urban psychodramas that come out of england every couple of months .
( director of photography ericson core should have been fired early on for lighting bello , so va - va - va - voom in permanant midnight , to look like a potato in a gregg allman wig . ) to analyze such mediocrity is to grant payback far more attention than it deserves .
perhaps only someone as experienced with antagonists - as - protagonists as tarantino - look what he did with the similar hero - less botched - robbery tale reservoir dogs - could have pulled off this material ( a loose remake of john boorman 's point blank ) .
the movie presents us with the conventions of pulp fiction ( all women are femme fatales ; even the cops are in on it , etc . ) and crosses them with the conventions of cheesy tv crime melodramas ( death is never in the cards for the main character , etc . ) but transcends neither .
N