An example of a movie review. positive.

A: After the failure of "The Crusades" at the box office, Cecil B. DeMille stopped doing films about non-American history. His films for the next thirteen years were about our history from Jean Lafitte to World War II (Dr. Wassell). The first in order of production was this film, starring Gary Cooper as Wild Bill Hickok, with Jean Arthur as Calamity Jane. James Ellison was Buffalo Bill, John Miljan (not a villain as usual) was General George A. Custer, and Anthony Quinn was one of the Indians who fought at Little Big Horn. The villains were led by Charles Bickford (selling arms to the Indians) and Porter Hall as Jack McCall (who killed Wild Bill Hickok).

Basically the film takes up the history of the U.S. after the Civil War. Lincoln is shown at the start talking about what is the next step now that Lee has surrendered. Lincoln talks about the need to secure the west (more about this point later). Then he announces he has to go to the theater. That April 14th must have been very busy for Abe - in "Virginia City" he grants a pardon to Errol Flynn at the request of Miriam Hopkins on the same date.

Actually, while Lincoln was concerned about the West, his immediate thoughts on the last day of his Presidency were about reunifying the former Confederate states and it's citizens into the Union as soon as possible. It was Reconstruction that occupied his attention, not the west (except for the problems of Maximillian and his French controlled forces in Mexico against Juarez). But he had been involved in actual problems with the West. In 1862 he sent disgraced General John Pope, the loser at Second Manassas, to Minnesota to put down a serious Indian war by the Sioux (the subject of McKinley Kantor's novel, "Sprit Lake". Pope, incompetent against Lee and Jackson, turned out to be quite effective here, and the revolt was smashed.

However, with all Lincoln's actual attention to western problems, it is doubtful that he says (as Cooper repeats at least once), "The frontier should be secure." There is nothing to say he could not have said it, but it is hardly a profound pronouncement by a leading statesman. Like saying, Teddy Roosevelt said, "Eat a good breakfast every morning for your health." It is not a profound statement of policy. It is, at best, a statement of recognizable fact. Cooper turning it into a minor mantra, like Lincoln's version of the Monroe Doctrine, is ridiculous...typical of the way DeMille's scripts have really bad errors of common sense in them.

However, this is not a ruinous mistake. "The Plainsman" is an adventure film, and as such it has the full benefit of DeMille the film creator of spectacle. As such it is well worth watching. But not as a textbook on Lincoln's political ideas or his quotable legacy.

An example of a movie review. negative.

A: The movie's storyline is pat and quaint. Two women travel through the middle east and discover themselves. Unfortunately, if you are looking for a movie about the middle east and central Asia this is absolutely terrible.

The producers of the film either did no research or were unbelievably lazy when filming it. To begin with, and most glaringly incorrect, the Nuristanis, as they were known in the thirties, and indeed since the 1890s and their forceful conversion by Abdul-Rahman Shah of Aghnaistan, were not nomads. In fact they have not been nomads since the Aryan invasions of central Asia over three milenia ago.

Second, the city that is filmed as Tehran is not Tehran, which is understandable, however the geography of the area around the city could not be more strikingly DIFFERENT than the city of Tehran, which is surrounded on all side by a large mountain range, which predominates all of the cities views.

Third, Persian, despite the fact it is spoken in Iran and Afghanistan, is never heard in movie. When there are native speakers who do not speak in German they speak in Arabic. The 'Persian' guards at the border, in fact, say to each other 'Ma hadha rujal' (This is not a man) and not 'in mard nist' as it would be in Persian. Also, the love song between the Indian princess and one of the main characters is obviously in Spanish. While talking in the garden one of the main characters says that the Quran uses the words 'Ferdos' and 'jehaan' and makes some reference to drugs afterwords. These words certainly never appear in the Quran as they are Persian for Paradise (indeed, Ferdos and Paradise are very distant cognates between our languages) and 'World' respectively, though Jehaan is admittedly close to 'Jehennan' which is hell in Arabic. When they encounter the nomads in the desert the language spoken is also Arabic, this despite the fact that there are NO native speakers of Arabic in Iran and Afghanistan and its use is primarily religious, with some use in education at that time.

When they are stopped in Iran before they reach the Afghan border the people they encounter are wholly unlike any Iranian group. Their tents are typically bedouin with carpets decorating the walls and a high profile. In Iran it is also extremely uncommon for people to wear Turbans unless they are a cleric. The language spoken is clearly Arabic from the initial greeting of 'Ahlan wa Sahlan.' When they do reach Kabul the desert they find themselves in is sandy, totally unlike the rock dirt that is found in the arid parts of the Hindu Kush mountain range. There is an absence of the light green scrub that covers the ground in the summer and spring. The area is also not wholly consumed by the extreme mountains of the mountain range that won its name, The Indian Killers, because of its difficult and limiting ground.

In short, the story line is the only thing in this movie that holds any water and it is still weak and common place. It lacks any real draw to it, being merely the tale of two women trying to learning about themselves as they get to Nuristan, however, even that is still-born and no real development is felt, leaving the characters in the end just where they were in the beginning and nothing has changed except that world war two has broken loose. In short, this is a really bad movie that I would have rated at one star except for the good footage of Bedouin and the deserts of the Levant, even if they are misnamed.

An example of a movie review. negative.

A:
Oh, my gosh...I thought CBS primetime television shows were the

worst things Gerald McRaney appeared in...

Four people are experimented on by a crazed mind control

computer. That's it, don't rent it.

I saw this under one of its many titles- "Grey Matter," and it is

perhaps one of the worst films of recent memory. The other

reviews are right, it is awful. Never have so many establishing

shots appeared onscreen, NEVER. The cast is awful, the direction

is awful, and the script is awful. I cannot stress how awful this is.

Avoid it like you would smallpox.

This is rated (PG) for physical violence, some gun violence, mild

gore, some profanity, and some adult situations