Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here: " It had to be You" is another sign that Hollywood is running out of ideas. This picture is about Charlie Hudson a former police officer turned Author. When Charlie's fiance goes out of town he's stuck with all of the wedding planning. He spends a week at a fancy hotel and meets Anna Penn a teacher who just happens to also be getting married. The two quickly become friends and set out to plan their separate weddings together. This is when the plot gets boring, Charlie falls in love with Anna and she has to choose between a safe life or Charlie. This movie rips off every romantic comedy ever made and just has you waiting for the end of the movie so you can do something else. Micahel Vartan and Natasha Henstridge give really mediocre performances which just makes this movie all the more gut wrenching to watch.
Problem: Write a negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: Cult of the Cobra is now available on DVD in a pristine print that does full justice to whatever merits it has as a movie. Unfortunately, that is not saying much.

It has a competent cast of second-rankers that acquit themselves as well as could be expected under the circumstances. It is efficiently directed, entirely on sound stages and standing sets on the studio backlot. It looks OK, but is ponderously over-plotted and at a scant 80 minutes it is still heavily padded.

For example, the double cobra attack on the first of the GIs was surely one attack too many.

The business about Julia choosing to marry Pete rather than Tom never amounts to anything. Tom immediately falls in love with Lisa and she never has any reason to be jealous of Julia (nor is she).

Julia's 'feminine intuition' is introduced as if it is going to lead to an important plot development, but it doesn't. Similarly, Pete's investigation into cobra cults and the suspicion that briefly falls on Tom serve no purpose other than to fill up screen time.

These are just symptoms of the underlying problem. The movie is structured like a mystery but it isn't. As soon as the curse is pronounced we know exactly where the story is heading, so the characters are left painstakingly uncovering what we already know.

The ending is particularly lame. Julia is menaced purely by accident. Lisa has no reason to want to kill her - she just happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. When Tom turns up in the nick of time to save her, it is not even clear whether she was threatened at all. He then simply disposes of the cobra in the way any of the previous victims might have done.

It is such an inconsequential little pipsqueak of a story that I found myself wondering how on earth it had been pitched to the studio heads. Then it occurred to me. Someone said: "Those Val Lewton movies were very successful over at RKO, so why don't we make one like that?"

Cult of the Cobra is clearly modelled on Cat People: mysterious, troubled, shape-shifting woman falls in love with the hero, is apparently frigid, kills people, arouses the suspicions of the hero's woman friend and dies at the end. But 'modelled on' doesn't mean 'as good as' - by a wide margin. It copies, but doesn't understand what it is copying.

It is obviously trying for the low-key, suggestive Lewton style, but this approach doesn't follow through into the story. Lisa is no Irene. She is meant to be strange and mysterious but there is no mystery about her. We get a glimpse of her after the first attack in Asia, so immediately recognise her when she turns up in New York. There is never any doubt about her purpose. Neither is there any ambiguity about whether of not she actually turns into a snake.

Then again, during her nocturnal prowling we get, not one, but two attempts at 'buses'. Neither come off, because the director doesn't understand what makes a 'bus' work and, in any case, they happen to the stalker, not the person being stalked.

These faint echoes of Cat People give Cult of the Cobra whatever small distinction it might have, but they only draw attention to the yawning gulf between the original and the imitation.

Plagiarism may be the sincerest form of flattery, but I doubt if Lewton or Tourneur were particularly flattered when this tepid little time-passer came out.
Problem: OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive negative
=++++=
Answer: Why?!! This was an insipid, uninspired and embarrassing film. The embarrassment comes from being from the city where they made it...Pittsburgh PA! Why did they let these people do such a BAAAAAD movie there?

When this movie was originally to be released...it was more of a romantic comedy...and no ROBO-anything. That all got changed along with cuteness courtesy of Disney. WHY???? They did a terrible interpretation of this classic comic character. Seeing Matthew Broderick make fun of his own movies was not fun either. Sheesh!!
An example of a movie review. negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive).

A: The saddest thing about this "tribute" is that almost all the singers (including the otherwise incredibly talented Nick Cave) seem to have missed the whole point where Cohen's intensity lies: by delivering his lines in an almost tuneless poise, Cohen transmits the full extent of his poetry, his irony, his all-round humanity, laughter and tears in one.

To see some of these singer upstarts make convoluted suffering faces, launch their pathetic squeals in the patent effort to scream "I'm a singer!," is a true pain. It's the same feeling many of you probably had listening in to some horrendous operatic versions of simple songs such as Lennon's "Imagine." Nothing, simply nothing gets close to the simplicity and directness of the original. If there is a form of art that doesn't need embellishments, it's Cohen's art. Embellishments cast it in the street looking like the tasteless make-up of sex for sale.

In this Cohen's tribute I found myself suffering and suffering through pitiful tributes and awful reinterpretations, all of them entirely lacking the original irony of the master and, if truth be told, several of these singers sounded as if they had been recruited at some asylum talent show. It's Cohen doing a tribute to them by letting them sing his material, really, not the other way around: they may have been friends, or his daughter's, he could have become very tender-hearted and in the mood for a gift. Too bad it didn't stay in the family.

Fortunately, but only at the very end, Cohen himself performed his majestic "Tower of Song," but even that flower was spoiled by the totally incongruous background of the U2, all of them carrying the expression that bored kids have when they visit their poor grandpa at the nursing home.

A sad show, really, and sadder if you truly love Cohen as I do.
Q: What's an example of a movie review?
An example of a movie review is here:
For those of us Baby Boomers who arrived too late on the scene to appreciate James Dean et. al., Martin Sheen showed us The Way in this great feature.

The premise is easy enough: cool hood meets small town sheriff and All-Hell ensues, but the nuts and bolts of this movie enthrall the car nut in all of us.

No, this isn't Casablanca, nor is it great Literature, but it IS a serious movie about cars, rebellion, and the genius that is Martin Sheen.

Enjoy this and appreciate it for what it is, and for what Martin will become. I loved this movie growing up as a teen in the 70's, and you will too.