Problem: Write a negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: An incoherent mess with a gratingly deafening sound track, "Soul Survivors" is the latest entry in the "who's dead and who's alive" genre of horror films. Two teenaged couples, Sean and Cassie and Matt and Annabel, prepare to go off to different colleges, but before they part until Thanksgiving Break, they attend one last fling at a rave-type party in some burnt-out church at the suggestion of lusciously slutty Annabel (Eliza Dushku, a.k.a. Faith, the other vampire slayer). Motiveless creepy guys start paying far too much attention to Cassie (the generic Melissa Sagemiller) for reasons that are never explained, and before long, the quartet leave the party. Driving away in their SUV, they are pursued and then passed by the motiveless creepy guys, who promptly and inexplicably do an intentional 180 in the middle of the highway, causing a nasty and fatal accident as the SUV flips over an embankment and plunges into a river. Sean is killed (or is he?), and Cassie spends the rest of the movie coping with loneliness and guilt (she was driving) when she's not being haunted by Sean's ghost or chased by those motiveless creepy guys. Much unexplained incoherence follows as Cassie's mental state degenerates further, until we reach the predictable conclusion. So, who is dead and who is alive? After ninety minutes of this purgatory, who actually cares?

Problem: Write a negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: Short Version: Seed isn't worthless. It's just derivative and inferior. And soulless.

Long Version: If you have never seen any of the films comprising the vaguely-defined "psychological horror" genre, this movie will probably melt your face off. Maybe not, but it will give you a good burn. The opening montage of real animal abuse will be sufficient to open your eyes to possibilities of brutality-on-video, and the (only) memorable gore scene later in the film will perhaps be more than you can handle. The climax will play with your emotions in a way that perhaps no other film has.

But that's if you don't have much experience with the genre. If you've seen the real thing..."August Underground's Penance," for example, you will, as I did, find it terribly difficult to stay awake until the end of the film.

Other reviewers have compared this to the video nasties of old. I understand this comparison. Like the video nasties, "Seed" is more violent than a mainstream horror film and less subtle. But the reason the video nasties are still known to us is not only for the above reasons--those that are still popular had something special. Permit me to be ambiguous, I think you will understand: those that have stuck around had "soul".

Take this quote from Gabriele Crisanti, director of "Burial Ground," on an interview on the new-ish DVD: "...we will never have more films like these, because today, technology has surpassed imagination. And technology is cold. So many things will disappear because small films like these won't be produced anymore. Today we have great, exceptional tricks that are very expensive, but they are cold. Today a horror, a terror film of this kind costs more than a million dollars. These films were not so expensive...they are real effects, made with our hands".

Perhaps it is wrong to take the comparison to old school horror so seriously. But Crisanti has hit the nail on the head. Even at their most seemingly exploitational, the best of the video nasties were pursuing a primitive "truth." And this is where Boll falls short. It's like he's seen the movies and not understood them. Everything on the checklist is there...BS about "making a statement about humanity," an obscene torture scene, etc. But it is, as Crisanti puts it, "cold." The gore is all CGI. The whole thing feels like scenes pieced together from other movies of various genres. And the pacing is sooooo slow. Man, so slow.

Another interesting note: the one gore scene really reminded me of a video game.

Anyway, enough BS. Weak movie.

Problem: Write a negative (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer: The episodic version of Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers plays out at a deathly slow pace, following Johnny Rico leaving his parents, the (not very attractive) girl he lusts for, and joining the mobile infantry. The aliens in the show are nothing like the barbaric bugs from the film, instead being squid-like monsters that shoot lasers out of their mouths.

Throughout watching this version, I was continually amazed at just how fruity they've managed to make the whole thing. The show is concerned mostly with the relationships between the recruits, and the aching, prolonged gazes they give each other through their battle armour visors, with 80s synth pop sometimes arriving *during* the sparse battle sequences which at last turning up in the final few episodes. In terms of construction, it owes a debt to Top Gun, sharing much in terms of pacing and content (and all that implies).

Problem: Write a positive (OPTIONS:
- negative
- positive) movie review.

Answer:
They're not jawing journalists Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell from "His Girl Friday" or witty detective William Powell and sassy lady Myrna Loy from Thin Man, but Woody Allen and Scarlett Johansson are surprisingly charming as amateur sleuths in Scoop. Their screwball repartee is more postmodern than post Depression, Allen's writing filled with ironic self deprecation and plain old New York angst. Shades of the old wit occur rarely, such as when he, as Sid, the Great Splendini magician, responds about his background: "I was born into the Hebrew persuasion, but when I got older I converted to narcissism." Johansson, fresh from Allen's Match Point as a bad girl, here gets to be a relatively good, sometimes ditsy journalism student caught in a murder mystery suitable for London: a serial killer. The plot is a reworking of his recent London-based thriller Match Point, right down to the upper-class sins and the "American Tragedy"/Place in the Sun boating "accident." As a matter of fact, Allen is reworking Manhattan Murder Mystery and Purple Rose of Cairo to name just a couple of other examples. I care not if he reworks; I would like the new material to be at least the equal of the originals, and, alas, it is just a reflection of his younger greatness.

Allen as director and actor can't hide his love for the actress, as he couldn't for Diane Keaton, and therefore takes a middling comedy into an appropriate place down the Allen canon, not great but amusing, at times brilliantly satirical: About the suspected upper-class murderer, Sid (Allen) quips, "I'd be very surprised if he killed one person." This is vintage Allen humor. While there are barely any bright literary allusions as in most of his film, he lards Scoop with music from Grieg, Tchaikovsky, and Strauss to let us know the Woodman has not lost his touch of class.