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

Q: capsule : earthy , experimental , difficult , shockingly frank ( even for 1997 ! ) , and ultimately refreshing story of a black man on the run from the cops .
the first few minutes of sweet sweetback 's baad asssss song ( yes , i checked --
that 's the correct number of ss )
are without dialogue , just eerie montages of sounds .
a young boy , obviously malnourished , is taken in and fed up by several loving mother - surrogate figures .
then one of them takes the boy to bed for a sexual initation ( underneath the title credits ) that 's far more confrontatory and shocking than any ten basic instincts -- probably because it has the directness and clumsiness of real life , something we 're not used to seeing on screen .
this is one tough movie to swallow , no matter who you are , but that probably reflects more on how pallid and unchallenging movies have gotten lately .
( i suspect the sex scenes in movies like el topo and salo would probably melt the synapses of most modern audiences . )
the plot is simple but not simpleminded .
sweetback , hassled by two white cops who are apparently just looking for an excuse to beat up on a black man , breaks his bonds and runs like hell .
along the way he moves through a good many of the kinds of environments that we are only just now being seen in a more serious light in the movies -- or at all , for that matter : the slums , the missions , the ghetto .
in other , lesser , movies , sweetback would be machine - gunning everything in sight and the end credits would roll over a pile of bodies ; in this one , we get taken on a kind of a tour of the depressing and anarchic world that sweetback takes for granted .
ssbas first appeared in 1971 and was promptly rated x ( " by an all - white jury " , as director melvin van peebles crowed in his legendary ad campaigns ) , and it 's hardly surprising why .
there 's a good deal of sex in the movie , but it 's handled in a way that 's unsettlingly frank -- a frankness that spills over into the rest of the movie .
in one scene , sweetback visits a friend 's house in the hope of getting sanctuary there , and the other man chats him up while on the toilet .
we 're not used to coming this close to people in real life , let alone in the movies -- especially not people who are not made out to be glamorous .
the movie is also full of experimental stylistics that are relatively unused today , but probably because of that seem curiously fresh and new in van peebles ' hands .
one scene , in which a man is interrogated by the cops , is loaded full of menacing energy as they fire off a gun inches from his ears , and suggest his deafness through a cleverly edited soundtrack .
another note : ssbas is not so much anti - white ( that would be too easy ) as anti - authority , and as the movie goes on to demonstrate , authority exists in many forms -- governments , churches , and even the paranoid inside of one 's own mind .
ssbas is ultimately about thirsting for freedom -- and it looks like we could use a little more of that in our movie diet , god knows .

A: P
****
Q: with the opening scene of a young couple in a van pulling up , loading their guns , kissing each other and uttering what sounds like " rock and roll !
"
( actually , it 's " lock and load " ) , you ca n't help thinking tarantino .
and of course with its storyline of a crazy girl and boy in love who turn to violent bank robbery , the film unapologetically takes its place alongside all those other films from bonnie & clyde to natural born killers .
but if most of those movies have their roots in pulp fiction , exploring a modern myth of the doomed rebels on the run , normal life takes a much more psychologically realistic look at the phenomenon .
" inspired by true events " -- we 've heard that one before , and yet in no other tale of violent couples has it seemed so solidly demonstrated . . .
or so strangely poignant .
for this is a story of real people whose lives take on a steadily unreal quality , who in their search for a normal life find themselves increasingly unhinged .
beginning with their final arrest , the film goes back to trace the relationship between chris ( luke perry ) , a policeman , and pam ( ashley judd ) , a factory worker .
they fall in love and marry , but pam 's increasingly erratic behaviour ( going on spending sprees , slashing herself with a knife after an argument ) begin to trouble the solid and stable chris .
when chris gets sacked , they find themselves heavily in debt and near breaking up .
then , chris begins to rob banks . . .
luke perry accomplishes the not - inconsiderable feat of making us nearly forget that he was ever in beverly hills 90210 or buffy the vampire slayer .
moustached , with a tough paternal look and yet a voice and eyes that suggest sadness verging on exasperation , he is perfectly cast as the long - suffering husband .
( it 's another of john mcnaughton 's coups of casting - against - type , after transforming robert de niro into nerd and bill murray into gangster in mad dog and glory ) .
but it is the character of pam who commands centrestage , and ashley judd rises to the challenge with great alternating currents of ferocity and tenderness , making pam into a fascinating yet often infuriating person .
if the performance falls short of greatness , however , it is perhaps because the role of the mad woman has been done so often before it is virtually a staple of cinema , whether it 's in betty blue , tom & viv or georgia .
as in those movies , there 's the danger that the performance seems mannered , a collection of screwy tics and tantrums designed for the oscar presentation piece .
judd does n't entirely avoid this pitfall , but pam 's ' craziness ' is best and most movingly presented in counterpoint to the more ' normal ' chris .
when pam reacts to her father - in - law 's death by showing up at the funeral in rollerblades and blaring headphones , chris ' face is the picture of pained restraint .
of course , it 's the question of what is ' normal ' that is asked in normal life .
mcnaughton constantly offers up the ironies of the aspirations for the average domestic life and its kinship with insanity .
it is the rational chris that loves guns ( " shooting is about precision , control " ) and the ' crazy ' pam that loves astronomy and yearns for a dog ( who is then called chaos -- " chaos and you and me . . .
we 're a real family " , she notes wryly ) .
it is chris ' methodical mind and his knowledge of police procedure that allows him to be such a successful bank robber ( his well - planned disguise as a bearded , roaring man of terror is another piece of method in madness ) .
in the carpark where he sets out for his first robbery , a huge sign on a shopping mall stands out in the background : " buy - more " -- the perfectly respectable consumption - crazy american dream that has driven pam to her extravagant purchases , and both of them into desperate situations .
it 's not a perfect film .
some of the dialogue is a touch too banal ( perhaps intentionally ? ) .
the use of the punk hardcore soundtrack in pam 's crazed scenes comes rather too close to making emotional disturbance seem glamourous and sexy an image which only detracts from the rest of the film .
indeed , as in mcnaughton 's seminal film henry : portrait of a serial killer , it is the avoidance of glamour or sensationalism , the denial of some of the standard thrills of the outlaw film genre
, that gives this determinedly unflashy , moving film its great strengths .
mcnaughton has filmed this story with a quiet , coolly ' realistic ' method that works far better than any nbk theatrics at unsettling the viewer .
the suburbs , with their miles of white - fenced houses and identikit malls , take on a sense of claustrophobic blankness .
in its very different way , this makes for as haunting a backdrop as the wide open spaces in terence malick 's badlands .
while pam shares the yearnings of malick 's heroes to escape from ordinary life , chris takes up crime precisely so that they can lead a ' normal life ' - their little house on the suburbs is financed by his violent robberies .
but these are dreams defined by , constrained by , and even doomed by , the limitations of the ' normal ' , conventional world .
pam 's final scene takes place at the edge of the suburbs , where wild bushes grow -- symbolically the frontier , the outer limits of her society , but also quite literally the end of the road , where there is nowhere left to go but to the final tragic denouement .
the flying inkpot 's rating system :
* wait for the video .
*
* a little creaky , but still better than staying at home with gotcha !
*
* * pretty good , bring a friend .
*
*
* * amazing , potent stuff .
*
*
*
* * perfection . see it twice .

A: P
****
Q: ingredients : man with amnesia who wakes up wanted for murder , dark science fiction city controlled by alien beings with mental powers .
synopsis : what if you woke up one day , and suspected you were not on earth , and instead were part of an experiment in a giant space terrarium manipulated by intergalactic alien zookeepers ?
in dark city john murdoch ( rufus sewell ) has this problem .
dark city starts out like a 1940s noir amnesia detective mystery .
poor john wakes up with amnesia in a hotel room with a dead dame in one corner .
a mysterious phone call tells him to get the heck out of there , and soon enough john is chased all over town by a murderous army of pale people in black trench - coats , as well as by the police , and the dogged inspector bumstead ( william hurt ) . is john a murderer , and what can his missing memories tell him ?
he searches through his own wallet for possible contacts and clues .
but when the clues do n't fit , it does n't just confuse him ; it causes john to go so far as to question the whole nature of reality in the dark city .
to john , something is fishy , and very unreal about this city .
how come
it 's always dark , and nobody seems to remember what they did this morning ?
and how come nobody seems to remember how to leave the city , or how to get to nearby shell beach ?
every night , around midnight , john notices that the whole city enters a state of suspended animation , and at this time , creepy alien experimenters known as the ' strangers ' come out and do nasty things like inject fake memories into people 's heads with big hypodermic needles .
the strangers have the ability to ' tune , ' or warp reality using telepathic powers .
turns out , the city is not on earth at all .
and the reason why john does n't fall victim to the nightly suspended animation , is because he is a human mutation that possesses the same god - like reality - warping abilities as the strangers .
even with the help of scientist dr .
daniel schreber , can john take back the dark city ?
opinion : director alex proyas ( he also directed the crow )
mentions this in the dark city press kit : in films , science fiction is always " used to have big spaceships blow up cities .
i think we 're a little tired of that .
"
according to director proyas , probably the most interesting thing about dark city is its layers .
it 's designed so that you can watch the film over again , and examine it from the perspective of a main character other than murdoch .
it 's a philosophical piece .
cinematic science fiction is basically a thinly disguised shootout between the good humans and the bad aliens ( whether they be klingons , giant bugs , or proponents of the dark side of the force ) .
but science fiction in books reaches beyond the ' shoot - em - up ' level and targets the big questions , questions like who are we ?
what is the human condition ?
what is ethical ?
what would a true human being do ? far from comic book style on the order of spawn , batman , or the mutant ninja turtles , dark city not only features the showdown between good humans and powerful aliens , but it also asks questions worthy of films such as brazil or blade runner .
dark city is what philosophers would call an existentialist screenplay .
a little more than 200 years ago , the world was filled with unhappy peasants - - unhappy because nearly every aspect of their lives was controlled by totalitarian , military , conformist , medieval regimes .
the people took refuge in religion , the idea being that earthly life was a time of suffering , but after death , heaven would be available .
meanwhile , the state used these same ideas to prop up their regimes ; the king was often head of the religion and therefore sanctioned by heaven .
when science finally overturned religion , the medieval dictatorships came tumbling down and were replaced by democratic governments .
but the new fear was that the power of science and experimentation would be used to create a world order as darkly totalitarian as the old .
this is the time period when writers and philosophers such as freud , kant , kafka , nietzsche , and dostoevsky pondered what society should be , and what place the individual had in it .
the existentialists ' in particular wrote about the power of the lone individual against what may be a hostile , indifferent , or alienated universe .
in dark city , when the last dying , defeated alien asks john murdoch why the aliens ' scientific experiments on the human beings ' brains failed , murdoch replies , pointing to his head , " because the human condition is n't located in here .
"

A:
P
****