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

you know something , christmas is not about presents .
it 's about over - hyped holiday films with lots of merchandising and product tie - ins . at least that would seem to be the message of " the grinch , " which has been advertised since last christmas and whose logo is currently plastered all over stores .
hollywood expects us to ignore this cynical greed as the movie scolds us about losing the true spirit of the season .
you know the plot : there 's this evil furry green guy called the grinch ( jim carrey ) who lives on a mountain overlooking whoville .
down below all the who s are preparing for their whobilation , but the grinch is determined to steal their christmas .
the movie is , of course , a live - action version of the beloved children 's book , which was previously adapted into a 1966 tv special by looney tunes animator chuck jones .
it 's rare that a big budget hollywood release is shamed by a thirty - year - old half - hour cartoon , but that 's the case when jones ' version is compared to ron howard 's .
the tv grinch hit all the right notes : boris karloff 's soft , deep narration ; thurl ravenscroft singing " mr . grinch " ; max the dog weighed down by the gigantic antler tied to his head ; and the grinch 's wide
, toothless grin .
by contrast , the movie hits one sour note after another .
first
, there are the numerous bad choices that jeffrey price and peter seaman made in padding out the short book into a 105-minute movie .
young wide - eyed cindy lou who ( taylor momsen ) is depressed about the misplaced priorities of her parents ( bill irwin and molly shannon ) during the holiday season .
she begins to sympathize with the grinch , who turns out to be surprisingly sympathetic .
cindy lou discovers that the grinch turned tearfully away from whoville in grammar school when he was publicly humiliated while expressing his love for the prettiest girl in the class , martha may whovier ( played as an adult by christine baranski ) .
are we expected to like the grinch , hate the who s , and want him to steal christmas ?
the grinch is n't even the villain here ; that role is filled by the corrupt mayor of whoville ( jeffrey tambor ) who was the grinch 's rival for martha 's affection .
not only are the characters needlessly complex ,
but the once - simple plot becomes so convoluted that the actual theft of christmas seems like an afterthought .
the casting choices are n't any better than the screenwriting decisions .
jim carrey seems woefully miscast .
while his face is so supple that the rubber make - up seems superfluous , carrey brings nothing else to the role .
his accent keeps changing ; i assume he was shooting for karloff ,
but he ends up sounding like a weird slurry of richard nixon , sean connery , and cartman from " south park .
" not knowing what else to do during his many scenes alone in the grinch 's home , carrey falls back on his stand - up comedy and clowns around ace ventura - style .
needless to say , his wise - cracking antics do n't quite fit the character of the grinch , who is an embittered loner filled with hate .
little taylor momsen brings little to role of cindy lou except big eyes and a cute smile .
she would have been fine if cindy lou was limited to her original purpose in the seuss story ( finding " santa " in her living room stealing the tree ) .
however , the expanded script makes cindy as important as the grinch , and momsen is not up to the challenge .
bottom line : when you 're stealing christmas ( movies ) , leave this one behind .
N

" mandingo " has traditionally been seen as one of two things : either a much - needed revisionist look at slavery in the south , or in the words of film critic leonard maltin , " a trashy potboiler " that " appeals only to the s&m crowd .
"
actually , i think " mandingo " is a strange combination of the two , although
it fails on both fronts .
it 's too trashy to be good drama , but too dramatic to be good trash .
the story takes place on a dilapidated louisiana plantation run by crotchety old warren maxwell ( james mason ) and his son , hammond ( perry king ) .
one day in new orleans , hammond comes across a slave trader selling a mandingo named mede ( heavyweight boxer ken norton ) .
although the movie never explains it , a mandingo is simply the name for africans who come from the region of the upper niger river valley .
according to the movie , mandingos were the rolls royce of african slaves .
hammond pays top price for mede and has to fight off others in order to get him .
hammond then spends his time training mede to be a fighter in money brawls with other slaves .
meanwhile , hammond has married his cousin , blanche ( susan george ) , because she wants to escape her family and he is under pressure from his father to produce a grandchild .
hammond , however , is happier spending nights with his " bed wench , " the derogatory name given to female slaves used by their masters for easy sex .
it is quickly apparent that hammond , despite his overt racism , is more in love with his bed wench , a sensitive slave girl named ellen ( brenda sykes ) , than he is with blanche .
hammond considers blanche tainted goods because he finds out on their wedding night that another man had " pleasured " her before he did .
of course , it 's fine that he 's slept with numerous slave girls , but the fact that his wife , a " white lady , " had been with another man out of wedlock destroys his capacity to care for her .
so blanche is usually left lonely and sex - starved while hammond is sleeping with ellen .
blanche gets back at hammond by seducing the studly mede and bearing his child .
hammond and his father can not stand the idea that blanche has given birth to a half - black child ( although it 's okay that ellen was pregnant by hammond ) , so warren kills the child by letting it bleed to death after birth , and hammond poisons blanche .
hammond then finds mede , shoots him twice in the shoulder , and pushes him into a giant cauldron of boiling water .
yes , you read right : the film ends with hammond getting his revenge by boiling mede alive .
judging only by the plot , " mandingo " is pure sexploitation .
the main purpose of the film seems to be getting as many blacks and whites into bed together as possible , with only the slightest commentary on what that would mean in 19th century southern society .
when " mandingo " was released in 1975 , it was still a bit of a shocker to see miscegenation on screen in such a graphic detail ; this way the movie could revise cinematic history while attracting large audiences of curious voyeurs .
dramatically , " mandingo " is weak and unfocused , and historically it 's mostly confused .
if one were to judge history by this film , it would be easy to walk away with the notion that the entire system of american slavery was based on sexuality , not economics .
not once in the film do we see any of the slaves working , except for a few house servants .
the men spend most of the time sitting around , while the sole purpose of a female slave seems to be free sex for the owner .
there is historical basis in the notion that slave owners often slept with their female slaves , but " mandingo 's " overwhelming emphasis on this aspect of slavery gives the movie the unpleasant taste of a cheap sex flick ( although there 's plenty of violence -- fights , vicious beatings , shootings , and the aforementioned human boiling sequence -- thrown in for good measure ) .
some tried to write off " mandingo " as a blaxploitation film , one of a number of quickly - made , low - budget films appealing to black sensibilities in the early seventies , but it 's not that easy .
" mandingo " was studio - financed by paramount pictures , and produced by dino de laurentiis , the grandiose italian producer behind such notorious productions as " the bible " ( 1966 ) , the remake of " king kong " ( 1976 ) , and the ill - fated " dune " ( 1984 ) .
the director was richard fleischer , a veteran who was best known for several special effects - laden action movies including " 20 , 000 leagues under the sea " ( 1954 ) and " fantastic voyage " ( 1966 ) , as well as such superior suspense films as " the narrow margin " ( 1952 ) .
the script , based on the supermarket best - seller by ken ostott ( and the subsequent play by jack kirkland ) , was penned by norman wexler , who had been nominated for an oscar two years earlier for his work on " serpico .
" james mason , perry king , and susan george were well - known and respected actors ( mason already had three oscar nominations under his belt ) , and ken norton appeared to have a promising film career .
so why is " mandingo " so bad ?
a number of reasons , including the fact that all those experienced filmmakers behind and in front of the camera did a lousy job .
wexler 's script is pure poor hokum bordering on the offensive
; it combines stereotyped slave - talk ( " yessuh , massuh " ) , stereotyped southern white trash talk ( " fer whut're you gittin ' outta bed ? " ) , and stereotyped contemporary militant black talk ( " if you see me hang , you gon na know you killed a black brother ! " ) .
fleischer 's direction is clumsy , especially during the fight scenes , and all the actors give weak performances , especially susan george whose constant shrieking finally becomes laughable .
nevertheless , credit should be given where credit is due .
despite its exploitative nature , " mandingo " was one of the first hollywood movies to take an alternative look at slavery .
until then , there had been a kind of underlying racism in all hollywood films dealing with slavery .
even classics such as " gone with the wind " ( 1939 ) can be seen as inherently racist by its glossing over the subject matter .
" mandingo " reassessed the south , and showed that it was n't all beautiful plantations , green fields , and pretty sunsets .
but all this is constantly undermined by the film 's negligible point - of - view
-- it claims to see things from the black perspective , but the entire narrative focus is on the soap opera tales of the white owners .
with a little more maturity and different handling , " mandingo " might have been an effective , worthwhile film .
while it portrays many sensitive aspects of slavery , it never deals with them .
the issues the movie brings up are worthwhile , but wexler 's script refuses to move them beyond a surface level of trashily vicarious viewing .
there is a great deal of potential in honestly exploring the nature of a sexual relationship between slave and owner , but " mandingo " never does it .
steven spielberg touched on that same topic in " schindler 's list " ( 1993 ) , by looking at a nazi officer writhing in inner turmoil because of his feelings for a jewish maid .
the difference between that film and " mandingo " is that spielberg dealt with the situation in a fair , unexploitive manner that focused on the inherent human dilemma .
" mandingo " is satisfied to simply show some skin , and because of that , its " trashy potboiler " nature overshadows any potential social good it might have accomplished .
N

with his successful books and movies , michael crichton is doing well .
with early successes with westworld ( 1973 ) and coma ( 1978 ) , and recent films such as jurassic park ( 1993 ) , his films have been entertaining .
however , he seems to taken a wrong turn somewhere with sphere .
this $ 100 million mess by good director barry levison ( disclosure ) is dull , long winded , and a huge disappointment .
considering the huge budget , the all star cast , and a story by crichton
, sphere is majorly disappointing .
the film opens with norman goodman ( hoffman ) , a psychologist who thinks he is visiting an airplane crash to console the survivors .
however , when he arrives , he his told by supervisor barnes
( peter coyote ) that he is actually investigating an spacecraft .
along with goodman is mathematician harry adams ( jackson ) , biologist beth halperin ( stone ) and ted fielding ( liev schrieber . )
they investigate the spaceship , find a massive sphere inside , meet an alien intelligence called jerry , and basically weird crap happens .
unfortunately , something went wrong along the way with sphere .
the film starts off entertaining enough , but throughout this very long movie , it just gets sillier and sillier .
the film jaunts along from scene to scene , never fully explaining what is going on .
the actors and directing do n't help , either .
hoffman is on autopilot ( and almost seems embarrassed ) throughout the movie , churning out dull lines , and probably wondering what the hell he is doing in this movie .
stone is useless , displaying no emotion , and fails to convince the audience that she has any feelings for hoffman .
the only person who seems to be having fun in this movie is jackson , who 's funny as the mathematician who slowly goes crazy and entering the sphere .
but he 's hardly in it , and by the end of the film he is just as dull as hoffman and stone .
the same goes for peter coyote , who hams it up as the officer , but is then killed off halfway through .
the director , barry levinson , who directed the better crichton adaptation disclosure ( 1994 ) messes up with the drama and the action .
the drama scenes are , quite frankly , boring , and the action scenes suffer from overkill , with levison throwing the camera all over the place ( much like the godawful speed 2 , 1997 )
the writing does n't help much , either .
although crichton is great with plots , he 's terrible with dialogue , and practically every line in sphere is a dud .
the speech is too simple
, i was hoping it would be a bit more intelligent .
practically every line is just stating the obvious .
none of it is smart .
also , where the hell did the budget go ?
the sphere itself is impressive , and there 's a few nice special effect shots , but
where the $ 100 million went is anyone 's guess .
there 's a giant squid attack in the picture , but not once does the audience see the squid , even though the film has a massive budget .
i assume the picture was trying to build up tension by not showing the squid , and if handled correctly it probably would .
but the whole scene is done badly , and i was just hoping we could see the stupid squid .
finally , the film has no idea what genre to be .
levison ca n't handle his own plot .
it leaps from hokey sci - fi , to horror , and finally the shining / event horizon psychological thriller .
and , of course , the film is very much like the abyss ( 1988 ) , although in it 's defense , crichton did write sphere before the abyss was released ( and is far superior to this rubbish . )
it 's not all that bad though .
the plot is all right , there 's a few jump scenes ( although nothing very scary ) and there 's the occasionally interesting bit .
but overall
, sphere is a big waste of some fine talent , a lot of money , and a potentially good movie .
not really worth seeing .
overall rating= review by david wilcock

N

