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

a film that means well , but is too pushy in promoting its belabored point and too sentimental to be compelling as a drama .
it 's jeroen krabb ?
's melodrama about a community of jews in antwerp in 1972 who ca n't forget their bitter past .
the heroine is an attractive , carefree , nonreligious 20-year - old , chaja ( fraser ) , who wants to forget her jewish roots by getting involved in student demonstrations , screwing a student rebel leader , and living with her gentile friends away from her nagging mother
( s ? gebrecht ) and her self - absorbed , eccentric father ( schell ) .
her parents are survivors of the holocaust concentration camps , and her home life is filled with angst .
her mother is in denial about the past always busying herself by cooking soup and baking cakes and complaining about everything , while her father is more openly loving but has recently been absorbed in searching for two suitcases filled with mementos , a family album , silverware , and his old violin .
he buried them in a garden during the war while fleeing the nazis , but ca n't locate them now due to all the changes in the city .
out of frustration after quitting her job as a dishwasher and facing eviction from her apartment , she reluctantly accepts a job as a nanny with an hasidic couple that an old man in her parents ' apartment building , mr .
apfelschnitt ( topol ) , tells her about .
the hasidics are ultra - orthodox : they do n't go to the cinema or watch tv , adhere to strict dress codes , and strictly observe their religious laws .
chaja is at first put off by the way they expect her to follow their rules , but soon finds the wife , mrs .
kalman ( rossellini ) , to be kind and she becomes attached to one of her 5 children , a 4-year - old named simcha ( monty ) who does n't talk .
the stern mr .
kalman ( krabb ? ) is not friendly to her and considers her to be a whore because of the way she dresses .
to hammer home the point of how anti - semitism has n't gone away
there 's a barrage of overdone and uninvolving scenes with a sneering concierge ( bradley ) , who keeps making nasty remarks about jews and tries to make things inconvenient for them by preventing the jewish family from using the elevator .
the film is done in by its ham - fisted script as the story , adapted from carl friedman 's book " the shovel and the loom , " goes from one false note to another until it gets lost in all the goo of its sentimentality .
it starts off telling chaja 's story of how she 's a lost jewess trying to find her identity , then to her nanny role as she loves a mute child stuck in an insulated environment , and then it makes it a story about the lingering effects of the bitter past that ca n't be forgotten .
the effort seemed heavy - handed , as the film kept delivering too many obvious messages that it ponderously kept delivering through the stock characters .
the supporting cast consists of all wooden characters who give their roles a cartoonish flavoring
: chaja 's parents are given no human shades , while the janitor villain was a particularly annoying role that was one - dimensional and falsely acted .
the only ones who fought through the script and showed some feelings were fraser , whose effervescent face was expressive of both the trying times she was going through and the joys she felt -- but most admirably showing how she could be so mistaken as to think that she could forget her roots ; while rossellini gave a warm performance of a woman suffering in silence , but is strong in accepting her faith .
topol 's reassuring performance as the wise man who says all the right things to fraser , acts as the true voice of the filmmaker in explaining all the sufferings with common sense .
the film brazenly uses little simcha to get across its agenda of pointing out how the patriarchal world can be cruel when it ca n't love : it starts out by showing how under chaja 's loving care he 's taken to the duck pond and soon starts jabbering away , beginning by saying ' quack , quack ' and then going on to ask the four questions during a passover seder .
but by showing how the boy is so terrified of his strict father that he wets his pants in his presence , refuses to speak because of his stern dad , and eventually becomes the victim of a tragic accident , the film thereby exploits the boy 's sufferings and his story just becomes tiresome and not sincerely done
.
i felt i did n't just see a movie , but i attended a lecture for the whole 100 minutes of this serious but unappetizing story .
it was the kind of movie that you hoped would somehow end soon , as it seemed to be in the habit of rehashing its same viewpoint unnecessarily -- the message it keeps sending was already received .
in the last shot where father and daughter are hopelessly digging for the lost luggage , one has the impression that no one in the film learned anything about themselves or the past .
that seems strange , since i thought that was what this film was supposed to be about . unless i was mistaken and the film 's real aim was to make us cry over simcha .
N

phew , what a mess ! for his fifth collaboration with director
rich- ard donner ( lethal weapon i - iii , maverick )
, mel gibson plays a motormouth , maybe mentally ill new york city cabbie , jerry , whose wild conspiracy theories are all but ignored by alice ( julia roberts , acting all serious ) , the justice department employee that he has a crush on .
she not interested , but another person is : a cia psychiatrist ( patrick stewart ) who promptly kidnaps him .
is one of jerry 's conjectures correct ?
* is * the metal strip in the new $ 100 bill being used to track your movements ?
is oliver stone still alive , because he cut a deal with george bush to spread * dis * information ?
is this movie really about
* any * of the crazed cabbie 's theories ?
no , no ,
and no . as it turns out
, there 's some other nonsense going on here , involving and revolving around jerry 's background .
( hint : pay attention to an early scene where jerry blacks out and flashes back , in quick succession , to images of an interrogation room , hypodermic needles , and ms .
roberts herself . )
the * initial * premise is pretty good and is played , for a while , at a delightfully dizzying clip .
mel is wider - open that we 've ever seen him and , if his character 's relationship with roberts ' initially strains credibility , their combined star power is blissfully intoxicating .
( the highest wattage of the summer , perhaps ? )
even when the plot contrivances begin to intrude , the two remain a randy dandy screen pair .
there 's a great scene in jerry 's fortress , er , apartment , with alice trying to act casual as her hyperactive host tries to remember the combination to a locked coffee bean container .
( which he stores in another locked con- tainer , his fridge . )
other hilarious moments , of which there are many , include a trio of memorable convention - breakers , where alice ditches a tail , jerry cold - cocks someone , and , later , eludes a foot pursuit , each in a uproariously unexpected fashion .
( that 's donner 's own ladyhawke playing in the theater , btw . )
let 's see , other pleasures include .
. .
a brilliant title sequence , a jazzy score from carter burwell , and the worth - paying - to - see sight of roberts pumping lead into one bad guy and slamming another 's head into a wall .
oh , pretty woman !
getting to the latter , however , requires slogging through an increasingly overburdened and ultimately unappealing story .
the last hour of conspiracy theory devolves from tolerable to torturous to almost unwatchable .
more stuff happens of the stupid shit variety than is worth mentioning here , except , perhaps , for a late sequence that has alice locating jerry in an abandoned wing of a mental hospital by hearing his voice carrying through the air ducts .
and here i thought it was wabbit season .
good god , who rewrites these movies ? and
do they arrive in nondescript black vehicles ?
N

gregg araki 's the doom generation was
possibly the very worst film ever made .
so why did i see his latest teen bisexual angst opus ?
first of all , some of the reviews were fairly positive .
also , the cast , consisting of cameos from dozens of washed up
ex
tv stars ( including christopher knight , eve plumb , shannen doherty , and david leisure ) was promising .
last of all , i wanted to give arraki one more chance .
i mean , the guy ca n't be that untalented , can he ?
the answer to that question is three letters long .
nowhere follows the character dark on his wild and odd journey through los angeles .
since arraki does n't know how to make anything coherent , it 's hard to describe the plot .
let 's just say that dark spends the bulk of the movie whining that his girlfriend wo n't make a commitment to him and jealous because she sleeps around with other guys and girls .
the only remotely compelling storyline involves sarah lassez as a teen who has a chance encounter with a famous tv star .
he turns out to be a nice guy who does n't care for fame and wishes he could walk down the street without being mobbed by fans .
this story has a shocking twist and a tragic end that i did not see coming .
it is the first time i ever felt any compassion for a character created by arraki , and this can be attributed to the appealing performance of lassez .
i thought maybe arraki was improving in his craft .
he works better with the camera this time around , especially in the early scenes .
halfway through the film , i did n't necessarily find myself enjoying the film , but it seemed like a considerable improvement on the doom generation .
then as the movie went on , arraki loses all sensibility and introduces us to exploding heads , twisted sex games , and alien abductions .
it 's sad , because he almost actually had some decent material here , but he ruined it with his usual in your face
" i 'm such a renegade maverick filmmaker , look what i can do " attitude .
the performances are generally better than in the doom generation , which is n't saying much .
at least we do n't have to suffer jonathan
" i am the most hideous man in america " schaech .
we are , however treated to another round of james " i 'm more wooden than keanu " duval .
sarah lassez gives the best performance in the film , and kathleen robertson ( formerly of 90210 and now arraki 's wife ) and rachel true are talented actresses caught up in this mess . of the tv star cameos , john ritter is the most interesting as a deranged right wing tv evangelist .
if i prefer nowhere to the doom generation , it is only in the way that i would prefer being assassinated than receive constant physical torture .
maybe greg arraki does n't want you to like his characters .
maybe he wants to laugh and make fun of those of us who try to care about them .
maybe he just wanted to piss me off .
if so , he was successful .

N

