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

in my opinion , a movie reviewer 's most important task is to offer an explanation for his opinion .
but with soul survivors , i 'm so full of critical rage that this review is liable to turn into a venomous , uncontrollable rant , obligations damned .
however , protocol forces me to do otherwise .
soul survivors tells the story of four college - bound friends : cassandra ( melissa sagemiller ) is sweet and innocent .
party girl annabel ( eliza dushku of bring it on ) is dating world - weary harvard student matt ( wes bentley ) .
matt still has feelings for cassie , who is now dating sean ( casey affleck ) .
driving back from a creepy , gothic party , the quartet gets into a horrific car crash .
sean dies , leaving cassie crestfallen and guilty , made worse because sean saw matt kiss cassie just minutes after sean revealed his love for her . as cassie mopes through her classes , she sees the ghost of sean all over the place , urging her to follow him .
along with being plagued by other ghastly visions , cassie is also followed by thugs from that strange party .
annabel and matt try calming her down , but no one shares cass 's visions .
she has to figure out this purgatory all by herself .
rarely have i seen a director
so thoroughly mishandle material .
in his directorial debut , steve carpenter does nothing to provoke the audience into feeling any emotion .
when the movie 's camerawork is n't pedestrian , it 's clich ?
d .
carpenter 's need for close - ups , his camera following sagemiller from behind , drain the movie of any anticipation .
we already know what to look for , so why should we be surprised ? and the sense of scary atmosphere , which was recently done so well in the others , is nowhere to be found here .
carpenter 's script relies on random twists and turns with a minimum of logic and loads of laziness .
this is a movie where the ending features one character providing an explanation about the plot to another character , which is one of the lamest screenwriting devices around .
the second lamest device , of course , is the , " oh , it was all a dream " resolution . and guess what ?
this movie has both ! not that the main body of the film , which has sagemiller constantly running in fear or having a nervous breakdown , is anything worthwhile .
since there 's no captivating dialogue , no character chemistry exists anywhere .
that 's a huge problem , since the four main characters are supposed to be couples .
carpenter ca n't even get the smutty scenes right , which are becoming more prevalent in pg-13 movies like bring it on and get over it .
[ the film was recently re - cut from an r rating to get more kids in the seats .
-ed . ]
when sagemiller and dushku dance together at a club , he rarely shows them in a full shot and he never keeps the camera on them for longer than a second before relating to some michael bay - style quick cuts .
and when sagemiller and dushku take a shower together after getting covered in paint , they 're fully clothed . regardless ,
any sexiness in that scene is undercut by its stupidity .
why would n't they wash the clothes in the sink or in the washing machine ?
why would they shower in their clothes ?
what if they were n't covered in latex paint ?
the cast , which will see better material in the future , would be wise to leave this one off their resumes .
i felt sorry for affleck , who i 've liked in other movies , and bentley , who was great in american beauty .
dushku , who possesses an alluring femme fetale quality , has got to stop taking roles belonging to rose mcgowan .
as for sagemiller ( star of the aforementioned get over it ) , i want to see her in a movie where she plays a person , and not an object for gawking .
and i 'm not even getting into luke wilson 's role as a priest .
at least he 's friends with wes anderson .
bottom line : soul survivors is so awful i feel compelled to knock on doors and warn people about it .
N

there was probably a good reason that the warner bros .
studio chose not to allow critics to view this steven seagal film when it first opened .
and , after seeing this piece of toxic waste , i now know why .
this movie is by far the worst offering that has hit the screen since possibly those ernest movies years ago .
fire down below centers its story on a little mining town in god 's country , somewhere in eastern kentucky .
it 's beauty and natural goodness is being slowly destroyed by an uncaring mining magnate ( kris kristopherson , who constantly looks like he wants to kill his agent for getting him this role ) .
it turns out that he 's filling the mines throughout kentucky with toxic waste for a tidy profit .
seagal plays jack taggert , an aikido - versed , fighting machine , who is an agent with the epa .
no . . . not the cia nor the fbi nor the nsa .
it 's the environmental protection agency .
i had no idea that epa agents were trained to be killers !
taggert is sent to find the perpetrators and to bring them to justice .
written by someone named jeb , i could already envision the stereotypes of incestuous relationships , banjo - picking preachers , and dumb - as - nails rednecks .
but the script puts seagal right smack dab in the middle of all of these scenarios as he tries to discreetly fit in .
seagal 's idea of a disguise is a long - length $ 1000 leather jacket .
but to get closer to the kinfolk , he will fix people 's porches for free .
that 's another great epa asset - teaching agents how to fix porches .
slow and plodding , this project is a total mess .
the sometimes allure of watching seagal is watching him outmaneuver enemies that outnumber and outgun him like in under seige .
here , his bravado basically turns into bullyness .
townsfolk who are foolish enough to challenge seagal are quickly subdued .
fight scenes are quick and senseless and offers no enjoyment value whatsoever
.
and his soap box message wears thin within the first 15 minutes .
the most annoying moment comes when he barges into the middle of a sunday church ceremony , gets behind the pulpit , and beseeches the townsfolk to take control of their lives and to help clean up the environment .
but the epitome of how moralistically mushy this film gets happens when the person responsible for the toxic dumping , kristopherson , meets up with seagal .
kristopherson asks seagal how much it will take for him to go away .
seagal gallantly replies : " i 'll leave when you take the poison from the streams and the earth .
"
i was expecting patriotic music to start blasting and a show of fireworks in the background .
this is truly nothing more than a pompous showcase for seagal 's righteousness and narcissistic arrogance .
seagal has been vanguard in trying to bring a new genre into the filmplace , that of the enviro - thriller ( on deadly ground ) .
however , the message will never come across through poorly developed vehicles like this .
still , i believe in preserving mother earth , so save your $ 5 and please donate it instead to some worthy environmentally conscious charity .
N

*
this review contains spoilers * as with most of her films , director amy heckerling 's latest , loser , seesaws between unpleasant and artificial , and is sometimes both at once .
when she tackles big issues , such as abortion in fast times at ridgemont high , it 's impossible to tell whether she 's being matter - of - fact or glib about them ( they carry an almost documentary starkness ) , but whatever the case , she continually refuses to comment politically .
such is the sitcom tendency of her work : to jeopardize the innocence of her characters and then hit the reset button .
this fear of drama soured me on fast times . . .
, look who 's talking , clueless , and now loser , in which ms .
heckerling also demonstrates , for the first time , zero affinity for the milieu
.
has anyone , for instance , ever met a girl in the stylistic vein of mena suvari 's dora ?
attired in black thrift , her eye shadow smeared to racoon chic and her bangy red hair barely contained by girlish clips , she accepts the label of goth , but no self - respecting goth girl ever admitted to digging , as dora does , those geriatric rockers everclear , nor willingly went anywhere with a six - pack - wielding fratboy stranger .
the mechanics of loser 's tired old introvert - boy - falls - for - extrovert - girl plot drive its protagonists into cultural non - specificity , so that they become even less than stereotypes .
they become walking wardrobes .
small - town transplant paul ( a strangely static jason biggs ) , our eponymous hero , always wears his woolly hunter 's cap with flaps covering the ears , and beneath it rests a parted moptop that could n't scream " shemp " ( the lame stooge )
wig louder .
he has three smug - looking roommates ( the one - dimensional trio is not supposed to be brothers , but they share similar facial features , including and especially mouths ) , and their fashion sense is incomprehensibly glam .
though they 're not overtly transvestites , heckerling seems to be equating flamboyance with villainy ;
how very cruising of her .
( the dormies conspire to evict paul and regularly molest women they have drugged .
dora ignorantly downs one of their date rape potions .
unfortunately , either heckerling or the studio is too cowardly to admit if she was subsequently violated . )
when paul rescues dora from said narcotic scare , he learns that she is dating their unctuous european lit professor edward alcott ( superb greg kinnear ) .
although paul 's already in love with dora by this point , as is bound to happen to losers when pretty girls address them by name , he gets altruistic and pretends the flowers he bought her are actually from alcott .
she 's thrilled , but nevertheless spends a few days at paul 's to recuperate ; the two bond over emergency kitten surgery and a broadway play ( " cabaret " ) , and just when paul 's got in his head that she 's starting to love him back in that non - friendly way , she decides to become alcott 's live - in girlfriend .
cue precious hommage to the graduate , shots of paul drifting around berkeley -- er . . .
( aside : simon & garfunkel 's " parsley , sage , rosemary & thyme " should never have been allowed in another motion picture . )
heckerling has a lot in common with nora " you 've got mail " ephron , the only other prominent chick directing comedies today , in that neither has any use for strong - willed women .
men continue to trod on dora until the bitter end ( in the final scene , she gives paul a big smooch after he blurts out his feelings in what amounts to a creepy ultimatum ) , and dora ultimately shrugs off being drugged against her will -- mere hours after paul hints to her that she was poisoned , she 's cheerily redecorating his apartment .
( heckerling is so laissez - faire about the issue in general that she reserves the comeuppance of the would - be rapists for jokey epilogue titles . )
goth veneer aside , there are an awful lot of girls out there who behave as erratically as dora , and enough angry young dude filmmakers to make movies about them .
heckerling misses her shot at having dora transform herself into a role model , and while such arcs may not be heckerling 's social responsibility , it is a privilege i would have taken advantage of if i were in her shoes .
( consider , too , that dora is the film 's sole female principal . )
not that loser is worth contemplating this seriously -- god knows heckerling did n't .
that is her hallmark .
( --- for more first - run , dvd , and books - about - movies reviews , plus contests and the proverbial " more !
"
, visit ' film freak central , ' @ http :
//filmfreakcentral .
net --- )

N

