In this task, you must classify if a given review is positive/negative, indicating your answer as P or N.
One example is below.
Q: plot : two teen couples go to a church party , drink and then drive .
they get into an accident .
one of the guys dies , but his girlfriend continues to see him in her life , and has nightmares .
what 's the deal ?
watch the movie and " sorta " find out . . .
critique : a mind - fuck movie for the teen generation that touches on a very cool idea , but presents it in a very bad package .
which is what makes this review an even harder one to write , since i generally applaud films which attempt to break the mold , mess with your head and such ( lost highway & memento ) , but there are good and bad ways of making all types of films , and these folks just did n't snag this one correctly
.
they seem to have taken this pretty neat concept , but executed it terribly .
so what are the problems with the movie ?
well , its main problem is that it 's simply too jumbled
.
it starts off " normal " but then downshifts into this " fantasy " world in which you , as an audience member ,
have no idea what 's going on
.
there are dreams , there are characters coming back from the dead , there are others who look like the dead , there are strange apparitions , there are disappearances , there are a looooot of chase scenes , there are tons of weird things that happen , and most of it is simply not explained .
now i personally do n't mind trying to unravel a film every now and then , but when all it does is give me the same clue over and over again , i get kind of fed up after a while , which is this film 's biggest problem .
it 's obviously got this big secret to hide , but it seems to want to hide it completely until its final five minutes .
and do they make things entertaining , thrilling or even engaging , in the meantime ?
not really .
the sad part is that the arrow and i both dig on flicks like this , so we actually figured most of it out by the half - way point , so all of the strangeness after that did start to make a little bit of sense , but it still did n't the make the film all that more entertaining .
i guess the bottom line with movies like this is that you should always make sure that the audience is " into it " even before they are given the secret password to enter your world of understanding .
i mean , showing melissa sagemiller running away from visions for about 20 minutes throughout the movie is just plain lazy ! !
okay , we get it .
. .
there are people chasing her and we do n't know who they are .
do we really need to see it over and over again ?
how about giving us different scenes offering further insight into all of the strangeness going down in the movie ?
apparently , the studio took this film away from its director and chopped it up themselves , and it shows .
there might 've been a pretty decent teen mind - fuck movie in here somewhere , but i guess " the suits " decided that turning it into a music video with little edge , would make more sense .
the actors are pretty good for the most part , although wes bentley just seemed to be playing the exact same character that he did in american beauty , only in a new neighborhood .
but my biggest kudos go out to sagemiller , who holds her own throughout the entire film , and actually has you feeling her character 's unraveling .
overall , the film does n't stick
because it does n't entertain , it 's confusing , it rarely excites and
it feels pretty redundant for most of its runtime , despite a pretty cool ending and explanation to all of the craziness that came before it .
oh ,
and by the way , this is not a horror or teen slasher flick . . .
it 's just packaged to look that way because someone is apparently assuming that the genre is still hot with the kids .
it also wrapped production two years ago and has been sitting on the shelves ever since .
whatever . .
. skip it !
where 's joblo coming from ?
a nightmare of elm street 3 ( 7/10 ) - blair witch 2 ( 7/10 ) - the crow ( 9/10 ) - the crow : salvation ( 4/10 )
- lost highway ( 10/10 ) - memento ( 10/10 ) - the others ( 9/10 ) - stir of echoes ( 8/10 )
A: N
Rationale: The phrases used in the review convey a negative sentiment (e.g. "presents it in a very bad package").
Q: capsule : in 2176 on the planet mars police taking into custody an accused murderer face the title menace .
there is a lot of fighting and not a whole lot of story otherwise .
john carpenter reprises so many ideas from his previous films , especially assault on precinct 13 , that the new film comes off as his homage to himself .
, 0 ( -4 to +4 ) .
john carpenter apparently believes that action scenes in which people fight something horrible are the same as horror scenes .
for a writer and director of horror films , supposedly an expert on horror ,
it is a very bad mistake to make .
ghosts of mars is called a horror movie , but it is more just a drawn out fight between humans and a surprisingly low - powered alien menace .
in addition if anybody but john carpenter had made ghosts of mars , carpenter would have grounds to sue .
this film is just chock full of pieces taken from assault on precinct 13 , the thing , and prince of darkness .
it is , in fact , surprising that carpenter managed to fit so many pieces of his previous work into this film in such an admittedly novel way .
but that still does not make for a really good science fiction experience .
ghosts of mars takes place in the year 2176 .
mars has been mostly terraformed so that humans can walk on the surface without breathing gear ( which is good for the film 's budget ) .
it is never mentioned , but the gravity on mars has been increased somehow to earth - normal , again making it easier to film .
society has changed a bit by that time , but it has advanced surprisingly little .
apparently the culture has changed so that women are much more in positions of control .
and from carpenter 's view , women have really made a mess of things .
society has stagnated under female control so that beyond some minor technological advances society has changed less in 175 years than we might expect it to change in ten .
the basic plot of ghosts of mars has much in common with that of assault on precinct 13 except that precinct 9 ( yes , precinct 9 ) has been replaced by a somewhat tacky looking rundown martian mining colony .
instead of having the criminal " napolean " wilson , this film has the criminal " desolation " williams .
instead of facing hoodlums with automatic weapons the police face , well , ghosts of mars .
because the ghosts are somewhat alien in nature they should behave in some alien manner , but they essentially behave as human savages , in another lapse of imagination .
the story is told in flashback , flashback within flashback , and flashback within flashback within flashback .
ghosts of mars takes place entirely at night and is filmed almost entirely in tones of red , yellow , and black .
carpenter manages to give us a powerful opening scene , showing a mining train rushing through the martian night to the sound of music with a heavy beat .
sadly what follows is not really up to the buildup .
the terror he creates looks a little too much like fugitive wannabes from the rock band kiss .
his idea of building suspense is having a bunch of sudden jump scenes that sucker the viewer into thinking something scary is happening and then prove to be just something boring .
these are standard haunted house film shock effects that require no great talent to give the audience .
somewhat newer but also unimpressive
are the cgi digital decapitations in some of the fights .
within a short stretch of time we have seen the release of mission to mars , red planet , and ghosts of mars .
after mission to mars was panned by too many reviewers it looks better and better and better as time goes by .
i rate ghosts of mars a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale .
following the movie i showed my wife , who liked ghosts of mars moderately more than i did , carpenter 's classic assault on precinct 13 .
her comment is that it was seeing the same film twice .
A:
N