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

i wish more films would take on issues of faith and morality in the modern world .
and i wish that film - makers would use commandments as a blueprint on how _ not _ to do it .
writer / director daniel taplitz has created a bizarre conglomeration of satire and soul - searching in this tale of seth warner ( aidan quinn ) , a man of faith who runs into a streak of bad luck which usually inspires country - western lyrics : his pregnant wife drowns , his home is destroyed by a tornado , he loses his job and his dog is crippled by a bolt of lightning .
convinced that god has broken his half of the covenant , seth decides to break his , and sets out to turn every " thou shalt not " of the ten commandments into a " thou shalt " ( and vice versa ) .
his wife 's sister rachel ( " friends " ' courteney cox ) wants to help seth ; rachel 's selfish husband harry ( anthony lapaglia ) , who tends to break a few commandments of his own , thinks seth is a lunatic .
thus begins a film which picks the wrong tone for every occasion .
taplitz is n't interested in treating seth 's tragedies as genuinely tragic , making it impossible to sympathize with him .
composer joseph vitarelli provides a score full of whimsical woodwinds , turning seth 's sacrilegious mission into an amusing lark ; quinn 's performance as seth is all wild - eyed fervor without any genuine pain .
the actual breaking of the commandments is almost treated as an afterthought , with one through five dispatched in a five - minute montage .
the result is a character whose actions feel less like the authentic responses of an anguished man than the machinations of a high - concept movie plot .
it 's not even entirely clear that commandments is about seth .
corporate attorney rachel is given a case which is supposed to soften a hard heart we see no indication she has , while harry gets his comeuppance as part of seth 's " false witness .
"
only courteney cox strikes a note of reality in a solid performance ; she is sane center around which too equally troubled men revolve .
even she ca n't force taplitz to decide whose story this is , or what we should have learned about dealing with the struggles in our lives and our relationship with the infinite .
by the time seth makes a singularly biblical reappearance late in the film , it has become clear that taplitz is aiming for a fantastical fable which makes no connection with real human experience .
commandments is a bad comedy which could have been a decent drama if daniel taplitz had had the guts to take faith -- and the loss thereof -- at all seriously .
N

studio 54 attracted so many weird and bizarre people to its gates that it 's a wonder why the film about the life and death of the studio centers itself on one very boring , cliched individual , not to mention an ensemble of people who would n't be at all fascinating unless they worked at the studio , which they did according to this film .
are we supposed to believe that out of all the strange folk who populated the studio nightly , that a character who is a bland ripoff of tony manero would really make a good protagonist for the film about it ?
" 54 " belongs in the elite group of films known as " the big disappointments " : the films that attain so much hype and/or so much potential in its creation that they come off worse than they are when they are finally finished .
i was heavily awaiting " 54 , " not the least because i 've become fascinated with the infamous club , which has been the subject of an engrossing documentary that 's been running all summer on vh1 , which is , weirdly enough , much more intriguing and engrossing than this " edgy " film .
perhaps more importantly , " 54 " is part of the blossoming subgenre , " the 70s nostalgia film , " which has been picking up mighty steam , what with " boogie nights " and " the last days of disco " coming out within the year , and both being such damn good movies that not only captured the feel of a certain time period ( the late 70s party and the early 80s wakeup period ) , but brought us interesting and real characters , like scotty , the tragically gay boom mike operator from " boogie nights , " and charlotte , the ironically clueless and bitchy co - protagonist from " the last days of disco , " not to mention several others .
"
54 " deals not so much with the timeline of the studio ( how it began , how it was run , how it ended ) - that 's all dealt with in the narrated opening and finale - but more interested in the characters who populated it .
this is a definite plus .
here 's a film that could have been a fascinating 2 hour plus film about the tragic people who went there to party , and had to wakeup in the 80s when things like diseases , economy problems , and perhaps worst of all , reagan , all hit and forced everyone into a rude awakening .
the story of the studio is tragedy in itself : let 's look at how it all affected the people .
but this film does n't let that happen .
it gives us a half - assed protagonist named shane o'shea ( ryan phillippe , from " i know what you did last summer " ) , who 's
chief character trait is the fact that he 's from new jersey , which also happens to be his chief character flaw ( i guess ) .
he 's dim - witted , into being part of " the scene , " and soon finds he 's become a bit of a rave amongst the studio regulars .
. .
a bit like " saturday night fever , " ' cept no travolta and no real interest put into him .
poor , poor phillippe struggles to make him interesting , but
all he is a half - assed character and not at all our ticket to the glimpse of the decadence going on inside the club that he could have been .
shane begins to hang out with some other denizens of the club , like anita ( salma hayek ) , a wannabe donna sommers , and her young hubby , greg randanzo ( breckin meyer , from " clueless " ) , who helps shane become a bartender and rise to a bit of fame .
although he begins to get somewhere when he sleeps with the foxy billie auster ( sela ward ) , an exec of sorts , he falls in lust with a soap star named julie black ( neve campbell ) , and thus the boring romance subplot that 's all too not necessarily important to anything else in the film and never really becomes interesting at any point in the film
.
the film 's sole point of interest and one major strongpoint is the all - too necesary personage of steve rubell , played by mike myers ( you heard me ) .
rubell , the famous head of the studio acted as if he never stopped partying ever , and is an easy metaphor for the life and times of his creation , but the film , thanks to a surprisingly strong performance by myers , makes him out to be more than that .
notice the scenes sole shocking scene , where he tries to get felatio from one of his male employees in turn for a promotion : myers brings the humanity to rubell in this scene , and a couple others , that some of us who 've only seen him on tv never saw , and proves to be perhaps the one aspect of studio 54 that this film actually nails .
first time feature director mark christopher proves that he 's a better director than a writer , though not too terribly much .
his story is trite and shallow , as are his characters , and his direction is shockingly flat , especially for a film about this subject .
it 's as if he had a great story to tell , but instead opted for the easier route .
the studio 's recreation is amazingly accurate , though , and very impressive , but his direction is never captivating enough .
some people say that a film does its job if it makes you want to visit the locale it takes place in ( despite the film 's tone , i still want to go to rome and its many nightclubs after i saw fellini 's " la dolce vita " ) , and when i watched " 54 , " i did n't particularly want to stay .
N

writers : dennis feldman and jonathan hensleigh ( based on the comic book by chuck pfarrer ) starring : jamie lee curtis ,
william baldwin , donald sutherland , joanna pacula , sherman augustus , marshall bell , cliff curtis , julio oscar mechoso
i suppose i 'm not extremely surprised that " virus " comes to us from a deciple of james cameron ( john bruno ) , and if i strain real hard , i could even say that it 's an obvious given , particuarly looking from the standpoint of mr .
cameron 's early works .
in fact , " virus " is yet another in the long line of action / horror / paranoia thrillers from the " aliens " vein : a group of people are dropped into a mysterious situation only to find a mortally - threatening entity is out to get them , a textbook example hailing all the way back to the early talkies , and maybe even to the first pictures , albeit redeveloped by cameron in his 1986 blockbuster that earned him esteem and bigger budgets to come in his future .
no such thing will happen to bruno , whom i believe worked in some capacity on that quasi - landmark feature ; while bruno may have studied under cameron 's wing for years and years , i 'm beginning to wonder at what capacity , and what exactly did he learn from him .
in fact , " virus " should at least be mediocre ;
the fact that bruno could have worked under a man like cameron - a director who , if anything , just knows how to make a movie - and then make a film like " virus " is just another detraction fairly aimed at this z - grade schlockfest of a film , albeit a z - grade schlockfest with a respectable budget .
the film seems to not only borrow it 's plot from last year 's similarly - fated " deep rising , " but also from a clunkish b - movie from the ' 80s called " leviathan , " an underwater thriller starring peter weller , richard crenna , hector elizando , and daniel stern about a group of miners who stumble upon an alien lifeform that was part " alien , " part john carpenter 's twisted remake of " the thing .
" " virus , " again , has a similar , uh , selling point : a group of sailors on a boat stumble upon a russian cruiser that is dead in the water .
they get on .
they break up into pairs and investigate .
and they find an alien lifeform on board that comes in the form of energy , has taken over all the machines on board , have meshed the machines with parts from corpses , and have deemed humankind their enemy because of a misquote in the dictionary ( ha ha ) .
not that any of this is for a second scary or the least bit involving ; not only does this film start off with a chintzy bond - ian opening ( the destruction of the cruiser via a satellite transmission from mir ) , destroying any of the suspense in what could happen , but it also fails to bring us any interesting chracters . of its motley crew , it only choses as its potentially eccentric cast of characters a lead woman skipper , a masculine potential - romantic - interest , a drunken captain , a black technician , a tatooed aborigine , a manic russian survivor , and a couple other candidates for alien food , none whom are the least bit interesting or more dimensional than a thin , plain piece of writing paper .
and it 's not the traditional argument for films like these , where you may in fact want them all to be eaten ( even " aliens " played with the karma of the arrogant soldiers , but this was more of a plus - side for the film as a whole than the opposite ) ; instead , as another cliche goes , you just do n't give a damn .
i almost do n't even have to say that the acting from everyone ranges from sub - par to horrific , the former being jamie lee curtis in the lead showing off what a strong female lead she is ( and she is , just not really here ) and the latter being - and it pains me to say this as he 's a particular favorite of mine - donald sutherland , who plays the captain so poorly and without a second of credibility that this will go down as the performance - of - which - he - should - be - ashamed
.
like anthony hopkins for " legends of the fall " ( the line " scrooooooo 'em " has been thus embroidered upon my membrance ) .
or peter o'toole in " caligula .
" great actor , horrific performance .
it happens every now and then , and it only helps sutherland 's career that
no one , except for an elite few , even bothered to see this film .
though it has sat on the shelves of universal studios for about two years , waiting until it can be released and make as much money as it possibly can ( read : early january , when everyone 's still trying to catch up on the potential oscar - nominees ) , it does show that universal shelled out a pretty penny to make this film : it 's laden with complex machinery , boasts respectable production design , and it may even feature believable special effects . . .
if , of course , i , or anyone else , could see them .
" virus " mostly takes place on a large , abandoned cruiser , and mostly at night until the dawn , and mostly without the use of lights , not so much for the productivity of the alien creatures in their pursuit of their human prey , but more so because , as the hollywood cliche seems to go , " if it 's dark enough , then the special effects will be more believable .
"
and if you do n't believe me , go back and rent " godzilla , " and tell me if there 's even one shot where we see godzilla
either a ) in his entirety in one wide shot , or b ) n the light so that we can at least see him
( well , you do n't really have to sit through it again ; just take my word for it ) .
but all of this does n't matter since " virus " is basically just one loud , cluttered mess of a movie .
the action scenes are muddled and as difficult to follow as any action movie i 've ever seen ( my , um , favorite part was the scene where a trio of them end up somehow on the outside of the ship , during a five minute bouillabaisse of tidal waves , rain , and any other ocean - extremeties the film can cook up , then end up back in the ship when one of them is revealed to have apparently drowned - well , i must say , thanks for telling me afterwards because i sure could n't figure it out when i saw it ) .
imagine the first attack of the aliens in " aliens , " shot from the pov of the soldiers and then the authorities in the battle car if it was all hard to follow and done without any dramatic intensity , and that 's basically the whole of " virus " :
one horribly - directed action scene after the other , capping it off with a proposterous gadget
that saves the day and at least a couple of the original cast members .
and my god , it 's a long damn sit .
with no interesting characters , no dramatic urgency , no tension , not one good moment of action , and no mesmerizing visuals , it 's a wonder that it even got made .
we already know that big movie studios ' mentality is shallow at best , and movies like " out of sight " and " saving private ryan " give you more faith in them , but movies like " virus " manage to drain a little more out of the pool .
i almost wish that instead of making this movie , john bruno had gone cinema verite and captured the meetings with universal heads when they gave this film a green light .
they read the script , they knew they were entrusting millions upon millions of dollars into a director who might have very well been a cameron hack ( and he is ) , and they still went ahead with the project , only to have bruno and company shit back in their face .
even though i hold universal in contempt for making this horrible movie , i 'd say even more contempt should be aimed at mr .
bruno for making a movie that could be this bad .
in fact , shouts of " egad , man , what were you doing when you worked for cameron anyway ? " are not only justifiable , but encouraged .

N

