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corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv003_12683.txt

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+ " quest for camelot " is warner bros . ' first feature-length , fully-animated attempt to steal clout from disney's cartoon empire , but the mouse has no reason to be worried . 
+the only other recent challenger to their throne was last fall's promising , if flawed , 20th century fox production " anastasia , " but disney's " hercules , " with its lively cast and colorful palate , had her beat hands-down when it came time to crown 1997's best piece of animation . 
+this year , it's no contest , as " quest for camelot " is pretty much dead on arrival . 
+even the magic kingdom at its most mediocre -- that'd be " pocahontas " for those of you keeping score -- isn't nearly as dull as this . 
+the story revolves around the adventures of free-spirited kayley ( voiced by jessalyn gilsig ) , the early-teen daughter of a belated knight from king arthur's round table . 
+kayley's only dream is to follow in her father's footsteps , and she gets her chance when evil warlord ruber ( gary oldman ) , an ex-round table member-gone-bad , steals arthur's magical sword excalibur and accidentally loses it in a dangerous , booby-trapped forest . 
+with the help of hunky , blind timberland-dweller garrett ( carey elwes ) and a two-headed dragon ( eric idle and don rickles ) that's always arguing with itself , kayley just might be able to break the medieval sexist mold and prove her worth as a fighter on arthur's side . 
+ " quest for camelot " is missing pure showmanship , an essential element if it's ever expected to climb to the high ranks of disney . 
+there's nothing here that differentiates " quest " from something you'd see on any given saturday morning cartoon -- subpar animation , instantly forgettable songs , poorly-integrated computerized footage . 
+ ( compare kayley and garrett's run-in with the angry ogre to herc's battle with the hydra . 
+i rest my case . ) 
+even the characters stink -- none of them are remotely interesting , so much that the film becomes a race to see which one can out-bland the others . 
+in the end , it's a tie -- they all win . 
+that dragon's comedy shtick is awfully cloying , but at least it shows signs of a pulse . 
+at least fans of the early-'90s tgif television line-up will be thrilled to find jaleel " urkel " white and bronson " balki " pinchot sharing the same footage . 
+a few scenes are nicely realized ( though i'm at a loss to recall enough to be specific ) , and the actors providing the voice talent are enthusiastic ( though most are paired up with singers who don't sound a thing like them for their big musical moments -- jane seymour and celine dion ? ? ? ) . 
+but one must strain through too much of this mess to find the good . 
+aside from the fact that children will probably be as bored watching this as adults , " quest for camelot " 's most grievous error is its complete lack of personality . 
+and personality , we learn from this mess , goes a very long way . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv013_10494.txt

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+a movie like mortal kombat : annihilation works ( and must be reviewed on ) multiple levels . 
+first , there's the rampant usage of randian subtext that pervades the entire movie . 
+but occasionaly , almost as if making an ironic , self-depreciating remark , the movie tosses in clearly marxist imagery . 
+no no . . . 
+just kidding . 
+had you going there for a moment , didn't i ? 
+in all seriousness however , and to be fair to the movie , it * is * necessary to provide two viewpoints : that of a movie watcher unfamiliar ( or only marginally familiar ) with the whole mortal kombat phenomenon , and that of a fan of the first movie and/or a fan of the games . 
+the first movie ( mortal kombat ( 1995 ) ) concerned itself with a martial arts tournament that would decide the fate of earth ( and it's 5 billion inhabitants ) . 
+the mortals won , and in theory this should have prevented the emperor shao khan from taking over the earth . 
+unfortunately , shao khan was a poor loser , and the very final scene in mortal kombat showed him arriving anyway , ready to take over the planet , as our heroes assumed a fighting stance . 
+the first movie was extraordinarily entertaining for those ( like myself ) who are fans of the game . 
+i'd even go so far as to say that many folks who didn't know about the game probably enjoyed the movie . 
+the writers and directors knew the limitations of both their cast and of the basic story itself , and they didn't try to overachieve . 
+there were a lot of really cool fight scenes ( with really cool accompanying music ) , intersperesed with some distracting ( but ultimately non-intrusive ) bits of fluff passing itself off as a plot . 
+and , as we know , the movie was a smashing success at the box office . 
+mortal kombat : annihilation picks up precisely where that movie left off , with some introductory exposition to clue in those who may not have seen the first movie . 
+shao khan has decided that he's going to take over the earth * anyways * , and to hell with some silly rule about mortals winning the tournament . 
+thereafter follows approximately 85 minutes of film that alternates between being confused , being trite , being silly , and being just plain stupid . 
+one gets the general impression that the producers of the movie thought " hey , that last movie was such a success that we can get more money and make a * real * movie now . " 
+too bad they didn't simply stick with the formula from the first movie . 
+i could write volumes about the things that are wrong with this picture , but here are the high points : 
+ * the acting is truly bad . 
+sandra hess ( playing the sonya blade character ) is particularly execrable , especially in scenes where she tries to convince us that she loved johnny cage ( a character from the first movie who gets greased at the beginning of this movie ) . 
+ * in one of the worst pieces of mis-casting i think i've * ever * seen , james remar plays raiden , the god of thunder . 
+in the first movie , christopher lambert played raiden and played his character as though he was in on the joke : a french actor playing a japanese thunder god being revered by chinese mystics . 
+i generally like it when actors are cast against type ( tim " tiny " lister , jr . being cast as the president of the u . s . in the fifth element , for example ) , and remar has always been one of my favorite " utility " actors but he's so totally wrong for this part that he doesn't even have the luxury of amused self-awareness . 
+ * there are too many characters that are introduced as being potentially important , but then never seen again . 
+ * there are a number of completely meaningless story sidetracks , including a muddled scene where liu kang ( robin shou ) seeks out nightwolf ( litefoot ) , has a mystical hallucination , and then wanders off with jade ( irina pantaeva ) . 
+for these reasons ( and many others ) , i can only give the movie a 2 . . . 
+ . . . unless you're a huge fan of the games and/or the first movie . 
+in that case , the following critiques also apply : 
+ * sandra hess , while being an even worse actress than bridgette wilson ( who played sonya blade in the first movie ) , is much more convincing as a fighter . 
+wilson looked like she was simply mimicing some movements taught to her by the fight choreographer . 
+hess looks like she actually knows some martial arts , and puts together a much more believable fight scene . 
+ * in the fights , each of the characters does at least * one * thing they do in the game ( and often more ) . 
+sonya does her " kiss of death , " jax does his " earthquake , " liu kang does his " animality , " and so on . 
+a big bonus for those of us who were looking for similar moves in the first movie and found them only rarely . 
+ * there aren't as many fight scenes in this movie as there were in the first , because the folks making the movie mistakenly try to hang a more robust plot in between . 
+silly , silly folks . 
+and the lamest fight involved two of the women in what turns into a mud-wrestling match . 
+lame and so obviously sexist even i ( politically incorrect , for the most part ) noticed and remarked upon it . 
+ * the special effects are generally better , except for the final fight scene between the emporer and liu kang in which both perform their " animalities . " 
+motaro and sheeva are both more convincing and lifelike than goro was in the first movie . 
+for folks like myself who loved the first movie and enjoy the games , i give this a 5 . 
+you'll probably like it , but not nearly as much as you liked the first one . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv015_29356.txt

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+john carpenter makes b-movies . 
+always has ( " halloween , " " escape from new york , " " the thing " ) and , by the looks of it ( " they live , " " escape from l . a . , " " vampires " ) , always will . 
+carpenter's latest horror opus with a science fiction bent ( or science fiction outing with a schlock horror bent ) is the aptly-titled " john carpenter's ghosts of mars " ( in case , i suppose , you went looking for someone else's " ghosts of mars " ) . 
+like all those films prefixed by the very possessive " john carpenter's , " " ghosts of mars " is an unashamed b-movie punctuated by a b-movie plot , b-movie actors , and b-movie special effects . 
+in category one , above , we have a storyline that borders on idiotic ( and , at times , chaotic ) . 
+dormant martians ( i . e . , swirling red gases ) awakened by meddling humans possess the souls of hapless mining colonists rendering them testy marilyn manson lookalikes . 
+all this explained ( in flashback ) to some grand pooh-bah counsel by martian police official melanie ballard ( natasha henstridge , from the sub- " species " films ) , the only returnee on a silly-looking train . 
+officer ballard went in to bring back incarcerated felon james " desolation " williams ; what she found was not a pretty picture . 
+in the second category we have ms . henstridge , her blonde hair pulled back tightly and awkwardly into a ponytail , ice cube ( as the appropriately-named " desolation " ) , pam grier ( briefly , oddly--who wanted to work with whom i wonder ? ) , and a host of extras all assuming that the story and special effects were going to carry this film and therefore they didn't need to try too hard . 
+in category number three we have , in addition to those swirling red gases and the silly-looking train , a couple of bird's-eye-view shots of a sprawling martian metropolis ( reddish also ) . 
+state-of-the-art special effects have never been a carpenter trademark and once again the writer/director ( who seems to have no problem finding work , however ) doesn't waste any of the film's budget in that department . 
+ " ghosts of mars " is lock , laughing stock , and barrel all your standard carpenter fare : dingy interiors , cluttered exteriors , inane dialogue , lots of leather , scarred , crazed-looking aliens , and lots and lots of weaponry . 
+the film often and always explodes into warfare without warning--spontaneously , stupidly . 
+carpenter might like to think he's made a western here but it's a western without any real heroes , villains , or border conflicts . 
+it's just the shootouts minus a hissing snake plissken . 
+i never thought i'd miss the guy but i do . 
+it's not * all * the same , however . 
+dubbed the " one-note wonder " for his minimalist music soundtracks , carpenter seems to have graduated from simplistic ( yet effective ) scoring by highlighting his action with loud , screeching guitar work . 
+fortunately this drowns out a lot of the dialogue . 
+the final exchange between henstridge and , er , cube though is both audible * and * priceless . 
+mars has proven an infertile breeding ground for hollywood in the last year or so , what with the stillborn " mission to mars " and " red planet " ( with val kilmer ) . 
+ " ghosts of mars " sadly adds to those disappointing returns ( in its opening weekend it was overshadowed by a bunch of sequels , among them " american pie 2 " and " rush hour 2 " ) . 
+the irony is that the mars in carpenter's film feels sadly absent . 
+there are occasional references to the red planet , of course , but the film might as well have been set in perth amboys than on earth's closest neighbor . 
+two things keep " john carpenter's ghosts of mars " from getting a huge slap upside the head . 
+1 . 
+henstridge keeps her top on ( miraculously ) , and 2 . the film doesn't pretend to be anything it's not . 
+what that means , however , is that fans of superior , intelligent , grade a sci-fi/horror are singularly out of luck . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv020_9234.txt

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+ " spawn " features good guys , bad guys , lots of fighting , bloody violence , a leather-clad machine gun chick , gooey , self-healing bullet holes , scatological humor and a man-eating monster . 
+it not only appears to have been tailor made for a swarm of 12- and 13-year-old boys , it appears to have been made by them . 
+in a classic example of telling and not showing , " spawn " opens with a truckload of mumbo jumbo about forces of darkness , forces of light and how " men are the ones who create evil on earth . " 
+so much for a message . 
+the movie then lurches forward into the plight of al simmons ( michael jai white ) , a government assassin/operative who is murdered by diabolical boss jason wynn ( martin sheen , who plays all of his scenes like an oscar clip ) while on a top secret mission in a north korean biological weapons plant . 
+simmons goes to hell and back , after making a deal with satan himself -- if he agrees to command the devil's army to overtake the world , he'll be allowed to return to earth to see his wife wanda ( underused theresa randle ) and little girl cyan ( sydni beaudoin ) . 
+of course , seeing as how five years has passed , wanda has fallen for -- and married -- simmons' partner ( d . b . 
+sweeney ) . 
+his , uh , shoulder to cry on comes in the form of clown ( john leguizamo ) , a disgustingly disproportioned minion of satan's . 
+clown manipulates simmons , now in superhuman spawn form , into a stand off with wynn . 
+wynn , who thinks he is in league with the double-dealing clown , recognizes spawn as a threat and undergoes an operation where a bomb is placed on his heart -- when it stops beating , major cities around the world will detonate , causing the leak of a disease that " makes the ebola virus look like a skin rash . " 
+phew . got all that ? 
+it would be easy to dismiss " spawn " as just another one of those heavy-on-fx , short-on-substance action pics , but it doesn't even work on that level . 
+the computer-generated sequences are often and plenty , and the problem is that they look too computer-generated . 
+the several scenes set in hell present a devil that looks and acts like a video game graphic -- with the movie's healthy budget you'd think they could have afforded to make his mouth move when he talks . 
+other elements of the movie are so-so ; spawn's enormous red , flowing cape is a wonderful sight , but it's too obvious when he's being played by a costumed actor or an image . 
+in movies like " contact , " the special effects serve the story . 
+in " spawn , " they are the story . 
+and spawn himself isn't even an interesting character . 
+the film's reliance on razzle-dazzle would be acceptable if we were given somebody to root for , but both simmons and his funky alter-ego are completely underdeveloped . 
+what we need is a batman , a luke skywalker . 
+even watching the adventures of kleenex man would be more interesting than spawn . 
+poor leguizamo . 
+he starred in february's " the pest , " a movie that i still think is the year's worst so far , although this one does give it a run for its money . 
+as clown , he overacts to the extreme , never missing an opportunity for a poor-taste punchline . 
+leguizamo farts green mist , munches a pizza slice covered with maggots and even dons a mini-skirt and performs a cheerleader routine , all before turning into a giant grey demon . 
+the guy was brilliant in " to wong foo , thanks for everything ! 
+julie newmar . " 
+what is he doing wasting his talent in this and " the pest " ? 
+i'm one of the few people that liked " batman & robin , " this summer's other big-budget comic book film . 
+yet after catching this movie and making the inevitable comparison , i can only hope people will change their minds and think of " batman " as the superior adaptation . 
+there's a compelling story somewhere in " spawn " -- including strong religious overtones and the debut of the first african-american superhero ever -- but it's just not found anywhere near here . 
+as it is , " spawn " is just awful -- it stinks worse than a dead trout . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv029_19943.txt

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+one-sided " doom and gloom " documentary about the possible annihilation of the human race as foretold by the bible . 
+orson welles narrates and appears in the film in which he , along with best-selling author hal lindsey , discusses various prophecies from the bible and relates them to recent ( well for 1976 anyway ) events . 
+the film is dated badly , as many things that are supposed to happen in the " future " never do . 
+for example , the planets of the solar system were supposed to line up in the year 1982 and cause chaos here on earth . 
+we're still here . 
+the arms race between the soviets and america was supposed to kick-off the apocalypse . 
+we're still here . 
+some of the more ludicrous moments come when it's alluded to that people like jimmy carter and henry kissinger may actually be the antichrist ( ! ) . 
+also , there's ten minutes of stock footage at the end of the film meant to give us an idea of what the battle for armageddon might be like . 
+if it's anything like it's depicted as here then it's going to be incredibly boring . 
+the late great planet earth is available on dvd from vci home video . 
+it contains the film in standard form ( aspect ratio of 1 . 33 : 1 ) , although some moments of stock footage are letterboxed . 
+also included are brief bios on orson welles and hal lindsey , as well as a trailer for another recent vci home video release , chariots of the gods . 
+audio is mono dolby digital , and the video is fair to good for a film like this . 
+i believe this is the first appearance of this film on any home video format so any condition at all is fine with me . 
+certainly i never expected a remastered print . 
+curiously , the menu screens on this dvd look nothing like the menu screens pictured on the back of the case . 
+but they're menu screens . . . 
+so who really cares ? 
+[pg] 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv032_23718.txt

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+hong kong cinema has been going through a bad spell . 
+the last few productions have been effect laded action adventures that combine both the best and worst of american filmmaking with the same qualities of hong kong films . 
+in a nutshell , the current crop of films from hong kong has been maddeningly convoluted and visually sumptuous . 
+with the one time british colony reverting back to mainland ownership , a lot of hong kong's best talents have crossed the pacific to work on u . s . productions . 
+such talents as jackie chan ( rush hour ) , chow yun-fat ( anna & the king , the corrupter ) and yuen woo-ping ( the matrix ) have all moved into the budget bloated world of hollywood filmmaking with mixed results . 
+now we can add two other hong kong filmmakers to the mix with star jet li and director and fight choreographer corey yuen kwai . 
+unfortunately " romeo must die " bears all the trademarks of a typical hollywood action film and none of hong kong's rhythms . 
+the film opens in a nightclub as an asian couple is necking . 
+enter a group of chinese gangsters led by kai sing ( russell wong ) . 
+kai confronts po sing ( jon kit lee ) , the son of kai's boss and leader of the local chinese family . 
+a battle breaks out between the bodyguards of the club and kai , who handily kicks and punches his opponents down . 
+it's not until club owner silk ( rapper dmx ) , bears down on kai and his henchmen that the fight ends . 
+the following morning po sing is found dead . 
+suspicions escalate , as issac o'day ( delroy lindo ) is told of the murder . 
+his concern that the war between his and the chinese family may explode and ruin his plans to move out of the business of corruption and into a legitimate venture . 
+issac implores his chief of security , mac ( issiah washington ) to watch after his son and daughter . 
+the scene shifts to a prison in china , where han sing ( jet li ) learns of his brothers murder . 
+he fights with the guards and is dragged off to be disciplined . 
+hung upside down by one foot , han recovers and battle his way out of custody in a blistering display of fight choreography and stunt work . 
+escaping to the u . s . han sets out to find the person responsible for his brother's death . 
+ " romeo must die " is in many ways a fun film . 
+it is both absurd and assured . 
+the basic plot of a gangster wanting to become legitimate echoes " the godfather " . 
+the relationship between jet li's han and aaliyah's trish o'day reminds us of abel ferrera's " china girl " , except that romeo must die's couple never once exchange more than a loving glance towards one another . 
+their romance is much more puritanical than any other romance in film history . 
+the performances are adequate if not fully acceptable . 
+li , of course has the showiest part , having to express both an innocents and steadfast determination . 
+allayah , in her feature film debut manages to carry what little is asked of her with a certain style and grace . 
+it's obvious that the camera loves her and she is very photogenic . 
+but , still the part is under written in such a way that even a poor performance would not have affected it . 
+delro lindo as issac o'day carries himself well in the film . 
+an unsung and under appreciated actor , mr . lindo turns out the films best performance . 
+the other performers are all adequate in what the script asks of them except for d . b . woodside as issac's son , colin . 
+the performance is undirected , with the character changing his tone and demeanor in accordance with whatever location he is in . 
+an unfocused performance that should have been reigned in and / or better written . 
+first time director andrzej bartkowiak does a workmanlike job in handling the film . 
+having a career as one of the industry's best cinematographers , bartkiwiak knows how to set up his shots , and " romeo must die " does look good . 
+but the pacing of the film is lethargic , only coming to a semblance of life during the fight scenes . 
+the script by eric bernt and john jarrell is not focused in such a way that we can care about the characters or the situations they are in . 
+the big gambit of buying up waterfront property to facilitate the building of a sports center for a nfl team is needlessly confusing . 
+and of course the common practice of one character being the comic relief of the film becomes painfully obvious here as anthony anderson as allayah's bodyguard , maurice has no comic timing whatsoever . 
+the best things about the film are its fight scenes . 
+jet li is a master of these intricate physical battles . 
+one needs only to see his film " fist of legend " to understand that the man is without peer in the realm of martial art combat . 
+here , jet is given the opportunity to show off in a way that " lethal weapon 4 " ( jet's u . s . debut ) didn't allow . 
+unfortunately , a lot of jet's fights are aided with computer effects that detract from his ability and precision . 
+also " romeo must die " must be noted as having the most singularly useless effect ever committed to film , and that is an x-ray effect that appears three times during the course of the film , showing the effect of bone crushing blows on an opponent . 
+obviously a homage to the famed x-ray scene from sonny chiba's " streetfighter " , the scenes here are just pointless and interfere with the pacing of the film . 
+it's as if the film has stopped and a video game has been inserted . 
+one problem though about the fight scenes . 
+those that are familiar with hong kong action know that even though the films are fantasies and are as removed from reality as any anime or cartoon . 
+they do have an internal rhythm to them . 
+a heartbeat , so to speak in their choreography . 
+the fight scenes in a hong kong film breath with an emotional resonance . 
+this is created by the performance , the direction and the editing . 
+here in " romeo must die " , there is no staccato . 
+every fight scene , even though technically adroit and amazing becomes boring as the editing both cuts away from battle at hand and simple follows a set pattern . 
+the rhythm is monotonous . 
+a hong kong film has a tempo that changes , heightening its emotional impact . 
+'rmd' is limited to a standard 4/4 tempo , not allowing for any emotional content whatsoever . 
+a fine example of this difference can be found by examining a couple of jackie chan's films . . 
+watch the restaurant fight from the film " rush hour " and notice that the context of the fight , while technically amazing is rather flat ( the framing and cut always do not help ) . 
+now look at the warehouse fight from " rumble in the bronx " . 
+there you have a heartbeat , and emotional draw that doesn't let the audience catch its breath . 
+the stops and pauses for dramatic effect work perfectly , causing the viewer to be both astounded and flabbergasted . 
+here in 'romeo must die' , the fight scenes have no more emotional content or character than any john wayne barroom brawl . 
+jet li is a grand and personable screen presence . 
+it's a shame that his full talents were not used to full effect here . 
+one day filmmakers here in the u . s . will stop making films by the numbers and start to embrace the style and emotion that has made hong kong action pictures such a commodity . 
+until then , we'll be left with emotionally hollow product like " the replacement killer " and , currently " romeo must die " . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv043_16808.txt

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+ " party camp , " is one of the most mindnumbingly brainless comedies i've seen in awhile . 
+a late rip-off of the " meatballs " series , the film follows a group of young camp counselors at camp chipmunk . 
+that's really about all that can be said about the " plot " because nothing much happens , except that the main character , wise-cracking jerry ( andrew ross ) , has the hots for a cute blonde ( kerry brennan ) , and there is a big contest in the climax . 
+how fun ! 
+since , " party camp , " has practically no screenplay and there is no talent at all involved , the least the makers could have done was make it raunchy and exploitative . 
+it's not that i think exploitation is necessarily a good quality , but when you are talking about a dull turkey like this , the least that could have been done would be to fill it with a lot of mindless sex . 
+even a psychopathic slasher at the camp would have done the trick . 
+at least , then , it wouldn't have been such a chore to sit through . 
+never before have i seen so many jokes fall astoundingly flat . 
+the comedy was easy to spot , but it wasn't the least bit funny . 
+it was groan-inducing . 
+constantly throghout , i was asking myself if director gary graver actually thought this movie was worth anything . 
+so what saves , " party camp , " from the dreaded zero star rating ? 
+well , that's simple : jewel shepard , as a flighty bimbo , was admittedly fun to watch . 
+although nothing could have saved this film from the lowest depths of motion picture trash , at least if the film had centered on shepard , she might have been able to add a little spice to an otherwise rancid , low-budget teen comedy . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv046_10613.txt

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+all through its production and into the early days of its initial , aborted pre-release publicity , hard rain bore the appropriate moniker of the flood . 
+ultimately , however , paramount pictures , nervous that this movie would be confused with 1996's other , underperforming disaster films ( dante's peak , volcano ) , changed the title and shifted the release date by nearly a year . 
+but , to paraphrase the bard , swill , by any other name , would smell as rank . 
+no number of name changes can help this picture . 
+it's not just about a disaster , it is a disaster . 
+hard rain is the case of a movie that gets progressively worse with every passing minute . 
+the best shot occurs during the opening credits , as the camera pans over the streets and byways of huntingburg , indiana as the water level slowly rises . 
+the community , protected by an overworked dam , is being evacuated as the rain continues to pour relentlessly from the cloud-choked skies . 
+from that moment on , it's all downhill . 
+whatever initial entertainment value the film possesses has long since drained away by the halfway point . 
+it takes forever to get to the end credits -- this is one of the longest-seeming 95-minute motion pictures i have recently endured . 
+basically , hard rain is one extended , dull chase sequence punctuated by occasional shoot-outs . 
+there's a lot of water , broken glass , gunfire , and explosions . 
+it's all very routine and uninteresting because there aren't any real characters and the plot only occasionally makes sense . 
+the film's conclusion is so preposterous that it's almost worth watching for the sheer masochistic enjoyment of seeing the monumentally idiotic way that the film makers decide to resolve the myriad subplots that are floating around . 
+action films are supposed to become progressively more invigorating as they rush towards a conclusion . 
+graham yost , the writer of both speed and hard rain , surely understands that principle . 
+unfortunately , neither he , nor cinematographer-turned-director mikael salomon ( a far off place ) , applies it . 
+the action in hard rain grows tedious through repetition . 
+we see the same kinds of things -- speedboat chases , flood damage , shoot-outs , etc . -- over and over again . 
+the movie constantly recycles about twenty minutes worth of material to pad the running time out to an acceptable movie length . 
+the storyline gives us a number of paper-thin characters in contrived circumstances . 
+there's tom ( christian slater ) , the one- dimensional action hero who works as a security guard driving an armored car full of cash . 
+he and his partner , charlie ( edward asner , tv's " lou grant " ) , get stuck on a street that's rapidly turning into a river . 
+a group of men , led by jimmy ( morgan freeman ) , arrive on the scene not as rescuers but as robbers . 
+after charlie is killed in a shoot-out , tom hides the money , then runs . 
+as he swims and boats his way through huntingburg's roads , he encounters some of the locals : karen ( minnie driver ) , a would-be love interest ; a bickering old couple ( richard dysart and betty white ) , who are on hand to provide comic relief ; and the easily-corrupted sheriff ( randy quaid ) , whose seeming helpfulness hides sinister ulterior motives . 
+there isn't any real acting in this film . 
+christian slater utters a few lame one-liners and does a lot of mugging for the camera . 
+tom is easily one of the most lifeless characters the actor has brought to the screen . 
+randy quaid sneers a lot , and is totally unconvincing . 
+morgan freeman and minnie driver both attempt to give legitimate performances , but they are defeated by the script . 
+freeman , one of the best cinematic thespians working today , looks suitably embarrassed to be here , but i suppose everyone needs a good paycheck from time-to-time . 
+following in the wake of twister , this is yet another natural disaster movie that doesn't trust nature's fury as the chief engine of conflict . 
+as a result , we are saddled with an idiotic good guys/bad guys story that effectively ruins any potential that the flood tale could have had . 
+titanic proved that there can be a wealth of drama in a movie where everything goes under water . 
+hard rain successfully demonstrates that the opposite is equally possible . 
+thus far this year , hollywood has already subjected us to its unique brand of moronic mayhem by fire ( firestorm ) and water ( hard rain ) . 
+fortunately , there are only two elements left . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv049_21917.txt

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+ " the world on land -- it's just too big for me . " 
+starring tim roth , pruitt taylor vince , bill nunn , clarence williams iii . 
+rated r . 
+the legend of 1900s is the year's most absurd movie , a rambling , nonsensical piece of seafaring garbage that goes nowhere fast . 
+it stars thespian extraordinaire tim roth , looking wistful as ever , as a guy named . . . 
+1900 . 
+you heard right . 
+his name is , in all actuality , 1900 . 
+he was born on an ocean liner on 1/1/1900 ( uh , hence the name ) , abandoned and adopted by danny , a ship crewman . 
+1900 spends most of his early years hiding in the bowels of the ship because of danny's fear that he might be taken away from him because of " visa matters . " 
+well , when 1900 is about 9 or so , he starts wondering all around the ship . 
+one day , he discovers a grand piano . 
+he sits down and starts playing . 
+miraculously , what comes out is beautiful . 
+a group of onlookers gathers to watch this stunning prodigy make such amazing music at such a young age . 
+when one of the people who knows 1900 tells him that his playing the piano like that without permission is " totally against regulations " 1900 replies " f * ck the regulations ! " 
+ho ho ho . 
+1900 grows up never setting foot on dry land . 
+when he's about 30ish and can play the piano like nobody's business , onboard comes another musician . 
+his name is max ( pruitt taylor vince ) and he plays the trumpet . 
+after 1900 catches max barfing everywhere during a storm , he sits him down on the piano next to him , takes the piano's braces off and plays while the piano flies all around the hall , taking them with it . 
+how the chair they're sitting on and the piano don't separate , i don't know , but this apparently isn't the kind of thing we're supposed to ask . 
+after that , 1900 and max become friends . 
+max is determined to get 1900 off the ship and discover what he is missing on land , but 1900 has no intention of doing so . 
+what's more , he doesn't even want his music to go anywhere without him : when a record company hears about his talents , they come on board to make a record of his music , but after finding out that -- gasp ! 
+-- they're going to make millions of copies , he breaks the record . 
+the conflict of the movie is that after max , unsuccessful in his endeavor to get 1900 off the ship , gets off himself , he stumbles upon a record of 1900's music in a store . 
+the record shouldn't exist because a ) 1900 never stepped on dry land and b ) the one record that was made on the ship was broken . 
+ladies and gentlemen , it's a mystery ! 
+the story itself is ludicrous and uninteresting and so are its elements . 
+we're supposed to be roused by a climactic . . . 
+piano duel ? 
+there isn't anything in this movie with the potential to compel . 
+1900 comes off as a whiny , brooding , extremely unlikable man : i can't recall a single word he said that was not some sort of depressing pseudo- meditation on life . 
+ditto for max , who doesn't seem to have a life outside his friendship with 1900 . 
+tim roth plays 1900 with about as much panache as a fig leaf ; there's no spirit , no gusto to the character . 
+he insists that he leads a happy life on the ship , but to us he is dead . 
+pruitt taylor vince is a little more palatable , at least providing a moment of comic relief here and there to liven things up a bit . 
+the highlight of the movie would have to be the eminently amusing clarence williams the iii as the arrogant , leering " king of jazz " who challenges 1900 to the aforementioned piano duel . 
+the legend of 1900 was made by giuseppe tornatore , whose 1988 cinema paradiso is considered a masterpiece by many . 
+this effort is utterly limp and lifeless . 
+at once ridiculous , boring , narrow-sighted and pointless , this is one movie that should be -- and will be -- quickly forgotten . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv052_29318.txt

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+this feature is like a double header , two sets of clich ? s for the price of one . 
+not only do we get the usual tired sports chestnuts , but the banal rich girl-poor boy love story is tossed in for good measure . 
+an original moment in this loser is as rare as a chicago cubs world series appearance . 
+the screenplay by kevin falls and john gatins , based on a story by falls , merely lobs its plotline at the audience . 
+this is a story that needed sent down for seasoning and more coaching . 
+summer catch centers around ryan dunne ( freddie prinze jr . ) , a cape cod youth chosen to participate in the prestigious cape cod baseball league , supposedly a showcase for the best young amateur and college players in the country . 
+ryan is a blue-collar kind of guy . 
+he works with his dad taking care of the lawns of cape cod's rich and famous . 
+he also , as we are informed early , his own worst enemy . 
+he has the potential and the talent , but always seems to self-destruct at the crucial moment . 
+so , ryan tries to remained focused on baseball . 
+then he meets tenley parrish ( jessica biel ) , daughter of one of the blue bloods whose lawn he manicures . 
+tenley , a name only a hack screenwriter could invent , is unlike her snobbish counterparts and falls for ryan . 
+if you can't figure out where all this nonsense leads , then you need a remedial course in film viewing . 
+as always prinze is pretty to look at , but his performance mainly consists of facial expressions : puppy dog love , heartbreak , frustration , self-loathing or determination . 
+biel cries a lot , while bruce davison merely acts smarmy as her class-conscious father . 
+the only beacon is matthew lillard's fun-loving billy brubaker , the team's catcher . 
+summer catch borrows situations and stylings from other baseball movies , such as bull durham and the natural . 
+no curve balls here , no sliders . 
+every pitch is predictable . 
+a blind umpire could call this movie . 
+summer catch is strictly rookie league moviemaking . 
+it has as much chance of making the movie hall of fame as the dodgers have of moving back to brooklyn . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv061_9321.txt

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+'traffic violation' dr . daniel's review of u-turn 
+dr . d's rating : critical condition ( 
+okay , here's the deal . 
+i'll be the first one to grant that everybody needs a day off now and then . 
+i'll even go so far as to say that a vacation is a necessary part of doing any job well . 
+i mean , hey , i've been known to stretch a weekend into a three-day outing , if friday looks to be a slow day . 
+and if monday ain't looking like a pick-me-up , well , i've been known to give martha nell a call and say , " do me a favor , sweetheart . 
+bump old man ferguson's boil lancing to tuesday morning , and tell miss audrey that i'll swing by her house monday evening and see if we can't get her trick knee back in line . " 
+a simple sentence like that , and i've got a nice four-day fishing trip with the boys , or more often than not , a trip up to cherokee , n . c . , for jackpot bingo and assorted other mountain funnery . 
+but the point is , if you take a day off , do something different . 
+if you've worked yourself silly for months , relax a bit . 
+sleep in . 
+eat pancakes at noon . 
+microwave an egg in its shell . 
+watch pro wrestling with the sound off . 
+listen to some barry white records at high speed . 
+whatever . 
+but do not , under any circumstances , spend your vacation doing the same thing you do for a living . 
+and , if you do , don't make the final product look ten times worse than it would any other time . 
+because i do not want to hear your sob stories , oliver stone . 
+you apparently thought you needed a break from making " important films . " 
+cool . 
+so you found this hinky little book and decided to make it a movie . 
+that's cool , too . 
+but , ollie , old sage , do not take a good story and a hot cast and make one of the most pointless and worthless films of the decade . 
+i'm just eager to meet you one day , so i can buy you a stoli , look you in the eye and say , " what in the wide world of sports were you thinking with u-turn ? " 
+and i'll stand there staring 'til i get a straight answer . 
+sean penn stars u-turn , as bobby , a drifter who's had some troubles a while back . 
+he's heading cross the desert minus two fingers when his mustang ragtop blows a radiator hose , stranding him in superior , arizona , held there by an " ignorant , inbred , turtleneck hick " of a mechanic named darrell . 
+while darrell puts a new hose on the ride , bobby walks into town to see what's cooking . 
+is it needless of me to say that superior , arizona , is not exactly the shiny scrubbed home of all things lovely ? 
+probably not . 
+bobby meets up with grace ( jennifer lopez ) , who invites him back to her place , for drape-hanging and other domestic issues . 
+just as those issues are starting up , grace's husband , jake , storms in , looking like check-out day of the elks lodge convention . 
+just beats bobby silly . 
+bobby takes to the road , only to meet up with jake again , and jake asks bobby to kill grace . 
+a little while later , grace asks bobby to kill jake . 
+them murderous arizonians . 
+gotta love 'em . 
+if any of this sounds familiar , congratulations . 
+you win a kewpie doll . 
+the story is a straight shoplift of red rock west , a cult favorite a few years back from john dahl , maker of the phenomenal the last seduction . 
+but the contest doesn't end there , guys and gals . 
+we get steals from russ meyer movies , where everybody in town is horny and sweaty . 
+we get the town from bad day at black rock , minus the train , plus busty women who can speak . 
+look at any schwarzenegger film , and you'll see our hero , bobby , as bobby has a mudhole stomped in his keister a dozen times , has his ribs stove in at least fifteen times , gets bit by a tarantula , gets shot at , and ends up with vultures circling overhead , all the while getting up like he just got a shaving nick . 
+bobby as terminator ? 
+stretch it a bit , and we have a five-finger discount from doc hollywood , where the whole story occurs because of car trouble , forcing the main character to stay at the mercy of the town and the mechanic . 
+okay , he's working from a book , so maybe ollie's not totally to blame for blatantly copping these ideas . 
+i just expect a man who can make up an alternative history of the united states to be able to craft a few original ideas before exposing the negative . 
+i just wish he hadn't brought a cast like this together for what amounts to a group toe-stub . 
+sean penn gives a great performance , and jennifer lopez and nick nolte are as on target as they can be , playing over-the-top caricatures of stereotype characters . 
+the best thing about the movie is watching penn react to the madness around him and try to figure out exactly what the blankety-blank is going on . 
+too bad it's not fun to watch when it's happening to us . . . while 
+we sit through this mess of a film . 
+u-turn is not a bad film if you're a fan of technique . 
+it's the oliver stone you've always known . 
+robert richardson is his usual cinematographer , and rob and ollie know how to shoot a flick -- great camera angles , shifting viewpoints , wicked colors , nice looking pictures . 
+but pictures of what ? 
+i think i'd rather stare at a xeroxed envelope for two hours than try to figure out the tilt-o-whirl point of this loser film . 
+plot twists are one thing , repetition is almost unforgivable , and this is dang near as unforgivable as any movie i've seen in the past five years . 
+oliver , i know your body of work is nothing to sniff at . 
+you've been nice enough to limit us to only one doors movie , and films like platoon , jfk , wall street and nixon give us plenty to dig on . 
+your scripts are certainly respectable , your budgets are up there on the screen , and your actors don't dog it . 
+and i know that , maybe , with u-turn , you were just kicking back , just having fun . 
+that's fine . 
+but don't do that with a movie with the potential of this one . 
+do some police academy sequel ( imagine that . ) 
+do a big comedy , like a remake of it's a mad , mad , mad , mad world . 
+but do not drop a limp u-turn out of your pocket and expect us to accept it as " an oliver stone movie , " and not question why it stinks like week-old snook . 
+there's a right way to have fun , and a wrong way to have fun . 
+this was as wrong as you can get without going to jail . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv066_11668.txt

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+mr . nice guy is the latest jackie chan film , so you should know what to expect . 
+a weak plot , terrible dialogue , very little acting ability , but some jaw-dropping action sequences that nearly make the rest of it worthwhile . 
+however , mr . nice guy lacks the sparkle of jackie's best efforts , and its weaknesses are more glaring than ever . 
+jackie chan plays , who else , jackie . 
+this time out , he's a famous chef who hosts an australian cooking show . 
+not that it ever makes a difference in the plot . 
+there are only two scenes of him cooking . 
+for the rest of the film , somehow he mutates into jackie chan , supercop . 
+it never does explain why his character has such superb martial arts skills . . . perhaps he was in the same cooking class as steven seagal in under siege ? 
+a tv newswoman , diana ( gabrielle fitzpatrick ) , covertly tapes a drug deal involving kingpin giancarlo ( richard norton ) and a local gang of toughs , the demons . 
+although she only has one camcorder , somehow the result is full of close-ups and multiple angles . . . hmmm , 
+shades of broadcast news ? ? ? 
+anyway , the goons discover diana , and will do anything to recover the tape . 
+here lies another crucial flaw in the story : doesn't anyone realize you can copy a tape ? 
+oh well , no one ever said jackie chan movies had to make sense . 
+as luck would have it , diana runs across jackie , and , wouldn't you know it , jackie accidentally ends up with the tape . 
+this leads to countless chase and/or fight scenes which look like they could have been lifted from rumble in the bronx or nearly any other jackie chan movie . 
+in a move apparently designed to woo american ( and other english-speaking ) audiences , the film uses english as its primary language . 
+however , that doesn't mean an end to the atrocious dubbing that has afflicted jackie's recent americanized releases . 
+strangely , many of the characters speaking english are overdubbed with english , and poorly too . 
+whether this is just a very bad case of looping , an effort to minimize accents , or a simple case of nostalgia , it does achieve the same level of distraction present in all of jackie's dubbed films . 
+the plot in mr . nice guy is negligible , merely an excuse to have jackie on the run from various goons . 
+but even though plots have always been second to the action in jackie's films , it seems odd that the filmmakers have stuck us with this tired retread . 
+look , if you have jackie chan playing a chef , why not use that to your advantage ? 
+watching jackie doing his stuff in a kitchen , beating the bad guys with foodstuffs sounds like the perfect setup for innumerable comic stunts . 
+the action is a mixed bag here . 
+there's really only one no holds barred fight scenes that have become the trademark of jackie's films . 
+it takes place in the arbitrary location of a construction site , apparently for the sole reason that there are lots of nifty things lying around that can be useful ala jackie chan . 
+the action in the film is neither jackie's best nor worst , but you long for some more inspiration in the scenes . 
+the film's gratuitous use of slow motion is distracting . 
+once or twice , it may be useful to highlight a spectacular stunt sequence . 
+but to slo-mo jackie running ? 
+either this is a nod to the six-million dollar man , or a pathetic attempt to disguise the fact that jackie may be slowing down . 
+if you've seen all of jackie's films and are in need of another fix , go ahead and see mr . nice guy . 
+however , if you're just in the mood for some good action , you'd be better off hitting the video store for some of his better work , such as supercop . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv084_15183.txt

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+brian de palma , the director who bought us carrie , dressed to kill and mission : impossible is back , and has bought all his technical expertise with him . 
+sadly , he forget to bring a good story and believable characters . 
+nic cage plays rick santaro , a fast talking cop who is watching a boxing match with his friend commander kevin dunne ( sinise . ) 
+an assassination takes place , and santaro tries to peace together how it took place , trying to work out the roles of the people involved in this conspiracy . 
+the film uses flashbacks and video cameras to bring the mystery together . 
+however , the film doesn't keep the mystery for long , and once the big 'secret' is out concerning kevin dunne , the film is at a dead end . 
+although there are some fantastic shots by de palma , including a 15 minute steadicam shot at the start of the film , halfway through the film drops dead . 
+the problem is that de palma doesn't have a strong story or characters to work with . 
+he tries to offshoot this with flashy camera techniques , but pretty soon this has no effect on the audience , and i quickly got bored . 
+nic cage and gary sinise try to inject some life into some poorly realised characters , but it's no use . 
+they are boring , faceless , and completely unlikeable . 
+yes , another problem with the film is that there's no-one to root for . 
+we're supposed to be on cage's side , because his character becomes nicer throughout the film . 
+however , his change is sadly unbelievable . 
+poor gary sinise's character is terrible , who completely changes throughout the start , the middle and the end , in an appalling way . 
+the film's use of flashback quickly gets boring . 
+while clever and interesting the first few times , it quickly becomes apparent that flashbacks are being used because the film has nowhere to go . 
+they certainly don't increase the tension or suspense of the movie . 
+there is small thread of suspense running through the film , but it certainly doesn't make this film a powerhouse thriller , rather just a slightly below average one . 
+the script is lousy and contrived , the characters flat and two dimensional . 
+certainly not good factors for a film passing itself off for a thriller . 
+the most depressing aspect of the film is that it had potential . 
+there's a good story buried in snake eyes , it's just bogged down in razzle dazzle and flashbacks . 
+it also gives itself away far too quickly , rather than leaving the big twist for the end . 
+while the performances are intriguing , especially by newcomer carla gugino as a sexy 'number cruncher' wrapped up in the case , there's no way of altering the fact that snake eyes is a terminal case of style of substance , and unless you're a big fan of either cage or flash directing , should be avoided . 
+a david wilcock review ? 1998 
+ " you know , for kids " - norville barnes 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv116_28734.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+a remake of the 1978 warren beatty vehicle " heaven can wait " ( which in turn was a remake of " here comes mr . jordan " ) , " down to earth " tells the tale of lance barton ( chris rock , " lethal weapon iv " ) , a young black standup comic trying to win over the audience at harlem's apollo theater . 
+when he's taken to heaven prematurely by bumbling angel keyes ( eugene levy , " best in show " ) , his only recourse is to return in another body . 
+he chooses that of charles wellington , the tenth richest man in the united states . 
+of course , wellington is not only rich , but white and 53 years old , which makes lance's bid for closing night at the apollo , as well as his desire to woo suntee ( regina taylor , " jerry maguire " ) , a tad tricky . 
+the original elaine may/warren beatty script has been reworked by chris rock , lance crouther , ali leroi , and louis c . k . 
+to turn beatty's vehicle as a football player into rock's vehicle as a comic and add some racial humor . 
+as directed by chris weitz and paul weitz ( codirectors of " american pie " and costars of " chuck & buck " ) , the whole affair comes off as amateur hour . 
+initial scenes play like filmed line reading rehearsals . 
+production values are shoddy . 
+most serious of all is the use of rock when his wellington counterpart would have been more appropriate . 
+this problem is clearly attributable to the fact that the old white guy is never lip or action synched when he is on screen . 
+rock does get the chance to do some fun schtick , such as his turnaround on wellington's plans for a poor neighborhood hospital ( 'bullet in the head ? 
+you got a bed ! ' ) , but he's uneven when interacting with the rest of the cast . 
+regina taylor fares well amidst the mediocrity as the young activist who confusedly ends up falling for the man she believed to be her nemesis . 
+also good is frankie faison ( " hannibal " ) as whitney , lance's compassionate manager - the only human who's made privy to lance's body body switch . 
+chaz palminteri and levy are pretty much wasted as heaven's ambassadors . 
+another " best in show " alumnus , jennifer coolidge , is poorly used as wellington's cheating wife ( and shown several days apart wearing the same outfit ? ! ) and greg germann ( tv's " ally mcbeal , " " sweet november " ) continues display his sitcom roots as her lover and husband's lawyer . 
+mark addy ( " the full monty " ) is sorely underutilized as cisco , wellington's fake english butler . 
+stealing the show in every scene she's in is wanda sykes ( " the chris rock show " ) as wellington's disgruntled maid . 
+ " down to earth " is for chris rock fans only . 
+all others should go rent " heaven can wait " or truly be brought down to earth . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv119_9909.txt

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+apparantly money talks . 
+ . 
+ . 
+and uses quite a bit of obscenities doing so ! 
+i've always considered myself pretty open about the gratuity a film can possess , whether in language , violence , sex , or what have you . 
+i find that this fact gives me a little more leverage to complain when a movie goes overboard , and money talks definitely does ! 
+it's not so much that the movie swore nearly constantly ( and i mean constantly ! ) , but it swore so much that it seemed overly prominent and way too staged . 
+perhaps if one character were foul mouthed , but in this film , everybody swears nearly every other word . 
+money talks is about a black ticket scalper named franklin hatchett ( played less annoyingly than expected by chris tucker ) . 
+franklin is your typical con-man and ends up with more than one person out to get him . 
+when the plot finally gets underway , there's no less than three people ( or groups ) that want him , dead or alive . 
+the frenchman who's somewhat responsible for franklin's escape from a prisoner-packed bus , a hoodlum whom franklin owes seven grand , and the cops who wrongly suspect him of murder . 
+franklin's only hope : james russell ( charlie sheen ) , an investigative reporter for the local news who's out to prove himself a worthy journalist . 
+james offers to help clear franklin's name if franklin will just allow him an exclusive report to help channel 12 conquer sweeps week . 
+both of these elements are completely lost along the way however , and never do reappear . 
+as expected , the odd couple of franklin and james do wind up friends at the end , which is another wasted element seeing as how they show no signs of becoming friends at any point along the way . 
+there is just nothing original or intriguing about this film , and so many developments are either non-relevant , or just plain forgotten about . 
+money talks is a paint-by-numbers movie that lacks any real involvment with the audience . 
+frivilous dialogue , a predictable , flat storyline , and two-dimensional characters make money talks a reason to save your money . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv145_12239.txt

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+it was once said that in order to truly enjoy some of todays movies or novels , you must suspend disbelief .  
+however , there is a distinct separation between opening your mind to ridiculous situations and believing a bunch of flat lies . 
+it came as no surprise to me to learn that huntingburg , indiana ( where the film is set ) , does not have a mcdonald's , a sears store , a statue of a man on a horse , nor even a dam close by . 
+even if you can ignore these somewhat white lies ( even though the dam is crucial to hard rains plot ) ; there is still a bunch of things that just dont gel . 
+firstly , morgan freeman , possibly the greatest actor alive ( after such films as driving miss daisy , the shawshank redemption and se7en ) , was cast as a shifty goon intent on stealing enough money for a healthy retirement . 
+he _should_ have played the town sheriff , an experienced and somewhat intriguing policeman . 
+as a massive flood started by a dam accident overwhelms huntingburg , its residents presumably flee as the water level steadily increases . 
+i say presumably simply because we never know what happened to them ; and it seems a tad strange that an entire town ( with the exception of some folk who get introduced along the way ) can vanish before the flood has actually started . 
+but nether the less , armored guard couriers tom ( christian slater ) and his uncle are carrying three million dollars in the back of their van . 
+with a heavy rainstorm causing depressing conditions and slippery roads , it doesnt take long for the van to end up stuck amongst mud and water off the side of the road . 
+jim ( morgan freeman ) and a small gang of thieves locate the van and attempt to steal the three million dollars . 
+but of course tom is more than willing to save the day , so he takes the money and hides it elsewhere in town . 
+the local sheriff ( randy quaid , whom most will remember as the drunken pilot in id4 ) and a couple of police men investigate the situation , but their morals are soon overpowered by greediness as each character contemplates what he/she would do with their share of the three million dollars . 
+director mikael salomon has made sure that hard rain ends up turning everything topsy-turvy , and whilst the film may at first appear to be a definite goodies versus baddies ,  there are numerous twists in its plot that make this a slightly more enjoyable experience . 
+but by the time these interesting changes occur , its far too late in the film for them to have much affect . 
+hard rains continuos corniness and lack of originality washes out whatever hope the script may have had ; and although its cast is somewhat appealing most of its stars act well below par . 
+not at one stage capturing what could have been a fabulous on screen battle between slater and freeman , we are left to reminisce on films that dared to do something different and achieved more than what was expected . 
+such titles as broken arrow ( slater and john travolta ) and face/off ( nicholas cage and john travolta ) come to mind as films that have mastered silver screen confrontations . 
+strangely enough , they were both directed by john woo and both star john travolta . 
+we can forgive morgan freeman for giving a slightly disappointing performance since he is newish to the action genre , but christian slater could have achieved so much more had the amount of crummy one liners been reduced and some personality added to his character . 
+if you had asked me whether slater could perform well enough to substantially boost a movie prior to the release of broken arrow , my answer would have been a definite no . 
+i now know that he has no excuse , and _can_ do better ( if you dont believe me rent a copy of broken arrow from your local video store ) . 
+although hard rain never really works from the start , i somehow felt feelings of missed opportunity when the credits filled the screen . 
+the addition of an enticing sub-plot would have given the film time to breathe , rather than try to cram 96 minutes of action and disaster into a story that cant handle anything else . 
+despite the fact that hard rain fails on almost every account , if your standards are low enough you may find this to be a mildly enjoyable film . 
+no creative flair and no inventive scenes means that hard rain does not stand up well against its many competitors , but it doesnt really matter since the last thing you would want to do after shelling about $8 . 50 is compare this to other films . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv171_15164.txt

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+ingredients : possessed plastic dolls in love , plastic dolls having sex 
+starring : jennifer tilly , voice of brad dourif , katherine heigl , nick stabile , john ritter 
+synopsis : this is the fourth film in the chucky series , which debuted in the late 1980s . 
+basically , chucky is a plastic doll that can walk and talk because it is possessed by the spirit of a slain murderer . 
+in bride of chucky , chucky's longtime girlfriend tiffany ( jennifer tilly ) dies and her spirit inhabits a female plastic doll through voodoo . 
+dolls tiffany and chucky get married and embark on a quest to reach a cemetery in new jersey , where a mystical gem might enable them to be humans . 
+the dolls stow away in the back of a vehicle driven by a newly eloped couple , so in the side plot , the couple suspects each other of being a murderer . 
+opinion : bride of chucky is an attempt at horror with humor , but doesn't succeed . 
+somehow , chucky moaning about mid life crisis , and how he should have gotten married does not make for a very scary chucky . 
+and tiffany harping about mid life crisis , and how she should have gotten married does not make for a very scary tiffany . 
+the suspenseless bride of chucky relies mostly on jennifer tilly's cleavage to keep attention during the first half , and on occasional puns to keep attention during the second half . 
+the best that can be said about bride of chucky is that it is sarcastic . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv176_14196.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,48 @@
+hello kids . 
+today the movie studios want to take over my critical review , and somehow persuade you that _armageddon_ , the summer's biggest blockbuster , is a film for everybody . 
+and remember , if a film is for _everybody_ , and if it makes the most money for the summer , it _must_ be good , right ? 
+armageddon is a comedy , with a capital " c " . 
+it stars bruce willis , who has a hundred one-liners ! 
+it has a tiny rock land directly in the middle of a heated argument in new york city ! ! 
+and , chuckle , chuckle , one of those new yorkers , _survives_ , with charcoal all over his face ! ! 
+snorkle , * sniff * , hiccup . 
+and it has steve buscemi as a _genius_ who wants to work for an oil rig ? 
+knee-slap ! ! 
+isn't this just so , so , funny ! ? 
+armageddon also has romance , with a capital " r " . 
+it has a tender moment between * forbidden lovers * ben affleck and liv tyler , with , with , animal crackers ! 
+and it has will patton as a long lost husband trying to reunite with his separated wife and child , who thinks he's a salesman ! 
+gurgle , * sniff * , awwwww . 
+and it has steve buscemi spewing more one-liners about minors and strippers . 
+umm , moving right along . . . 
+armageddon also has lots of action , with a capital " a " . 
+not just any action sequence would do . 
+it must have _original_ action sequences that are designed to thrill . 
+like , drill , darn it , drill ! ! ! 
+and , let's have inept people destroy the mir space station ! ! 
+can't you hear your heart beating ! ? 
+and steve buscemi goes crazy and starts shooting at people ! ! 
+what drama ! ! 
+lastly , armageddon is out there to save the planet , with a capital " p " . 
+this can't be any old thriller--we must have an asteroid , the size of texas head straight for earth ! ! 
+and , and , we must have beautiful scenic worldwide shots , like paris , blown up . 
+and , and , we must have peoples of all colors , nations , and religions , join hand in hand for one final , hopeful , hug . 
+the final sequence , where muslims in prostrate worship stand up--in domino fashion--to cheer the victory , filled me with such emotional goo that i wanted to , to , to rip the screen into shreds ! ! 
+i mean , i mean , cheer for ecstatic joy ! 
+ ( it was over ) . 
+comedy . " c " . 
+romance . 
+ " r " . 
+action . 
+ " a " . 
+planet . 
+ " p " . 
+okay , kids , what does that spell ? 
+seriously , folks . 
+any film that could take the indie-films' most valuable talents , and throw it all away with a bruce willis vehicle , a hundred-million dollar budget , but have cheap-o sets and lousy special effects , is , bottom line , living proof that hell exists , and has made a multi-picture deal with universal . 
+in the midst of all the action , the terseness , the one-liners , the fake sets , the overall waste of time , i recognized matt malloy playing an underwritten nasa technician ( " malloy , give me a reading " ) . 
+remember him ? 
+he was a principal player in last year's _in the company of men_ , a film that was more powerful , shocking , terrifying , funny , and shocking than _armageddon_ could ever aspire to be . 
+_armageddon_ cost over $100 million to make . 
+_itcom_ cost a paltry $30 , 000 . 
+need i say more ? 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv180_17823.txt

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+ " goodbye , lover " sat on the shelf for almost a year since its lukewarm reception at the cannes film festival last may , and one look will tell you why . 
+it's a mess . 
+and that's * way * before ellen degeneres shows up . 
+the film is one of those torrid double-indemnity crime stories that , in this case , required the services of three screenwriters . 
+i suspect that one wrote a sexy thriller , one wrote a murder mystery , and one wrote a comedy , then director roland joff ? tried to piece it all together in the editing room while scratching his head in bewilderment . 
+i didn't laugh at ellen degeneres much ( i think i was supposed to ) . 
+degeneres is horrible and her character is even worse , a tough-talking vulgar cop with a bad wardrobe and bad hair . 
+either degeneres is wearing a wig--as most of the actors appear to be--or she doesn't yet have enough clout to secure a hairstylist . 
+every single word out of her mouth is supposed to be racy and hip , but her incessant wisecracking is poorly-written and merely stupid . 
+her reaction to the brutal killing of a jogger is " at least she died healthy . " 
+and that's one of her wittier asides . 
+degeneres' sgt . 
+rita pompano is called in to investigate the allegedly accidental death of . . . wait . 
+to give away too much of the plot would all but ruin a film that has very little going for it outside of its numbing plot twists and multiple triple-crosses . 
+it's best described this way : 
+sultry sexpot/real estate agent sandra dunmore ( patricia arquette ) is married to jake , a " creative yet unfocused " ( and alcoholic ) advertising rep , played by dermot mulroney . 
+sandra likes to act out her deep-seated sexual fantasies and jake's brother ben ( the suave-as-ever don johnson ) likes to help . 
+ben is also coming on to his petite , mousy co-worker peggy blaine ( mary-louise parker ) and someone , somewhere , is planning to cash in on that huge life insurance policy of his . 
+the film is ripe with cheating lovers cheating on each other and back again . 
+although there are some genuine surprises , the plot twists get too contrived too quickly . 
+probably around the time degeneres' gumcracking gumshoe appears . 
+at least the former " ellen " star is going for something a little different . 
+arquette turns in yet another of her stiletto-heeled , platinum blonde bombshell roles ( see : " lost highway , " " true romance " ) while quoting embarrassing lines like " i'm not wearing any underwear . " 
+i hope she got paid a lot of money to do this . 
+here's an example of some of the film's flat-out stupidity . 
+sandra purchases a used car and disguises herself in a red wig prior to stalking two of the film's duplicitous lovers . 
+she drives the motorbiking couple off a cliff while blaring her favorite " the sound of music " on her car stereo , intent on identifying herself to her hapless victims . 
+so what was the point of the wig and the car ? 
+ " the sound of music " stuff might be a reference to " the wizard of oz " allusions in david lynch's " wild at heart , " but if so joff ? must have forgotten that " wild at heart " was a despicable movie . 
+it's hard to believe that " goodbye , lover " was directed by the same person who made " the killing fields " and " the mission . " 
+it's not , however , hard to see why it sat on the shelf for so long . 
+it should have stayed there . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv187_14112.txt

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+54 is dull , perfunctory , uninspired , and boring . 
+a greater writer might have created a lyrical sentence for each of those adjectives , flowing in lovely arangements with soaring metaphors . 
+i , however , would rather cut to the chase . 
+54 is dull , perfunctory , uninspired , and boring . 
+there is nothing in it -- not a glimpse of depth , nor a shimmer of intelligence or insight . 
+there is no electricity in any of the scenes , or a moment of interest in the story or its subplots . 
+and it's underdeveloped , and features an array of bland characters played by actors who think they're in this year's boogie nights . 
+they are so wrong . 
+the picture has been assembled by mark christopher . 
+based on this film , i don't know how he got a job in the business . 
+54 is supposed to be an amazing insight into the world of the dance club of the same name , which originated in the 70s and closed down in the 80s . 
+i don't know if this film went into production after boogie nights was released , but christopher has managed to plagiarize paul thomas anderson's brilliant work in every possible way , from the framework of the plot down to the style of the cinematography . 
+what it lacks is everything that made boogie nights great : depth , intelligence , energy , fascinating characters , and challenging themes . 
+54 can't even measure up to the last days of disco , which is flawed , but still smart and entertaining . 
+it's remarkably bad timing , i'd say , to release a film this tedious after a couple of noteworthy pictures of the same kind . 
+i have exaggerated , though : there is one interesting character , and one terrific performance . 
+that character is steve rubell , played with more perceptiveness by mike myers than this limp production deserves . 
+steve rubell is the owner of studio 54 , and if christopher had focused on him , then myers could have forced a good film out of this wreck all by himself . 
+alas , we are instead guided to endure the trials of a young man named shane ( ryan phillippe ) , a going-nowhere new jersey teen who gets a job in the club , thanks to rubell's homosexual impulses . 
+it's here that he meets his friends , the array of uninteresting characters : his co-worker , greg ( brecklin meyer ) , his wife , anita ( salma hayek ) , and , of course , the love interest , julie black ( neve campbell ) . 
+shane is just an innocent young fool in the beginning , and he has a reasonably sturdy home life . 
+ ( some of the scenes with his father border on interesting , while heather matarazzo , who plays his sister , pushes phillippe off the screen . ) 
+but he decides to envelop himself in the disco scene , and succumb to peer pressure and to drugs . 
+why his " friends " push him into drugs is never really explained , but the fact that they are " friends " is questioned only is superficial ways ( greg gets really mad at shane because he's been elevated to bartender status ) . 
+there isn't a single conflict that takes center stage , except that shane has some kind of unexplored reservation with the business in which he works . 
+most of the film is dumb , and most of the dialogue is inane . 
+there's a scene late in the film in which shane confronts julie black , and , in the next scene , they're arm-in-arm without a bit of development . 
+then , they're kissing in a bowling alley ! 
+this is five minutes of material , thrown into the picture at the last minute ( well past the one-hour mark , and this isn't a long film to begin with ) . 
+campbell is a talented actress , but she needs a role that gives her a little depth . 
+this one doesn't . 
+and phillippe has almost no presence whatsoever ; this performance pales in comparison to mark whalberg's star-making role in boogie nights . 
+he seems dumb and misguided , and his voice never changes tone . 
+i guess he was picked for the color of his hair and the shape of his body , but he seems pretty lanky to me . 
+he's all wrong for a lead role , but it doesn't help that christopher has forgotten to develop his characters . 
+by the end of 54 , shane's most notable trait is his stupid , fake accent . 
+the rest of the performances are wasted . 
+hayek is an energetic , talented young actress , and does almost nothing here . 
+meyer is endearing , but allowed to be no deeper than cardboard . 
+only myers , by sheer force of talent , manages to rise above christopher's wading-pool of a script . 
+rubell has been written just as depthless as the rest of the characters , but myers is good enough to inject subtleties that help round out the performance . 
+in fact , myers is the sole reason to see 54 , and all it really does is make you wish that the film had revolved around him . 
+i've read that studio 54 has been recreated down to the last detail . 
+frankly , i don't care . 
+it's easy to recreate something technical like this . 
+a fairly skilled production designer and a few carpenters can manage such a task . 
+besides , christopher keeps the lights so low that the sets are invisible , anyway . 
+aside from myers' performance , 54 is a complete failure . 
+it's dull , perfunctory , uninspired , and boring . 
+some may find my comparisons to boogie nights unfair , but they're so obvious to me . 
+in any event , 54 is pallid without the contrast . 
+it doesn't even work as mindless entertainment : it's so shallow that the most escapist viewers are likely to dismiss it . 
+so , don't forget those key words : dull , perfunctory , uninspired , and boring . 
+everything else i said was just padding . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv195_16146.txt

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+one of the first films of 1999 is this mtv pictures release which marks the first leading feature role for james van der beek , the star of the wb's runaway hit dawson's creek . 
+following in the foot steps of mtv's two other live action films , joe's apartment ( 1996 ) and dead man on campus ( 1998 ) , varsity blues is a bad film and is unlikely to cause much of a sensation in the marketplace . 
+set in west cannan , texas , the film examines the small town obsession with high school football through the eyes of second string quarterback john " mox " moxon ( van der beek ) . 
+we know he's smart because he reads kurt vonnegut instead of the playbook . 
+coach bud kilmer ( jon voight ) has been around so long there is actually a bronze statue commemorating him . 
+the star quarterback , lance harbor ( paul walker ) , is a handsome , blonde , hero who has his own billboard in his front yard and dates the sexy head cheerleader , darcy ( ali larter ) . 
+also on the team are an enormous guy ( ron lester ) with some health problems and the token african-american team member ( eliel swinton ) whose only real dialogue scene deals directly with the color of his skin . 
+when lance is seriously injured , mox gets his chance to shine and he runs with it , undermining kilmer with his unusual playing strategies . 
+his relationship with his dutiful girlfriend , jules ( amy smart ) , is threatened and there's a big game at the end . 
+guess who wins ? 
+nothing about varsity blues is inspired and the whole film simply moves through the sort of conventional motions that coach kilmer would love . 
+there's a chance for some smart satire on small town obsessions but the humor here is decidedly lowbrow . 
+van der beek does a decent job of carrying his first film although a silly accent trips him up sometimes . 
+also , the role isn't very much of a stretch from his dawson leary character . 
+he's still a pseudo-intellectual , whiny , nice guy , except here he also happens to be a jock . 
+voight is a terror as he chews up every single piece of scenery and spits it out . 
+the other adults are all notably awful while the younger performers don't fare much better . 
+on the positive side , walker is a charismatic actor who is due for a breakout role following this and his supporting turn in pleasantville ( 1998 ) . 
+scott ( son of james ) caan has some lively moments as tweeder , the team's wild man . 
+larter , as a gorgeous seductress looking for a one way ticket out of texas , gets to show off the film's most interesting costumes , including a very eye-opening " whipped cream bikini . " 
+it's interesting to note that the film definitely earns its r-rating with a lot of harsh language , alcohol abuse and an unusually high amount of nudity ( including a gratuitous trip to a strip bar that reveals a not very surprising surprise ) . 
+all this is likely to come as a shock to the young female fan base of dawson's creek , presumably the target audience for the picture . 
+director brian robbins previously helmed the kids feature good burger ( from nickelodeon films , a sister company of mtv ) and changes directions here a bit but still fails to make much of an impression . 
+the look of the movie is as bland as the town and characters who populate it . 
+the football scenes are generally unexciting and the entire film looks a bit washed out . 
+there's an ok soundtrack featuring music from collective soul , foo fighters , green day and aaliyah but it's not as impressive as one would expect from a mtv film . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv199_9721.txt

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+come on hollywood , surprise me . 
+stop giving us these poorly written thrillers with banal dialogue , sketchy characters and plots as predictable as the sunset . 
+the always watchable morgan freeman plays a detective who becomes personally involved in a case involving missing girls . 
+personal , because his niece is one of the victims . 
+it's a slobbering psychopath , of course , but this time there's a twist . 
+freeman notes that each of the young women who've disappeared are all strong willed , assertive , and more successful in their careers than the average girl . 
+we soon learn that the guy calls himself casanova , whose aim is to " dominate " these modern gals by imprisoning them in some dungeon and keeping them as his personal harem . 
+anyway , one of the women manages to escape ( ashly judd ) and teams up with freeman to . . . well , 
+you know the rest . 
+a brief glance at the plot to silence of the lambs , with which this film is constantly being compared to by the hype merchants , may suggest lambs also has a fairly predictable story . 
+perhaps , but that film also has superbly drawn characters and smart dialogue . 
+so lets not insult a great movie by taking the comparisons any further , okay ? 
+and as for comparisons to seven . . . oh 
+please ! 
+kiss the girls is based on the novel by james patterson and written for the screen by one david klass . 
+maybe the novel was a stinker to start with , but whatever the case , it's the writing that's clearly at fault here . 
+one , these characters have very little to say that's engaging or interesting . 
+two , the script has no sense of humour . 
+three , while the notion of a psycho's victims being smart , successful women is an interesting twist , the execution isn't even half as good as the idea . 
+thus , ashly judd comes across all out of focus , instead of being the heart of the story . 
+we can't feel her rage . 
+some atrociously written casual exchanges between her and several male characters are supposed to remind us that she's the no-bullshit 90's type , but these conversations barely register . 
+and as for freeman , kiss the girls is his second dog in a year : first chain reaction , now this . 
+for an actor of his calibre , this is most worrying . 
+young director gary fleder scored a hit a few years back with his quirky pulp fiction-esque things to do in denver when your dead . 
+but what can he do with material as resolutely mediocre as this ? 
+not much , and you can hardly blame him . 
+there's a few well-staged chase scenes through the forest where the camera whirls , dives and jumps , and the effect is startling . 
+but the script is beyond rescue . 
+what hurts most is that hollywood continues to get away with serving up this tripe , safe in the knowledge that jaded audiences will lap it up . 
+complacency rules : it's been so long since we saw a mainstream american thriller that delivered juicy characters , real surprises and consistently sharp dialogue . 
+the only consolation for this viewer is that my ticket to the movie was a freebie , positive proof that the best things in life aren't free . . . . 
+ . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv203_19052.txt

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+synopsis : sonny koufax ( adam sandler ) is a rich , childish , angry man who has just been dumped by his girlfriend vanessa ( kristy swanson ) . 
+in a bid to impress vanessa sonny impersonates his friend kevin ( jon stewart ) and adopts a 5 year old boy named julian ( cole and dylan sprouse ) while kevin is on an overseas trip . 
+under sonny's supervision julian soon learns to lie to women , tell people how he " wipes his ass , " throw tantrums , and scream for his " god damned " treats . 
+self centered , julian breaks a school classmate's arm without apologizing or even realizing he has done anything wrong . 
+meanwhile sonny bribes julian with sugary talk , food , toys , and flashy promises in order to get the kid to perform . 
+not surprisingly the government takes julian away from sonny's incompetent supervision , and this leads to a custody battle . 
+opinion : it's a movie about an embittered creep teaching a little kid to be a jerk , and we all get cheap laughs because for 90 minutes the innocent kindergartner never finds out what it means when he mimics all the bad boy behavior . 
+that's the essence of big daddy . 
+but there's a bigger issue involved : marketing . 
+movies that are rated pg and pg-13 are heavily marketed towards children of preteen age and below . 
+on tv , film clips advertise these movies as family-friendly hit comedies . 
+then when you go see them they turn out to be either raunchy sex acts like austin powers with characters named fat bastard - - or big daddy where adult characters get their jollies by buddying up to naive five year olds and encouraging them to experiment with drugs and mistreatment . 
+folks in hollywood are trying to develop a preteen market for raunchy stuff , but i think most american parents would agree that early childhood is a time of mental innocence that should be protected from uncaring media market exploitation . 
+to many american mothers there's probably nothing more pathetic and unsettling than the sight of a theater full of unsupervised little eight year olds laughing raucously as movie character father adam sandler jokes about a woman's " ice cold tits . " 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv229_15200.txt

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+it's amazing how a comedian can have the some of the funniest stand-up around but completely fall flat in the movies . 
+take adam sandler . 
+on the basis of his first two cds ( " they're all gonna laugh at you ! " 
+and " what the hell happened to me ? " ) , 
+he's the best thing to hit comedy since robin williams . 
+but when you put him in front of a camera , it just isn't the same . 
+i kind of enjoyed happy gilmore and thought that it warranted a marginal recommendation , but his latest film , the waterboy is about as funny as a root canal . 
+seriously , i'm willing to wager than there were more laughs in saving private ryan than there are here . 
+in fact , i found this movie to be more depressing than comedic . 
+the first half hour generated not one smile in me , with it's scenes of emotional abuse towards adam's character of bobby boucher not only by the cruel football players , but also by his very disturbed mother ( kathy bates - what is the world coming to ? ) . 
+granted , after the film gets rolling , there are a few mild chuckles throughout ( i'm even willing to admit that it actually had me laughing once or twice ) , but not nearly enough to sustain the waterboy for it's nearly hour and a half running time . 
+you're all familiar with the plot because you've seen it at least a million times before ; everyone picks on the hero until he shows a hidden talent and leads the underdog team to victory over the champions , in the process not only winning the respect of his teammates but also getting the woman he loves . 
+and believe me , i'm not giving anything away by saying that sandler's team wins . 
+if you would actually feel any degree of suspense watching this movie , then god be with you . 
+the only things that keep this bomb from getting the big banana are the winning performances from henry winkler as the insecure coach and the severely underrated fairuza balk as bobby's love interest . 
+i mean , they should be lending their talents to some loftier purpose , but they do extremely well with what they are given here . 
+kudos to both of them . 
+my advice to adam is to try and follow in the footsteps of veteran comedians like williams and steve martin , who made a very smooth and successful transition from stage to screen . 
+rely more on actual comedy rather than strange voices and rude noises to make people laugh . 
+or maybe even show what dramatic talent he might have , like jim carrey did with the recent truman show . 
+with the obvious and considerable talent that he possesses , he just can't keep going on like this . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv266_26644.txt

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+the spy game is up . 
+you can thank charlie's angels -- the movie -- for that . 
+when did banality and pandering become okay ? 
+just steal from hong kong , the matrix , and a kitschy tv show from the mid-1970s and that's a movie ? 
+charlie's angels is one of the worst examples of action film homogeneity and shameless duplicity in any film i've seen in ages . 
+charlie's angels is dumb . 
+just plain dumb . 
+as we all know , three of the hottest females on the planet -- drew barrymore , cameron diaz , and lucy liu -- are three super-agents working for the mysterious millionaire named charlie . 
+they all drive fast cars , look oh-so-fabulous even in the morning , and don't seem to get a scratch even when fighting armed men , having buildings explode ten feet in front of them , or flying through the air in matrix slow-motion . 
+and while the entourage spends 90 minutes romping around in cleavage-busting wetsuits , cleavage-busting waitress uniforms , and cleavage-busting wet t-shirts , they scarcely succeed in resembling so much as a group of annoying , drunk sorority girls , the kind who hit on everybody at a party . 
+the actual plot revolves around the ridiculous story of a millionaire computer engineer -- the great sam rockwell -- who gets kidnapped by a mysterious rival computer company . 
+of course , the rival wants control of his new personal identification system , which involves such latter-day buzzwords as gps , cellular tracking , and even mainframe . 
+the amazing crispin glover lends his acting chops as a crazed henchmen involved in all the nasty things that happen to the angels -- like battling each of them in many round-robin matrix rip-off ( again ) fight sequences and harboring a strange attraction to sliced-off locks of the angels' hair . 
+the coup de grace is bill murray as bosley , serving as charlie's manservant , or , more to the point , the angels' pimp . 
+the rest of the movie comprises a revenge arc , enough costume changes to fill three productions of les miserables , carbon-copy fight sequences that would lend credible evidence to a jackie chan and the wachowski brothers lawsuit for intellectual property theft , and the strange transformation of sam rockwell into mickey rourke's long-lost brother . 
+charlie's angels starts off with a bang and ends up being a soggy burrito left out overnight . 
+nothing is difficult , plausible , or believable in any of the angels' actions . 
+it feels like the matrix , mission : impossible 2 , and cleopatra jones and the casino of gold all rolled into one . 
+diaz is a knucklehead . 
+barrymore is the " dangerous one , " mean and tough and about as believable as katie holmes in the role . 
+liu is just . . . 
+lucy liu , looking good in a skin-tight black leather suit . 
+the list of movies from which charlie's angels is directly lifted is equally astonishing . 
+the writers apparently ran the copier all night stealing scenes from armageddon , lethal weapon ii , all of jackie chan's movies , the great escape , saturday night fever , revenge of the nerds , payback , darkman , dr . no , the matrix ( as mentioned ) , and even tv's friends . 
+it's a shame , too , because one of the many screenwriters , john august , was at the helm of last year's favorite , go . 
+then again , what can you expect from a director known solely as " mcg . " 
+there is no camp value in the film , no interesting main characters , no invigorating action scenes , no reason at all to waste your time except to ogle the hot chicks and enjoy the performances of a few supporting players . 
+note to hollywood : next time , let's leave the tv shows on the tv . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv286_26156.txt

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+here i sit at my computer about to write my review of the recent action comedy " bait " starring jamie foxx and david morse . 
+this is a review i don't even want to write because i'd just be laying the same criticisms on it that i would with any other so-generic-and-predictable-it's-beyond-ridiculous piece of hollywood fluff . 
+if they're not going to give us , the audience , just a little credit and put something together with half a brain , why should i waste my time and mental energy criticising it ? 
+last summer i took this same approach with my review of " the mummy , " in that review i just quoted phrases my reviews of other sub-par movies . 
+i think i shall do the same thing here but with a few less quotes ( not all are applicable ) . 
+i hope this goes to show you what i think of " bait " and why you can find out all you need to know about it without having to take a wild guess . 
+it's genuinely unfunny ( i , and the other audience members only laughed once during the entire two hours ) , unoriginal and unthrilling . 
+it's not so bad to the point where it's fun to watch because of its badness and it's no so bad you absolute loathe it and are pained by watching it , it's just such a cliche in and of itself , that , uhh . . . 
+lost my train of thought . 
+anyways , here's those quotes , enjoy ! 
+ " getting an audience's attention right from the beginning plays a major role in how today's films work . 
+we want to have something exciting to watch , not a slow build-up of a story ( god forbid ! ) , and this film plays right into the mainstream's hands . . . " 
+- review of " armageddon . " 
+ " it's clear the film doesn't want to waste time on reality and thus the attempt to establish plausability ( the most minimal amount necessary ) comes across as a half-assed effort . 
+supporting characters and shady sup-plots are introduced , but as is the case with films made up of a large cast of characters , only a handful have any real significance . . . 
+there's a fine line separating homage from plagiarism . . . , " - review of " godzilla " ( 1998 ) 
+ " unfortunately , as is the case with most modern thrillers , once the film showed potential for authenticity and intelligence , the cliches and action sequences take over , " - review of " the jackal . " 
+chad'z movie page is back after heavy renovation . 
+reviews of nearly all mainstream movies playing today ! 
+get my reviews of everything playing at your local cineplex so you can better make an informed decision on what to see . 
+don't forget to vote on my poll and sign the guestbook ! 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv297_10104.txt

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+this movie tries to present itself as the sequel to jan de bont's debut as a director , 1994 surprise hit speed . 
+but the only thing the two movies have in common is sandra bullock as the female lead . 
+annie ( sandra bullock ) is in the wrong place at the wrong time again . 
+she's going on a cruise with her new boy-friend alex ( jason patric ) , and of course it is her ship that is kidnapped by john geiger ( willem dafoe ) who has a bone to pick with the shipping line . 
+they sacked him after he got sick . 
+now he wants the diamonds stored in the ship's safe for compensation . 
+that actually is the whole storyline . 
+speed 2 could do without dialogues . 
+the movie is all about images and remarkable sound . 
+i don't really know why this is called an action movie . 
+except for a few scenes that are vaguely reminiscent of speed this goes along the lines of the desaster movies of the 70ies . 
+first we are introduced to a number of people who are going to be important later on in the movie . 
+then desaster strikes . 
+sandra bullock was said to have been glad that she could take action this time around . 
+i looked for the " action " but couldn't find it . 
+most of the time she is part of the decoration . 
+the only time she is part of what happens is when she can have a shot at defusing a bomb and freeing some passengers trapped behind a fire door . 
+now we know that she can handle a chain saw . 
+we also know that fire doors on cruise ships can be cut apart in seconds . 
+the bomb defusal of course goes wrong , but only the furniture is damaged , not our heroes who still are needed . 
+jason patric alias alex spends most of his time flirting with annie , helping other passengers and frolicking in the water . 
+his initial sea-sickness is suddenly gone , because there are ship , crew and passengers to be saved from evil geiger . 
+he does a pretty good job but i can't blame keanu reeves for declining this part . 
+then there's willem dafoe , the villain , who desperately tries to look as frightening as frankenstein's monster . 
+he doesn't succeed , though . 
+an untidy appearance isn't enough to convince the viewer of his psychopath potential . 
+before he tries again to make us believe he is a dangerous man he should practise for a while in front of a mirror . 
+i can't really recommend speed 2 . you will probably like the movie if you like funny situations that aren't meant to be funny . 
+especially the showdown , when the ship first runs into an oil tanker and then dissembles a whole village is a treat . 
+there you get to see the most superfluous scene in the movie . 
+in keeping with last year's desaster movie tradition a dog is miraculously saved from certain death . 
+a really funny ( and meant to be funny ) scene takes place on the oil tanker right before the collision . 
+some crew members watch two ships colliding in an old movie . 
+had they looked out the window they wouldn't have missed the huge ship racing toward them . 
+those of you who still want to see the movie should pick a theater with a large screen and a good sound system to enjoy the visual effects and the phantastic surround sound effects . 
+in an adequately equipped theater it's as if the explosion were going off all around you and you can feel the seats vibrate . 
+but the ilm special effects can't save the movie . 
+for all the money they could have done better . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv313_19337.txt

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+let me begin by saying that this is easily the worst movie in the entire official ( and even unofficial ) james bond series . 
+it is so full of self-parody and silly characters that you would almost believe you were watching a spoof . 
+an omen of what is to come is provided by the pre-credits sequence , a dull affair featuring a confrontation between a man ( it's difficult to give a better description since no mention of him is made elsewhere in the movie ) and the assassin of the title . 
+a song with woefully terrible lyrics follows , and the rest of the movie is even worse . 
+the plot might have been a pleasant change from the usual rule-the-world so often found in the james bond movies of the 70s , but here we get a confused mismash about a fabled assassin , francisco scaramanga ( christopher lee , putting in a performance which is one of the rare saving graces of this movie ) who someone has apparently payed one million dollars to in order to remove roger moore's 007 . 
+there is also a flimsy connection with the energy crisis and a missing solar cell with 95% efficiency . 
+it's as much of a mess as it sounds . 
+bond is " helped " in his task by mary goodnight ( ekland ) , whose character couldn't possibly be any closer to the stereotypical bimbo . 
+during the course of the movie she gets locked in both a closet and a car trunk , blunders around a control room accidentally setting off a laser and serves no purpose in enhancing the plot whatsoever . 
+maud adams ( later to star in octopussy ) is a much more stronger and useful character , but she hardly features in the movie . 
+scaramanga's lackey is a dwarf called nik-nak , who rather fittingly is also possibly the silliest henchman in the series , serving up annoyance and weak dialogue in equal measures . 
+worse still is an almost total lack of action throughout the whole movie . 
+there is but one fight sequence about fifteen minutes in ( not counting a ludicrous scene where two teenage girls beat up several dozen trained martial artists -- another misguided attempt at humour ) . 
+the solitary car chase might have been a highlight , but the " action " is interrupted on a frequent basis by a redneck sheriff ( j . w . 
+pepper , played by clifton james of live and let die " fame " ) yelling stupid comments out of the passenger window . 
+he is easily the most irritating character in a james bond movie . 
+even his presence could have been made bearable by one of the most impressive car stunts in cinematic history , a 360 degree twisting loop jump over a broken bridge -- could have been , except somebody got the idea to dub a mocking whistle tone over the final print . 
+on top of that debacle , the whole end of the film is an anticlimatic sequence in scaramanga's " funhouse " . 
+the only good thing that came out of this movie was that the producers had to make the next film in the series ( the infinitely superior " the spy who loved me " ) a great film in order for the bond franchise to survive . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv324_7502.txt

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+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 isn'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 can'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 . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv334_0074.txt

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+i'm not sure i should be writing a review of the witches of eastwick , because i'm not sure just what the hell ( pardon the expression ) was going on in it . 
+however , i can express the most important observation i made of it , i . e . 
+i didn't like it . 
+if i had to summarize this film , i think i'd conclude it was an updating of one of those old new england folk tales of someone selling their souls to old scratch and how they try to get out of the deal . 
+that's the kernel of it , anyway . 
+tossed into this are little bits and pieces that occasionally seem to be saying something about men and women , feminism , the role of the devil , modern reformers , and friendship . 
+unfortunately , little or no effort is ever made to follow up and elucidate on these concepts ; they're simply thrown out and then left to rot while the film goes on apace . 
+actually , i think that most of the audience was even more confused than i was . 
+they came in expecting some kind of supernatural comedy , on the level of ghostbusters , and were a bit confused to be getting a folk tale with philosophical overtones . 
+they laughed , or tried to laugh , at moments that were either barely funny , or much more horrible than funny , as if that could bend the film away from it's rather frightening direction . 
+three women ( cher , susan sarandon , and michelle pfieffer ) live in eastwick , a small midwestern town . 
+one night , while drinking late into the evening , they begin wishing for the ideal man to drop into their lives . 
+in seeming answer to their idle daydreams , a wealthy eccentric moves into a mansion on the hill and seduces each one by attempting to be everything they want him to be . 
+he soon shows evidence of mystical--perhaps demonic--power , and his devotion to the women's merest fantasies or wishes has dangerous overtones . 
+even worse , when ignored his moods become ugly , and he mistreats the women for spurning him . 
+anyway , the problems : all three female characters are fairly uninteresting , and several are cardboard stereotypes , especially sarandon's character . 
+we never get inside them , never feel sympathetic to them , because their dialogue and personalities seem pretty bland . 
+as for nicholson , well , even the devil needs a direction to go in , and while darryl van horne is the most interesting character in the movie ( due to the grace of the screenwriter and , more importantly , nicholson's acting ) , he still can't be yanked in one direction and then another without making him a little vague . 
+and then there's the special effects . 
+not in themselves--they weren't that good--but their overuse . 
+i was almost positive , until i saw the credits , that the witches of eastwick was either produced by alexander salkind ( who has turned out the slop named superman ii and iii and supergirl ) , because of the big name actors in dopy stunts , or stephen spielberg , after the 18th vomit scene and the nicholson-blown-down-the-street stunt . 
+nope , it's another bunch of guys , and directed by george miller , who has shown great skill with stunts/special effects before ( the road warrior , " nightmare at 20 , 00 feet " episode of twilight zone : the movie ) but apparently doesn't know when to turn off the wind machine and let his people act . 
+f'gawds sake , guys , this is jack nicholson ! 
+let him loose ! 
+let him grin demonically ! 
+skip the splitting earth and fake lightning ! 
+watching the scene where nicholson is tossed out of the car by the voodoo doll , all i could think of was , " what a waste " . 
+if you're going to use slapstick like that , use it up on pee wee herman . 
+nicholson does what he can with the role , and when he can find his bearings , can be extremely good ( the scene in the church , for instance ) , but most of the time , he seems a bit stiff , as if he's not sure what he should be doing next . 
+and no wonder . 
+this script goes all over the map , giving you the feeling that it'd just love to be allegory , but it's not sure about what-- maybe if you give it time it'll think of something . 
+so what is the witches of eastwick ? 
+a horror movie ? 
+a folk tale ? 
+a comedy ? 
+a statement about women ? 
+an examination of the religious right or comparitive morality ? 
+i tend to think of the image that seems to dominate the movie for me . . . watching 
+someone regurgitate half-digested bits of food and cherry pits all over rooms , people , the screen , and ultimately , the audience . 
+in other words , a mess . 
+ ( $2 . 00 ) 
+if you like nicholson enough to watch him here ; maybe 25% of his charm is able to make it through the logjams of others . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv338_9183.txt

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+wizards is an animated feature that begins with a narration of epic proportions . 
+over black and white drawings , we are told that the earth is destroyed in an apocalyptic nuclear exchange , sending the remnants of humanity through generations of radiation-induced mutation . 
+the " original " inhabitants of the earth , fairies and elves , return to populate the globe , along with their evil , mutant counterparts . 
+one day ( and i say " one day " not to be trite , but because that's exactly how it happened - no advance notice ) , a fairy queen gives birth to twins , one good and one evil . 
+the twins grow up to be powerful wizards , the good one embracing magic , and the bad one utilizing technology to attempt to expand his evil empire . 
+we are given the notion that an ultimate battle must occur between the forces of magic and those of technology . 
+as unoriginal as the premise is , i was still somewhat interested in how this story would play itself out . 
+there's a lot you can do in an animated fantasy world , after all . 
+i soon learned , however , that the fantasy was the expectation of a decent film . 
+once the transition was made from still art to color animation , an entirely different feel takes precedence . 
+rather than the epic saga promised by the narration , we get a goofy-looking world of a saturday morning cartoon . 
+not just the look , mind you , but all the zany sounds like >honk boing 
+for years , blackwolf has lost his battles against the magical forces of good , since his armies of ogres and other mutants would get dispirited or distracted soon after battle is joined . 
+however , blackwolf now has a secret weapon : nazis . 
+yup , adolf hitler , the luftwaffe and the wehrmacht . 
+okay , not the real things , but an archival film his minions dug up . 
+projected into the sky for all to see , it inspires his own army while shocking the enemy into submission long enough for the ogres to hack them up . 
+before you know it , there are dead elves everywhere . 
+this is just as well . 
+the characters are so bad that the viewer doesn't care about any of them . 
+they're either silly , sappy , or both . 
+the dialog gets much of the credit for this . 
+an example is when avatar nonchalantly says , " well , looks like my brother and i begin our final battle . " 
+not very formidable when he's also the guy who says , " this is the biggest bummer of a trip i've ever been on . " 
+my favorite line was from a sideline fairy who is asked by her child why good can't fight back against the nazi-charged evil . 
+her response is , " they have weapons and technology . 
+we just have love . " 
+suffice to say , the characters are strictly two-dimensional , and we therefore don't expect anything more than the obvious to happen . 
+which it does . 
+the only unexpected occurrence is the way the final battle between brothers is played out , which is anticlimactic and disappointing . 
+please note that it is the action that is unexpected . 
+that it is disappointing is not . 
+the film couldn't settle on a particular mood . 
+it seems to move from dark to light with the cuts from scene to scene and even angle to angle . 
+scenes which are seemingly meant to contain deep meaning are ruined by acts of levity . 
+the dramatics , which seem to occur at random , are overly staged and overly acted , detracting from any kind of value or even enjoyment which could otherwise be gleaned . 
+ralph bakshi , the director , makes an obvious attempt to get a message across in this film : hitler and the nazis were bad . 
+so who doesn't know this already ? 
+well , maybe children . 
+okay , so you might say that this is a movie for children . 
+it's not . 
+in the scenes where good fights evil , there's a lot of violence and gore that children should not be seeing if they're watching a cartoon . 
+so is the film for adults ? 
+if so , we probably don't need to be bashed over the head to get the point . 
+why not have the bad guys be symbolic of the nazis instead of using old propaganda in a seriously disjointed attempt to show us something we already know ? 
+wizards gives us a lot of footage of nazi tanks and airplanes , and hitler giving speeches . 
+however , we don't see any reason why they should be considered bad . 
+we see no atrocities being committed , not even any real battle footage . 
+there is absolutely no connection made between the armies of evil and the third reich , and we're not even given a cursory explanation as to why this stuff is inspiring in the first place . 
+this needed to be thought out much more thoroughly if a point were to be made , since subject matter such as this deserves better treatment . 
+i'd like to assume that bakshi was trying to say that the same nationalist movement that drove the nazis could happen anywhere , at any time , and we must therefore be vigilant . 
+however , i'm not sure if i want to give him that much credit . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv354_8573.txt

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+wow , a film without any redeeming qualities whatsoever . 
+i'm amazed that someone thought this was a story that must be told on screen . 
+many blacks in hollywood complain that they are not nominated for awards based on their race . 
+i think first they need to concentrate their energy on themselves , and stop making movies which makes them look like nothing more than sex-crazed buffoons . 
+even i'm offended by it . 
+bill bellamy is a " player " which means he sleeps with a lot of women and lies to them . 
+what a pleasant main character . 
+one day , his friends decide that they want to find out how to be a player . 
+why they decide this " one day " i have no idea . 
+how many years have they been friends and why all of a sudden would they want to learn ? 
+anyway , bellamy agrees to teach , and his wonderful lesson to his friends consists of letting them ride in his car while he rides from house to house having sex with women . 
+this is the bulk of the film folks , guys riding from house to house , one keeps getting out to have sex , while the others sit in the car . 
+since russell simmons is producer , and since the official title of the film is " def jam's how to be a player " , i was ready to be jumping up and down and stomping my feet and beating the person next to me because of the comedy . 
+amazingly , aside from gilbert gottfried's 90 seconds of screen time , there was no comedy in the film for me to express myself in such a manner . 
+instead of jokes , there's just an endless stream of profanity and naked breasts ( and naked breasts aren't so bad , but naked breasts alone don't make a good movie ) . 
+be sure to bring along your ebonics to english dictionary as well . 
+gilbert gottfried's character serves as one in his very brief appearance , asking for explanations as to what is being said . 
+they should have brought him along for the entire film . 
+[r] 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv356_26170.txt

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+the summer of 00' wasn't a very good one for devout cinephiles . 
+it offered no blair witches or sixth senses ; the best big budget hollywood could do was an efficient x-men adaptation and a flawed but entertaining shaft update . 
+nurse betty signals the unofficial end of that dreadful summer movie season and the commencement of a potentially brighter fall movie season , that battery-charging ( at least for critics who have to sit through every piece o' shit that moseys into multiplexes ) time of year when all those oscar contenders ( read : " quality " films ) compete for audiences . 
+alas betty has the dubious distinction of being the first overpraised junk heap of the new season . 
+it's also indie director neil labute's first attempt at something resembling a mainstream picture , and i'm sad to report it's a resounding failure ( at least on this web site ) , a mess that's as hopelessly saccharine as people have accused labute's previous films of being unrelentingly masochistic . 
+i went in expecting something decent , for betty was gleefully praised , it's screenplay even winning an award at cannes , but i exited shaking my noggin in bewilderment . 
+are critics so desperate for something unique that they're blind to how derivative the particular brand of " uniqueness " betty dolls out is ? 
+for the first time labute is working from a script he has not written , and he seems unsure of how to handle the material . 
+betty tries to be hip like pulp fiction ( this is another flick featuring a pair of strangely bright and articulate hit men ) , enchanting like the wizard of oz ( of which this film makes several allusions to ) and heartwarming like [stick in your favorite loveable misfit movie] , but by the end it left me cold with its calculated desperation . 
+it's labute's half hearted attempt to make a crowd pleaser and he doesn't even seem to have half that heart in it . 
+nurse betty concerns a soap opera addict , betty ( brilliantly played by renee zellweger ) , who witnesses the killing of her husband , del ( aaron eckhart playing the most casually loutish husband since richard benjamin in diary of a mad housewife ) by two hit men ( morgan freeman and chris rock ) . 
+she happens to have her most beloved soap on in the background and somehow merges the two realities . 
+she's blocked out her husband's death and thinks she's a character in her favorite soap , a reason to love . 
+betty sets out on the road to la ( with some drugs unknowingly stashed in her car trunk ) searching for her soap boyfriend dr . david ravell ( greg kinnear ) while the two bickering hit men follow in not so close pursuit . 
+the labute who birthed the extraordinary in the company of men , slipped a bit ( but not much ) with his sophomore effort , your friends and neighbors , then fell straight on his ass with bash , a play he penned that was recently aired on showtime . 
+the play demonstrated no forward movement as an artist , only labute's persistence in wallowing in the horrid things " average " people do to each other , usually with out realizing how horrid they themselves are . 
+in the play , paul rudd , as an obnoxious jock , delivers a monologue detailing how he once followed a gay man into a bathroom and beat him maybe to death , while his clueless girlfriend essentially regards his sadistic behaviors as something along the old maxim " boys will be boys " . 
+another character , schlubby businessman reacts to the loss of his job by actually killing his own baby ! 
+what was once so powerful about labute's work , the casual , nonchalant cruelty and selfishness ( often elements we all have in us amplified to a disgusting degree ) had become so over the top it was borderline comic . 
+obviously , at this point , labute could use a dose of some different kind of material before he pigeon holes himself further , but nurse betty isn't it . 
+he clearly has little passion for what he's doing here , instead replacing his mojo with strained quirks ( one of the hit men is a huge soap fan , and the character of betty would be little more than a one joke gimmick if zelllweger hadn't managed to transcend that ) tailor made to appeal to the widest possible audience . 
+nearly every scene between chris rock and morgan freeman fatally slows the picture down , as the two are made to enact soft-boiled tarantino-esque dialogue . 
+they evince little chemistry , with rock constantly in over the top rant mode , acting more like an angry comic than any thing resembling a hit man ( an occupation that's represented far too frequently in movies nowadays ) . 
+i think rock is a great comic yet he hasn't been able to bring his feral intelligence to movies , whenever he acts , and no matter the part , it's like he's doing the damn chris rock show . 
+surprisingly ( at least considering her work in me , myself and irene ) renee zellweger gives a revelatory performance , building on her baby faced , apple pie looks . 
+that wide-open face and helium voiced earnestness suggests a little girl not fully grown into her thirty-year-old body . 
+it's the best work she's ever done . 
+freeman is effective as always , though his performance nonetheless suffers because it seems at odds with where the movie wants to take it . 
+the actor plays the role in his usual calm , collected manner , though the flick tries to insinuate a symbolic kinship between his character and betty's , suggesting that both are controlled by their fantasies rather than reality . 
+that's interesting but the movie doesn't do anything with it other than crash land the sub-theme into a labored speech in the midst of a badly staged gun battle . 
+the film has good moments ( many of the scenes involving a very good greg kinnear , especially his confrontation with zellweger ) , an almost soothing , lyrical score ( and you know a movie's in trouble when the score sticks out as one of the best things about it ) but nothing jells , it's parts , good or bad , are so disparate as to be opposing . 
+the film might have worked had it settled on being one type of film , a mainstream , female forrest gump or an oddball art film , but as both if it falls as flat as diet coke . 
+betty's screenplay makes the mistake of relying too much on concurrence , without which betty wouldn't make any progress in the film . 
+nurse betty is a film driven by coincidence rather than charter , like how betty becomes a nurse in the film , a job that she takes in order to get closer to her imaginary lover ; she happens to be at the hospital at the exact moment that a drive by shooting takes place and miraculously knows how to take care of the victim's wound because she happened to see how on tv , which leads to her being offered a room with the victim's girlfriend who eventually gets betty into a party where she meets kinnear ? ? ? a little too tidy , don'tcha think . 
+betty has an interesting theme , though it doesn't even seem aware of this . 
+the current state of tv has been leaning towards reality television what with the enormous success of survivor and moderate success of big brother , with more on the way . 
+this is a film about a women so deluded as to think that her favorite soap opera is reality ( ironically real-life survivor sean kennif has taken a part as a doctor on the soap opera guiding light ) . 
+instead of exploring this timely matter in a way relating to the current tv craze ( since the film does largely appear to be a satire of television , albeit one that would feel more appropriate in the '80s than the '00s ) , the film simply uses betty's delusions as a plot device to get her from point a to b . no progress is made and little is unearthed except that maybe labute could use a bit of rest and a lot of contemplation . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv365_12442.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,68 @@
+welcome to your oh-so typical sequel . 
+it tries to be twice as big as it's predecessor , yet ends up twice as shallow . 
+shallow . . . . hmm . . . now there's an idea . 
+maybe if the ill-fated cruise liner in this movie had struck a shallow reef early on things may have turned out better . 
+the first thing that struck me . . . and 
+surprised me , was that the camera work ( for the opening sequence anyway ) was terrible . 
+looked like the cameramen were drunk and kept tripping on their own feet . . . . . . very 
+different to the original movie . 
+the characters ? 
+well , not many of the characters actually * had * characters , but here's a rundown . 
+annie , who was the highlight of the the original , must have seriously banged her head in the train crash at the end of the first movie . 
+why ? 
+because something's got to account for her losing that many iq points . 
+even though annie wasn't exactly a rocket scientist in speed , here some of her actions just make you want to beat your head against a wall . 
+for instance , after successfully using a chainsaw to cut a hole in a door so that a group of people can escape noxious gases - she stands in the middle of the opening for about five minutes till someone reminds her that the people can't get ut till she get's the chainsaw out of their faces . . . . bang 
+bang bang 
+in point of fact sandra's character is turned into little more than one of those scantly dressed extras from hercules , who constantly has to be rescued . 
+jason patric ? 
+all i can say is bring back keanu . 
+keanu reeves might have the emotional range of a tree stump . . . but 
+that's one more tree stump than jason has . 
+i don't think he changed facial expressions all movie - jason , smile for the cameras ! ! 
+now frown ! . . . i said frown . . . . oh . . . you are . . . bang 
+bang bang . . 
+wooden just doesn't describe this guys performance , but it'll have to do . 
+the bad guy . . . . . ahh . . . william 
+dafoe - there's a bright move . 
+how can you go wrong with the star from that acknowledged classic , body of evidence ? 
+ ( yes , that is sarcasm ) . 
+his wide eyed maniac of a character doesn't start out too bad . . . . but 
+goes steadily downhill as the movie progresses . 
+in the end he degenerates to chasing annie around for a hostage , even though he already has the money and can escape . . . . bang 
+bang . 
+though i'd like to give this movie a double thumbs down , there were some nice sequences . 
+considering the movie cost over 100 million dollars - you'd hope there'd be at least a couple . 
+the real eye-popper for me , even though it was given away in the trailer . . . . bang 
+bang . . . . . was the sequence where the cruise liner sideswipes the oil tanker . 
+this looks terrific and i was very surprised to hear that the cruise liner in it was . . . . completely 
+computer generated ! 
+wow . . . . i 
+don't think i've ever seen a cg model look so real before . 
+the sequence where jason patric in trying to disable the propellers from under the ship is also terrific , and the only time during the entire movie where you get that feeling of . . . . speed . 
+this lack-of-speed problem affects many sequences . 
+such as the oil tanker part . . . . . it was - " oh no , we're going to hit the oil tanker ! " , 
+20 minutes later - " oh no , we're going to hit the oil tanker ! " 
+20 min . . . . you 
+get the point . 
+this movie failed simply because it didn't live up to it's name . . . . there 
+was very little feeling of speed . 
+in the original movie , the lead characters had to make split second decisions to survive . . . . . in this movie it felt more like - " well people , we're gonna run into that there island in a few hours - i think i might stroll over to engineering and see if i can't turn off the engines . . . i'm 
+passing the cafeteria on the way , can i get anybody anything ? " 
+the ending of this movie really is terrible . 
+even though it features what i've since found out is one of the most expensive sequences ever in a movie - it just doesn't work at all . 
+the part where the liner crashes through the town looks very realistic , but . . . . surprise 
+surprise - it just takes waaaaay too long . 
+it seemed to go for 15 minutes before the ship finally stopped . 
+one thing that struck me as extremely poor scriptiing was that as the ship crashes through the harbour and town , around 25 people are killed by the ship . . . . and 
+there's only 15 or so people left on the ship . 
+so when it stops safe and sound and the characters are all cheering - the audience is sitting back and thinking - " wait a sec . . . this is a happy moment because ? " 
+bang bang 
+then there was the dog . . . . . i 
+almost fell out of my seat when i saw the bit with the dog dodging the falling debris . 
+putting a dog in peril has become the ultimate hollywood cliche . . . . . . every 
+movie seems to have a 'dog-in-danger' sequence - volcano , dante's peak , independence day , daylight , twister . 
+lost world . . . . . . etc , 
+etc . 
+this movie is a perfect example of how not to make a sequel . 
+director jan de bont should try watching the orignal movie and this one back-to-back and see if he realises where he went wrong . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv378_21982.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,40 @@
+it should have been a classic . 
+a great cast of respected supporting actors . 
+an interesting premise of loser comic book characters . 
+however , " mystery men " proved to be one of the great disappointments of 1999 . 
+the jokes were bland and hackneyed from talents who have previously made audiences laugh with their unique rituals . 
+the number of cliches and shallow characters made the film difficult to sit through seriously hurting its attempt of having a fast paced premise . 
+the script tried to deliver a series of small jokes throughout the film but without a big laugh-out-loud joke and mediocre small jokes , it failed miserably at being entertaining at all . 
+the jokes were not funny for a number of reasons . 
+they had been used a number of times before in previous films , the best ones , which were mediocre to begin with , were ruined in the trailer , and the expectation of laughing at clever , unique gags from clever unique comedians when there were none to laugh at greatly damaged the film . 
+ " mystery men " might have worked if it was an ensemble cast of newcomers trying to break into the business . 
+but with veterans doing this kind of junk , it really questioned whether their other work was as funny as originally thought . 
+thankfully most actors in this movie will appear in five other movies before the new year arrives to help viewers forget this little movie . 
+the film follows a band of wannabe superheroes living in a wannabe gotham city who are ridiculed by their fellow citizens and villains because of their clumsiness and failure to save they day and capture the bad guy . 
+the fact is these pathetic losers are not needed because their city already has a successful superhero , captain amazing , who has recently captured every evil-doer in the city . 
+captain amazing ( played terribly by an uninspired greg kinnear ) , because of his success in the past , is worried that he will lose popularity . 
+after freeing one of the most notorious bad guys in the city ( geoffrey rush , overacting just a bit too much ) to keep himself busy , things get out of hand when captain amazing is captured . 
+it is up to the wannabe superheroes to save the day . 
+by the time this section of the plot is finished , the interest for what happens ( if you haven't already figured it out ) is very low . 
+there are very few scenes which catch the viewers complete attention . 
+the first scene in the film , which shows the wannabes trying to save the day , feels like it was seriously edited down . 
+right when it was beginning to become slightly funny seeing these actors get humiliated at an old folk's home by some masked goons , captain amazing comes in and saves the day ? or ruins the movie . 
+instead of editing this scene , more editing should have been done in areas such as the unnecessary romance between mr . furious ( ben stiller ) and monica , a waitress ( claire forlani ) or the vast majority of the film , which is the heroes talking at a coffee table about how their day was . 
+a simple rule : more silly action is needed in order to make a silly action movie work . 
+another major problem with " mystery men " is that every actor in it seemed very uncomfortable and consequently gave terrible performances . 
+the film depended on its cast to work fluently together , like a bunch of old friends working together in an amiable reunion . 
+however , most characters seemed like they did not even want to be in this film or at least the script made it seem this way . 
+to pull one of the actors in this film randomly out of a hat , paul reubens , who disappeared from acting to everyone's joy , returns here leaving very little to be impressed about . 
+as a wannabe who uses flatulence for a weapon , all of his jokes must therefore be fart jokes . 
+fart jokes that have all been heard before and will inevitably be heard again in future films thanks to the success of " american pie " and " there's something about mary . " 
+ " mystery men " drags on towards the end to a point where anything else in the world is more entertaining . 
+anyone with a brain knows each one of the heroes is going to be successful at their talent in the end and each one is going to contribute in a helpful way . 
+so why continue to watch ? 
+this film is far from a worthy guilty pleasure . 
+ " mystery men " indeed does this and every time a character succeeds another one congratulates him and says " i knew you could do it ! " 
+ " mystery men " fails in every category it attempts to pass . 
+what makes this film so bad is that it had the potential to be wonderful and unforgettable . 
+terrible acting , terrible script , and a terrible waste of time changes opinions about all of these actors . 
+ " i'm unpredictable ! " 
+an overexcited ben stiller shouts out . 
+no ben , you're the complete opposite . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv380_8164.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,23 @@
+i want to be involved in show business one day . 
+and i refuse to do any sequels to any movie i may make because i believe they only get worse . 
+this movie proves it for me . 
+i was a little worried about the last batman film , as i thought joel schumaccer , taking over from tim burton , would screw it up . 
+i also assumed val kilmer would screw up as bruce wayne . 
+they didn't . 
+kilmer did a good job , and the cast was left to carry the movie , which they did ( even jim carrey as the riddler and i can't stand jim carrey ) , because schumaccer messed up the direction with his glitzy gotham and his awkward camera angles . 
+this film is different . 
+the cast is still impressive , but here , not only does schumaccer mess up with the direction ( he's one of those directors who's good with actors , terrible with camera angles ) , but writer akiva goldsmith doesn't really give an impressive cast anything to do . 
+the cast is impressive : clooney is a surprisingly good wayne/batman , o'donnell is a crafty robin as usual , they could've casted somebody better as batgirl ( my friend likes neve campbell ) , but silverstone is not bad , and thurman is a good poison ivy . 
+the major problem is schwarzenegger , who is a terrible freeze . 
+his accent is so heavy , you can't understand what he says , and the trouble with action stars like him is they cannot act , and they know it , but they figure that if they flex their muscles , say a limited amount of stuff , and kill a bunch of guys , then they figure nobody'll notice . 
+that's the trouble with me , * i * notice . 
+schwarzenegger does not deserve billing over clooney , or as much money as he got for this , but hollywood thinks he does . 
+patrick stewart was the person i'd heard that was considered to play freeze , and he would've been so much better . 
+or sean connery , but not arnold " i'm not an actor , but i play one in real life " schwarzenegger . 
+i realize that you must be a star to play a major role in a batman film , but it would've been nice if they'd casted a star that had talent for the role . 
+akiva goldsmith's screenplay avoids some stuff that happens in a normal batman film . 
+in a regular batman film , they'd concentrate on the relationship with the girlfriend a little more , but elle macpherson's julie madison is so limited here that we never get a real sense of who she is . 
+there is talk of a fifth batman movie . 
+my interest to see it is low , but i hope it's better than this . 
+if you don't want to waste your time , rent any of the other batman movies from blockbuster . 
+any other . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv396_19127.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,6 @@
+adam sandler isn't known for appearing in deep , thought-provoking films , but he's still a really funny guy . 
+most of his movies are successful not because of the film making behind them , but because they let sandler do what he does best without a stupid plot to drown him out . 
+big daddy is the first film in which the story seems more important than sandler's comic performance , and it's a miserable failure . 
+sandler plays a thirty-something loser who gets attached to an orphaned young boy ( played by cole and dylan sprouse ) . 
+as one might expect from the synopsis , director dennis dugan resorts to the usual bag of manipulative and sentimental sequences , including a repulsive courtroom battle and a lot of teary scenes in which characters say " good-bye " to one another ; in addition , there's a ridiculous amount of disgusting toilet humor ( urine and vomit both get more screen time than sandler himself ) . 
+there's a hilarious running joke featuring a female doctor who previously worked at hooters , and the film features passable performances from sandler , joey lauren adams ( as the love interest ) , and the two young boys , but the film on the whole is trite and disappointingly unfunny . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv403_6721.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,39 @@
+a cop with a troubled personal life . 
+a ruthless villain . 
+a friend of the cop . 
+a _dead_ friend of the cop . 
+a quest for vengeance . 
+a new partner . 
+a romantic interest . 
+a chase scene . 
+a chase scene _in san francisco_ . 
+a woman in peril . 
+a confrontation . 
+an explosion . 
+the end . 
+yawn . 
+yawn . 
+yawn . 
+the preceding has been the plot of approximately twelve thousand and six action films ; this one just happens to be called metro . 
+i have learned to expect little from films like metro , and consequently i am bored by them more often than i am genuinely disappointed . 
+with eddie murphy on board , however , you hope for something extra , some kind of spark . 
+when a film makes watching eddie murphy a tedious experience , you know it is doing something terribly wrong . 
+murphy stars as scott roper , a hostage negotiator for the san francisco police department who is exceedingly good at his job . 
+with his personal life , he is considerably less successful , facing an unhappy ex-girlfriend named veronica ( carmen ejogo ) , a gambling problem and a mountain of debt . 
+then his professional life gets a jolt as well when a friend and colleague ( art evans ) is murdered while investigating suspected jewel thief michael korda ( michael wincott ) . 
+finding korda becomes very personal to scott , and he joins with new partner kevin mccall ( michael rappaport ) to foil korda during an attempted heist . 
+but all is not well even with korda in jail , as scott , veronica and kevin all continue to face life-threatening danger . 
+metro ( the title , in case you are wondering , means absolutely nothing ) is so badly put together that even the most casual viewer may notice the miserable pacing and stray plot threads . 
+in the first place , korda's rage over being discovered before he can make his big score is rendered completely pointless when he proceeds to hit the target anyway ( and , incidentally , to screw it up ) . 
+a reference to payoffs in the police department , followed by a conspicuous decision to keep scott off the korda case and a couple of pointed glances , is dropped abruptly with no resolution after about forty-five minutes ; even the relationship between scott and new partner kevin is so perfunctory , with kevin disappearing entirely after taking a bullet for scott , that you may yearn for bickering buddies . 
+worst of all is a plot structure which places the main villain ( the always menacing michael wincott ) behind bars for far too long , leaving a lot of time to kill with the tedious reconciliation of scott and veronica . 
+you can't blame murphy for being unable to muster any enthusiasm for the scenes with his bland leading lady , but he should have known better than to take this role at all . 
+scott roper exists in an uncomfortable middle ground between the kind of street-wise fast-talker murphy has built a career on and an actual three-dimensional character , and murphy is never able to reconcile the two . 
+the script seems to have been doctored for him , with a gambling problem turned into a bit of character color and his supposed inability to form relationships turned into a cause for gags rather than actual conflict , yet there is still too little comedy for murphy to work with . 
+for much of the film , he walks around with an intense frown , and it is over 90 minutes into metro before you hear that trademark laugh for the first time . 
+murphy is stranded with too few solid punch lines , and nearly all of the ones he does have bounce of ejogo and fall to the ground limply . 
+i suppose i should give director thomas carter credit for taking the obligatory san francisco car chase ( how much do you want to bet on the likelihood of seeing a car soar over a hill ? ) and doing a few interesting things with it . 
+as vehicles are sent flying and passengers sent sprawling by a runaway cable car , it is possible at least for a moment to take some pleasure in a goofy spin on a familiar situation . 
+carter does an even better job by taking that old suspense stand-by -- the medicine cabinet mirror which will close to reveal a killer standing behind someone -- and using it to defuse tension not once , but _twice_ . 
+the fact that carter was able to demonstrate even that much recognition of cliches , and a willingness to subvert them , makes his involvement in the rest of the disaster that is metro all the more puzzling . 
+an action film like this plods so relentlessly and obviously from point a to point b to point c that you might find yourself shouting out " point c ! " while they're still getting to point b , or getting up with the rest of the audience after the big explosion which signals that nothing else of any consequence is going to happen . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv409_29625.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,32 @@
+capsule : this super-light situation comedy from sweden tells the story of two close friends with romantic problems . 
+the script involves formerly taboo subjects like erotic toys and sexual enhancers but otherwise the writing is not a lot different from what is shown free on television . 
+the characters are paper-thin and the interesting ideas purely non-existent . 
+this is a decrement-life-by-90-minutes card . 
+ , 0 ( -4 to +4 ) 
+jalla ! jalla ! 
+is basically an exuberant tv situation comedy written instead for the wide screen . 
+it tells the story of two park custodians and the problems they are finding on the path to true love . 
+the film is set in sweden where roro and mans ( fares fares and torkel petersson ) are custodians at a public park . roro is from a tightly knit lebanese family who control him very closely , mans is a swede from a much more liberal background . 
+they spend most of the day in the bushes at their park , cleaning up after dogs . 
+roro and mans each have girlfriends , but each has a problem . 
+roro ( nicknamed " jalla " ) is having family problems . 
+it seems that his family wants to arrange a marriage between him and a nice lebanese woman , yasmin ( laleh pourkarim ) , but he is already in love with lisa ( tuva novotny ) . 
+yasmin likes roro , but does not want to get married either . 
+mans on the other hand has been having a problem of sexual impotence . 
+the two friends worry about their problems and discuss the problems with each other . 
+mans thinks the answer to his problem is to purchase sexual enhancers . 
+the one catch is that he is too shy to go in and buy them . 
+roro and yasmin decide to give themselves some time by telling the families that they want to marry each other , but then plan to break up before the wedding . 
+not too surprisingly neither finds that his idea works out the way he quite expected . 
+the plot turns in several places are contrived . 
+one knows fairly quickly that if things are going to work our happily for everybody certain plot contrivances have to happen . 
+lebanese-born josef fares who wrote and directed is perhaps a better director than he is a writer . 
+when things start to get slow , he just adds throws in another story . 
+for example halfway into the film mans innocently antagonizes some local toughs and a long chase is added to the film . 
+characterization is a little better with roro than it is with mans who does not seem to have a whole lot more personality beyond fear for losing a biological function . 
+we do see some of roro's family life and his concerns . 
+that may be because roro's background is a lot like that of the director . 
+while the story was entertaining , i did not feel that i got anything worthwhile from the film . 
+it was just a way to pass about an hour and a half in my life . 
+one does not have to go to the movies to see entertainment like this . 
+i rate it a 4 on the 0 to 10 scale and a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv415_23674.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+it's been hours since i returned from the much anticipated sci-fi opus `mission to mars' , and i can still detect the reek of moldy cheddar . 
+why ? 
+the movie is a shoddy cheesefest full of digital eye candy , stapled carelessly onto a flimsy screenplay which somehow manages to leapfrog the great promise of a space opera , instead shooting for the angle of a feel-good science fiction drama more akin to `2001 : a space odyssey' . 
+i got the feeling that most of my fellow movie-going patrons were expecting another `armageddon' . 
+but no , `mission to mars' certainly isn't one large action sequence about colossal disaster . 
+this is a supposedly thoughtful , family-friendly space flick in which the apocalyptic excitement takes a back seat to visual elegance and uplifting drivel . 
+you have been warned . 
+of course , crafting a tightly claustrophobic space drama is not impossible ( see `apollo 13' for an excellent example ) , but few directors possess the skill and craftsmanship to pull it off without seriously scarring their reputation . 
+brian de palma has enough directorial expertise and visual wizardry up his sleeve to pull it off . 
+when he gets his hands on an intelligent , systematically practical script like `the untouchables' or `mission : impossible' , the director has the ability to create a sound technical achievement ( although his overly indulgent style becomes bothersome more than occasionally ) . 
+of course , there's also the inexcusable string of crap that has carried his name ( including `snake eyes' and the notorious bomb `the bonfire of the vanities' ) . . . . 
+all of which makes me want to call de palma the most talented hack in hollywood . 
+that term may be too harsh , but if i were judging him solely on the perpetual waste of talent that is `mission to mars' , my choice of words would have been slightly less lenient . 
+if i were gary sinise , i wouldn't touch de palma with a 10-foot pole . 
+sinise is a wonderful , wonderful actor , but after appearing in `snake eyes' and this vomit-inducing sham , i'm sure he wouldn't want to risk the embarrassment of a third collaboration . 
+the academy award-winner plays nasa astronaut jim mcconnell , a man who recently lost his wife ( kim delaney ) and is apparently psychologically unfit for an upcoming space shuttle mission to mars ( oops , forgot to mention the year - 2020 ) . 
+after a barbecue get-together for the astronauts , we cut to luc goddard ( don cheadle ) and his team , who are already taking measurements and calculations on the red planet . 
+suddenly , a towering formation of rocks and soil - probably best dubbed a `sand tornado' - appears and creates a whirlwind of suction . 
+for some reason , the astronauts just stand there calmly to admire this , as if it were a lovely piece of art . 
+the team is killed within seconds , expect for luc , who was able to send one final transmission and may still be alive . 
+immediately , a second mission - consisting of astronauts mcconnell , husband and wife woody and terri blake ( tim robbins and connie nielsen ) and phil ohlmyer ( jerry o'connell ) - are dispatched to rescue luc and discover the mysterious secret of planet mars . 
+let's put the `secret' on hold for now , and discuss the trip there . 
+it is explained , whether scientifically accurate or not ( probably not ) , that a trip to mars takes roughly six months . 
+i'm not sure why the quartet of screenwriters behind `m2m' didn't capitalize on this juicy opportunity of creating tension and claustrophobia . 
+instead , we join the team during their final days aboard the ship . 
+what happened during the five months prior to this ? 
+did they just play cards and tell dirty jokes ? 
+still , there are few nicely tense moments ( maybe the only in the movie ) during the time-frame involving a fuel leak . 
+depalma's direction is quite good in these scenes , although the score by ennio morricone is largely inconsistent ( organ music in space ? 
+c'mon ) . 
+there's a few good , imaginative ideas in the landslide of cheese , a sad realization that causes me to sigh out loud . 
+it's a colossal bummer that `mission to mars' is poorly assembled and laughably written , with a dubious and supremely silly finale that will only satisfy dedicated optimists . 
+as mentioned before , anyone looking for some disaster-movie carnage is going to feel savagely disappointed . . . 
+maybe even cheated . 
+after the unbelievably hokey final shot ( with the words ? the end' somehow adding insult to injury ) , a few audience members made the effort to boo and hiss at the screen . 
+others muttered obscenities , shaking their heads in disbelief while mumbling `jeez , that sucked . ' 
+okay , it did suck . 
+but you have to show the actors some sympathetic mercy . . . 
+after all , they do pretty well . 
+sinise is sincere and effective in many of his scenes , robbins and nielsen wholeheartedly convince as a loving nasa couple , and funnyman o'connell - well , he has a couple lines are actually amusing ( and intentionally so ) . 
+the digital effects accompanying the sand tornado sequence are quite impressive . 
+so , by golly , where did this `mission' go wrong ? 
+looking back on the appalling experience , i would say in practically every conduit and crevasse it could have . 
+while watching `mission to mars' , my suggestion would be to immediately abort , or better yet , don't even strap yourself in for lift-off . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv427_11693.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+ " 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 cannot 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 gonna 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 wasn'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 . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv452_5179.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,11 @@
+a big , busy boxing satire with a surprisingly paltry punch , the great white hype stars samuel l . jackson as a shameless boxing promoter whose plan to boost sagging pay-per-view revenues is to " invent " a white contender ( peter berg ) to challenge his black heavyweight " champ " ( damon wayans ) . 
+ ( the logic is that people will pay more to see black vs . white than black vs . black . ) 
+he may be right , in an absurdly accurate way , but the film doesn't give us a reason to care . 
+as a scathing sports spoof , hype is just that : unfunny , unfocused , and , at times , just plain pointless . 
+as a commentary on race relations , it's even * less * effective . 
+the dialogue is the best of this mess , lines like jon lovitz exclaiming " i cannot make caviar out of fish eggs ! " 
+writers tony hendra and ron shelton also do good on the street slang , though we never hear enough of it . 
+the script isn't strong enough , though , to support the aggressive camera work of director reginald hudlin ( house party ) . 
+he comes across as absolute overkill . 
+the great white hype * almost * turns around at the end , at the big match , when hudlin attempts an extended gag of rock-concert proportions . 
+with costumed dwarfs , gangsta rappers , and the " champ " dressed as death , only then do we get a glimpse of the spoof that should've been . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv462_20788.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,38 @@
+in double jeopardy , the stakes are high . 
+think of the plot as a rehash of sleeping with the enemy , and then rearrange the details and the gender of the stalker . 
+the finished product , although able to maintain the viewer's attention , is a predictable and unexciting thriller with an idiotic script . 
+`alex , i'll take homicide for $400 . . . ' 
+libby parsons ( ashley judd ) is a happily married mom leading a normal life . 
+one night , her husband nick ( bruce greenwood ) takes her out for a romantic escape on a sailboat . 
+libby awakens in the middle of the night to find she is covered in blood and nick has strangely disappeared . 
+she follows a trail of bloody footprints up to the deck , where she handles a fallen knife ( like any stupid character ) and is spotted by the coast guard , who are responding to a distress signal sent earlier in the evening . 
+nick is presumed dead , and although she pleads her innocence , libby is tried and convicted for the murder of her husband . 
+now , please don't think i'm spoiling any vital plot details , because the informative trailer has already spilled most of the beans . 
+if you haven't seen this preview , don't read any further . 
+but seriously , the inane screenplay by douglas weisberg and douglas s . cook is so elementary that the average viewer will be two or three steps ahead of the characters . 
+during the most vital scenes in the movie , i was anticipating every twist or `surprise' that eventually popped up on the screen . 
+i imagine the writers presume their core audience for double jeopardy is a very naive group of individuals . 
+most , unfortunately , will be too distracted by the moronic plot to appreciate the few positive aspects of the production . 
+one is tommy lee jones , who plays travis lehman , a parole officer given the tedious task of watching over libby after she serves her sentence in prison . 
+jones is always wonderful as an authority figure , and he's certainly familiar with this sort of role ( as he played so well in the fugitive and us marshals ) . 
+judd , as a likable heroin with gusto , also has a chance to flex her acting abilities . 
+while emotionally unconvincing , the actress is tremendously fun in her juvenile role , perking up the movie like an injection of anti-depressant . 
+the actors , and their relationship together , present the one-two punch that prevents double jeopardy from derailing itself entirely . 
+and now , back to the plot . 
+while behind bars , libby learns an interesting little bit of information : a person can't be convicted of the same crime twice . 
+this law , called `double jeopardy' , could be her motive for hunting down her husband . . . 
+who may still be alive . 
+yes , you heard right . 
+the movie degenerates into a cross-country chase , where everything you expect to happen . . . 
+does . 
+the final scenes , which could have redeemed the film , are poorly handled by director bruce beresford - whose previous work centers highly around drama ( driving miss daisy , paradise road ) . 
+ironically , it is those elements - like the driving force of libby to reunite with her son - that don't quite work here . 
+at least double jeopardy is paced well enough to satisfy diehard fans of the two stars . 
+unfortunately , jones lacks some of the edge that he had as sam gerard in the fugitive , and the real depth of his character is only skin deep . 
+but he and ashley judd are more than welcome considering the material , and both have some memorable comic moments . 
+judd , in particular , has a hilarious scene in which she wards off an oncoming male by explaining she has to check in with her `parole officer' . 
+hmmm . . . 
+perhaps this would have made a good comedy . 
+it is disappointing , because there are the makings of a competent action film here . 
+it's nicely shot and choreographed in downtown vancouver , and will entertain those who aren't turned off by the woeful story-line . 
+ ? tis a shame that double jeopardy is an adult thriller that wouldn't fool most children . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv468_16844.txt

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+the " fab 4 " of ronald reagan high are four stuck-up girls , played by rose mcgowan , rebecca gayheart , julie benz and charlotte roldan , who overdress like 4 posh spice wannabes . 
+their daily ritual is to parade up and down the school halls like royalty , and their constant reflex action is to grab their compacts so they can check their make-up and powder their cheeks . 
+under no circumstances will they ever let themselves be seen eating in public . 
+in writer and director darren stein's jawbreaker , it isn't as funny as it sounds . 
+in fact , it isn't funny at all . 
+stein has taken the black comedy of a teen movie like heathers and stripped it of any intelligence , wit or charm . 
+his actresses toss off their lines so fast that they don't have time to add any emotion . 
+and all of his female characters have considerably more lipstick than brains . 
+the setup for the movie has one of the fab 4 , liz , who is referred to as " the princess di of reagan high , " be killed when a prank by the other 3 goes wrong . 
+the princess di reference is in bad taste , as is much of the movie . 
+granted , bad taste can sometimes be funny , but the mere presence of bad taste doesn't guarantee it . 
+liz's girlfriends stick a jawbreaker that is literally larger than a golf ball in her mouth , tape her mouth shut , and stick her bound body in the trunk of a car . 
+when they open the trunk later , liz is dead . 
+they eventually put her blue and bruised body into a sexual position and make it look like liz was the victim of a brutal rape . 
+these realistic and disgusting scenes of a dead , seminude teen have a pornographic feeling that is hard to forget and will likely turn the stomach of many a viewer . 
+the film's dialog not only isn't funny , it's trite . 
+one nerdy young girl introduces herself with " my name is fern mayo , as in hold the mayo . " 
+when fern discovers what has happened , the fab 3 make her an offer she can't refuse -- make-up ! 
+they cake it on her and welcome her to the clan . 
+the parents in the movie brag about learning parenting skills from watching oprah . 
+the teachers fare no better , especially in the ridiculous lines they are given . 
+ " miss shayne , please cover your bosom , " one young teacher , who has been made up to look old and ugly , says without any conviction . 
+ " this is a learning institution , not a brothel . " 
+besides the obvious question of why this movie was ever made , there is one other question that i'd like to ask the director . 
+why do you have a phone number start with 555 if you going to cover the rest of the number anyway ? 
+in a cameo , pam grier plays detective vera cruz , who investigates liz's murder . 
+as she interrogates the other people , she stares at them like they are all idiots , proving that she is the only one that gets it . 
+i am sure that if the hard nosed detective cruz were to see this movie , she'd walk out after about 5 minutes , and you'd be well advised to do the same if you should happen to find yourself in a theater showing it . 
+jawbreaker runs 1 : 27 . 
+it is rated r for violence , gore , profanity and sex . 
+i would advise everyone to avoid it , but if teenagers go they should be older and mature . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv472_29140.txt

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+it's almost amusing to watch 21-year old christina ricci get drastically overshadowed in sally potter's follow-up to 1997's the tango lesson , the man who cried . 
+the gen-y actress , with her cold stare and big , black eyes , has appeared in an impressive range of films ; but she doesn't even come close to being the bold heroine the film , set against the historical backdrop of world war 2 , requires her to be . 
+ricci , whose character is shockingly silent and blank , showing only the occasional smile or hint of concern , shares most of her scenes with the astounding cate blanchett : quite an amusing sight to behold . 
+blanchett's lola , a paris dwelling dancer who befriends the aspiring singer suzie , is bold , interesting and layered ? everything our heroine lacks . 
+co-star of the upcoming lord of the rings trilogy , blanchett has a good seven inches on ricci , sports twice the makeup and dons a flashy wardrobe . 
+the actress inhabits the role ? as she always so remarkably does ? with a fervor and life that makes you want her to hold the screen as the film's lead rather than her dull companion . 
+important historical events involving hitler and his nazis scatter themselves across the film ; these landmarks serve as the film's little conflict . 
+obviously , the tables are turned in the life of suzie by these events , whose jewish origin is unknown among her parisian colleagues . 
+the man who cried has many aspirations , none of which come full circle by the film's close . 
+there are forced messages here and there : " go forward ; always go forward , " lola preaches to suzie ; there's romance between suzie and a fellow target of hitler's nazis , the gypsy cesar ( johnny depp , who , like ricci , barely gets to speak ) ; lola struggles with her character that desires above all things wealth and men who have it ; and at the core of all these devices lies suzie's desire to travel to america , where her father journeyed after leaving her and her mother years ago . 
+the film's main problem is that potter isn't skilled enough to tell the epic-sized story of suzie . 
+the time period's instability , the conflicting social classes , the prejudice against suzie from all those around her in her new life : serving as both writer and director , potter throws in some of each , but hardly an inch of depth is to be found in any . 
+by the time the sigh-inducing climax hits , the believability and complete absence of focus leave one ready to leave the theater . 
+the film's falling action is weirdly unsatisfying and unlikely ; are we really meant to believe any of this could happen ? 
+contrastingly , in its moving final scene , the man who cried strikes a note that is made effective in its ties to the emotional beginning of the film . 
+although it's apparent that potter can't grasp what she reaches , i'm puzzled as to why she reaches for so much in the first place . 
+ricci's suzie is meant to be the film's core : from the extended flashback at the film's beginning to the quickly drawn ending , everything seen in the film , in some way , relates to her . 
+so why then does potter spend so much time on subplots involving other individuals ? 
+the character of suzie is too present for the man who cried to work as an ensemble , but not present enough for the film to be ricci's . 
+the almost constant lack of flow and one-note tone with which potter depicts the man who cried are somewhat improved upon by sacha vierny's beautiful cinematography that renders the film's various locations wonderfully . 
+also worthy of note are lindy hemming's costumes that help to depict the area quite nicely . 
+and then there's the music . 
+from minute one to minute ninety-seven , there's hardly a moment when the wavering , skilled voice of an opera singer or the rhythms of the gypsy music don't undercut the action ; the notes stricken both overwhelm ( particularly john turturro , portraying fictional opera singer dante dominio , whose money and reputation catch lola's interest ) and accompany ( oftentimes , the perfect chords are captured to undermine the state of the film's characters and reinforce that state ) . 
+potter obviously cares much about each and every musical note ; unfortunately , the same effort isn't given towards ( almost ) everything else . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv491_12992.txt

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+at one point in this movie there is a staging of an opera that goes completely wrong . 
+but one member of the crowd stands up and cheers , thinking the performance was planned , and applauding it for their efforts . 
+that's " dirty work " in a nutshell . 
+a very different kind of movie . 
+this is not a movie that i can easily review . 
+the critic in me analyzes the structure , plot , acting , characters . 
+ . 
+ . and 
+tells me this movie is terrible . 
+but the norm macdonald fan in me had me rolling on the floor laughing . 
+this movie plays more like an hbo sketch comedy than a movie . 
+it's a one note concept . 
+mitch and sam need $50000 in order to bribe a doctor to give their father a heart transplant before other more needy patients . 
+realizing they are very good at revenge plots , they open a revenge for hire business , eventually running afoul of a rich businessman played by christopher macdonald ( who after roles in " happy gilmore " and " veronica's closet " seems typcast in this role ) , who sends them to destroy a building that mitch learns is the home of his girlfriend's grandmother , thus leading them to plot against the rich businessman on the night of the grand opening of a new opera house . 
+first the critic in me . 
+the plot is the standard poor guy vs evil rich guy device , where the main character meets the girl of his dreams along the way . 
+here's the catch . 
+none of the characters are sympathetic . 
+they're all selfish jerks who don't care who they hurt in their attempts to do whatever they want . 
+the jokes are juvenile , crude , appealing to the worst elements in people . 
+there's jokes about prostitutes , the homeless , beastiality , anal sex . 
+there's even a subplot that's developed , it seems , only to make jokes about infidelity and incest . 
+and i loved watching it . 
+i was a huge fan of norm macdonald's sarcastic , to-the-point comedy on saturday night live , and this movie is an hour and a half of it . 
+norm macdonald takes a joke , strips it to the core , and tells it like it is with a dry wit . 
+like the scene were he and his friend are learning the ropes at a new construction job . 
+the foreman goes over the basics , which mitch and sam don't understand . 
+how do they get out of it ? 
+by admiting they lied on their resumes , and don't know a thing about construction ! 
+and surprise , they get fired . 
+the characters are incredibly mean-spirited . 
+there's a father who's loud and obnoxious , a gambling addicted doctor played by chevy chase who tells sam of his father's condition by saying " if i were a gambling man i'd put a lot of money on death . " 
+the businessman cole who always has his dog spunky , and does who knows what with it . 
+and then there's mitch and sam , who , thinking they can get $50000 by destroying a building , ponder how their actions would ruin the lives of the residents . 
+ " too bad we have to do it , " mitch says . 
+here's a movie where every joke that is executed as it is set up , where you see every punchline coming , where every spot profanity could be used and then is used . 
+at least the film is honest , and makes no mistake that it is anything more than idiotic . 
+but at least it isn't dull , and it isn't predictable . 
+and that's the way it should be . 
+it's sketch comedy , and if you're a fan of norm macdonald , you'll love it . 
+the jokes are crude , the characters are mean to the core , the attitude of the movie is that it just doesn't care . 
+if you don't like norm macdonald , or stupid movies , then you probably won't like this one . 
+the jokes are crude , the characters are mean to the core , the attitude of the movie is that it just doesn't care . 
+so before seeing this one , tune your mindset , and prepare for a slew of norm macdonald humor , gay animal sex , prison rape jokes , uncaring characters , and one last performance from chris farley . 
+the critic in me says ( * ) but i give it an 8 ( * * * ) . 
+i just couldn't stop laughing . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv497_27086.txt

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+this film is worth seeing for those who want to see what mick jagger looks like when sporting an abe lincoln beard . 
+the rock and roller is asked to carry the film as the action antihero of australian legend . . . ned 
+kelly , the so-called robin hood of the aussies . 
+but he fails to be convincing , in my opinion he is better suited to play gene kelly than ned kelly . 
+the film opens to a b/w prologue of ned kelly bravely going to his execution . 
+then it goes to technicolor and ned is seen in what goes for flashback , coming home from jail after a 3-year sentence to see his mom and reacquaint himself with the large kelly family . 
+this scene is set in 1871 . 
+in the background we hear the booming voice of waylon jennings , as he sings shel silverstein's lyrics , which tells -- of ned's hatred for the british rule and hope for ireland to be a republic . 
+ned says a debt must be paid . . . 
+as he hears voices from his dead father , his class-divided country , and his conscience , all telling him to get revenge . 
+so begins ned's romp through australia's outback , seeking justice for all the wrongs his people have suffered . 
+he begins by stealing horses , after complaining about the unfair tax law on horses that stray , which favors the rich landowners . 
+when he's only 20 he forms a gang , causing him to hide the rest of his life from the police , who put a price on his head of two thousand pounds . 
+when ned's mother ( clarissa kaye ) is jailed on a false charge of abetting criminals and sentenced to 3-5 years , ned offers to surrender in exchange for his mother's freedom . 
+when the authorities refuse , the kelly brothers go on a robbing rampage , burning mortgages of the poor found in postal vaults and murdering some soldiers . 
+rampaging through the outback , they gather sympathy among the poor and lower classes , who don't trust the traps ( police ) . 
+spoiler to follow in the next paragraph . 
+in the climax , kelly and his gang plan to ambush a train with british police , but someone kelly trusted tips the police on the train and kelly is trapped in a saloon and captured . 
+ned's brothers commit suicide rather than be taken alive . 
+but kelly's gang escapes , as ned heroically has the police go after only him and his brothers , as they become decoys . 
+this was a flat presentation , hardly touching an emotional button on what all the fuss was about over ned kelly's call for justice . 
+jagger didn't have a prayer in succeeding in this dry script offered by ian jones and tony richardson . 
+the story failed to focus on australia , seemingly a more british film than australian . 
+under richardson's lackluster direction , all jagger seemed to do , was proclaim his innocence and vow revenge , which soon became a shrill cry . 
+if you want to see a better film about ned kelly , catch " mad dog morgan " ( 76 ) , a much truer and more daring version , with dennis hopper giving a much better characterization of ned kelly's madness , something this film could only do in a ho-hum manner . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv527_10338.txt

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+woody allen is one of the most successful artist-directors in hollywood , but he is becoming less and less reliable as a filmmaker . 
+in his early years of film-making he mastered the simple comedy . 
+from there he went into a second phase and took risks experimenting with different approaches and styles . 
+some of these work better than others . 
+zelig and crimes and misdemeanors are the work of a creative and intelligent artist . 
+deconstructing harry goes to the other extreme and is a bizarre experiment demanding more of the viewer than it gives back . 
+harry block ( allen ) has in his life only two drives . 
+he wants to have sex with as many women as possible and when he makes a mess of his life and those of his lovers he wants to retreat into his writing . 
+the story of this static and highly unsympathetic character is told with a number of often clumsy stylistic experiments . 
+perhaps the most irritating device is to express the disjointedness of harry's life by editing harry's scenes putting in cuts in the middle as if to show missing time with something edited out . 
+as a writer , harry puts his friends into his books in the thinnest of disguises . 
+the film dramatizes incidents from these supposed books and cuts between his real story line and fragments from harry's books with different actors playing the real and fictional people in harry's life . 
+these fragments are frustrating in their lack of completion , but even more frustrating is the bringing of the characters out of the fragments into scenes with the real characters . 
+it is up to the viewer to keep track not just who is fictional and who is real but also to keep straight who is the fictional doppelganger of which real person . 
+if that sounds complicated , it is . 
+then as another device in one of the stories , an actor seems to have the peculiar property that he has gone out of focus and can only be seen in blurry image . 
+harry sees this as a metaphor for his own condition and himself goes blurry for a short time . 
+as if these touches did not create sufficient confusion , the story is told out of chronological order . 
+if allen were giving the audience a story that was worth decoding , any and all of these stylistic touches could be excusable . 
+but allen puts the audience through all of this to give us a portrait of harry block who is a selfish manipulator who is not worth the effort to understand . 
+deconstructing harry is set at a time when harry's old college , the one that expelled him when he attended it , wants now to honor him for a lifetime of writing achievement . 
+harry is searching among his friends to find one who will go with him . 
+just why someone who is so unwilling to commit to a relationship with anyone suddenly needs the support of someone else is unclear . 
+harry tries his current girl friend fay ( elizabeth shue ) only to find that she is about to marry harry's old friend larry ( billy crystal ) . 
+block would like his son hilly ( eric lloyd ) to accompany him , but hilly's mother , previously first harry's psychiatrist and more recently his wife , refuses to let her son see his father . 
+another friend richard ( bob balaban ) would go but has health problems . 
+harry also considers bringing a prostitute cookie ( hazel goodman ) . 
+it is interesting that allen should introduce another likable prostitute so soon after mighty aphrodite , but cookie is considerably different--black and a lot brighter than mira sorvino's character in the previous film . 
+while the comedy sequences are never complete , a few are elaborate and some quite funny . 
+the centerpiece of the film is a journey into hell with allen playing a sort of orpheus rescuing fay from the clutches of the devil , who looks a lot like larry . 
+that story also is left uncompleted , perhaps to show harry's unwillingness to commit even to telling a story . 
+the linchpin that was needed to tie together the stylistic quirks of this film was a central character who changes and who gives us something about which to care . 
+that character is patently not the one allen creates in harry block and not the characters around harry as seen through his acerbic eyes . 
+allen can do much better than deconstructing harry . 
+i rate it a 3 on the 0 to 10 scale and a -1 on the -4 to +4 scale . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv531_26838.txt

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+i have never been so confused after watching a movie . 
+ " meet joe black " is probably one of the most visually satisfying films of this year , with a cinematography , music and cast that will dazzle most of us . 
+at the same time it is probably the most boring and ridiculous experience hat you will have this season . 
+at first you marvel at the elegant direction , graceful cinematography and sensual musical score . 
+then you'll wait for something to happen for half an hour , but when you finally understand what's going on , you'll wonder what are actors such as anthony hopkins , brad pitt and claire forlani are doing in a film like this ? 
+the script is simply a silly and unresolved story , which is artificially stretched into a three hour long motion picture . 
+it feels like an eternity . 
+most of the time it is a pompous soap opera , filled with empty dialogue that the actors deliver in a high pitched voice and " meaningful " winks . 
+the film is based on alberto caesella's play " death takes a holiday " . 
+the story concentrates around bill ( anthony hopkins ) who lives a fulfilled life as a successful business man , but sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and hears a voice that is saying " yes " . 
+soon he meets a young elegant gentlemen ( brad pitt ) who introduces himself as " death " . 
+it is bill's time . 
+but death has other plans . 
+it has come down to us simple mortals to find out what it means to be alive . 
+our bill is chosen to be death's guide and in exchange he gets time . 
+bill introduces death as joe black , who immediately becomes the center of everyone's attention . 
+bill's business partners speculate about why joe is constantly at bill's side , lives in his house and resides at his office . 
+that is not all , however . 
+bill's youngest daughter susan ( claire forlani ) falls in love with the mysterious stranger and joe falls in love with her . 
+this relationship is bound to have some serious consequences . 
+it wouldn't be fair to say that this film didn't have some interesting moments , such as the scene where joe is invited to join bill's family for dinner . 
+when joe starts enjoying peanut butter and later falls in love , the experience is somewhat different . 
+it is obvious that a story like this story is very difficult to structure . 
+it's one thing to say : " wouldn't it be fun to have death take human form and come down to earth . . " 
+to create a motion picture out of this is another . 
+four screenwriters have worked on a script that lacks drive and logic . 
+it is overlong and too primitive to pass as a serious film . 
+on the other hand it demonstrates incredible performances and a very decent direction by martin brest ( " scent of a woman " ) . 
+hopkins looks great in any role , and no matter how shallow or hollow it is , he will complete it . 
+his talent and charisma are needed here more than any where else , since it actually saves the film from a complete embarrassment . 
+but pitt is the one that got one of the most difficult roles of recent time . 
+how can you play death in human form ? 
+to me it seems that death and life are not something that can be associated with earthly matters . 
+they are not creatures , but phenomenas . 
+saying that death takes human form would be the same as to suggest that eternity would take human form . 
+handling such a ridiculous task is incredibly difficult and pitt deserves some credit for his work . 
+speaking in a calm , soft voice , portraying death as a lonely , distant and powerful guy that is unfamiliar with practical earthly matters . 
+he looks and acts more like an angel of death , rather than a demon or a red-eyed executioner . 
+claire forlani and others are also fine , stretching their stereotypical characters to their limits . 
+unfortunately their performances are not enough to rescue this film from its self inflicted misery . 
+in other words this is not what i expected from the director of " scent of a woman " . 
+it could ( and should ) be better with such cast and crew . 
+in the end it seems as if they have all been intensively working on a ravishingly looking soap opera . 

corpora/movie_reviews/neg/cv533_9843.txt

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+keep cool , a chinese film directed by semi-accomplished filmmaker yimou zhang , was one of the kickoff films for this year's hawaii international film festival . 
+on the day it premiered , lines of eager moviegoers stretched around the block , some anticipants having queued up well in advance to get a good seat in the theater . 
+they need not have wasted their time . 
+the movie is billed as a comedy , but is surprisingly bereft of humor . 
+there are noticeable attempts at laughs , but very few tries actually click . 
+i wondered if there were jokes that i wasn't getting because i'm not from china , but unfortunately my conclusion was that this lack of humor couldn't be attributed to the cultural barrier either . 
+keep cool just isn't very funny . 
+the prelude to the film was a visit by keep cool's producer who , with the help of an interpreter , regaled us of how in order to get the print to the festival in time , an assistant hand carried it on the plane from china to hawaii . 
+although the print made it , the assistant's luggage was lost . 
+too bad that story wasn't in the movie , because it got a big laugh . 
+qu ying , the film's female lead , was also on hand to give a few comments . 
+however , whereas the producer politely made regular pauses in his dialog so the interpreter could bring us up to speed , ms . ying saw fit to say everything she had to say in one , fast-paced , incredibly long tirade . 
+it was dizzying ; good foreshadowing for the film . 
+you see , keep cool is filmed almost totally with a camera handheld by a man with a bad case of the shakes . 
+at least that's the way it seems , since the camera is constantly moving . 
+cinema verite is one thing , but panning and shaking around until your audience has a headache is another . 
+although some might consider it a form which helps give the viewer an idea of the anarchic state into which chinese youth is slowly growing , i found it thoroughly distracting , and after a while , quite annoying . 
+headache , as i said . 
+the film is about a young bookseller ( wen jiang ) who is after a young woman ( qu ying ) . 
+they used to be romantically involved , but the woman grew tired of him and left the relationship . 
+the first half of the film is about the young man's plan to win her back . 
+of course the thing is , she doesn't want to be won back , and has a nightclub owner friend of hers rough him up a bit . 
+in the fight , the young man grabs a laptop computer belonging to a bystander and attempts to use it to fend off his attacker , but only ends up smashing it against a lamppost . 
+we later find out that the laptop belongs to an older man who wishes to get his damaged computer replaced . 
+there is a funny scene ( the only one in the film ) where the young man tries to use some twisted logic in order to get the older man to seek out the nightclub owner ( baotian li ) in order to recoup his losses . 
+there is no sense to be made out of the young woman's behavior ; cold one minute , caring the next , so we feel no sympathy for her character . 
+the bookseller would be better off without her . 
+although the second half of the film causes us to lose a lot of sympathy for the young bookseller as well , who is obsessed with chopping off the nightclub owner's hand as revenge for the beating he took , it also offers us some nice interaction between the bookseller and the older man . 
+while the bookseller is blinded by his thirst for revenge , the older man is the voice of reason and tries to rationalize each situation . 
+his quest to end the dispute peacefully and equitably is the one we identify with , but it is frustrating to see that he seems to be talking to a brick wall half the time . 
+a friendship develops between the two men , but it occurs too late in the film for the audience to appreciate . 
+although only an hour and a half in length , keep cool contains extraneous material . 
+the whole plot of how the bookseller is after the young woman could have been taken out , since we don't see her from the midpoint on . 
+a case of mistaken identity or some other device could have served as the point of conflict between the bookseller and the nightclub owner , and would have saved us from the bookseller's boring pursuit during the first half . 
+but of course , this would have shortened the movie to less than an hour . 
+there are a few things that keep cool does right . 
+as mentioned before , the interaction between the bookseller and the older man is generally pretty good . 
+although it grows tiresome , the reasoning with the unreasonable is a nice exercise in logic , and represents the differences in thinking between generations . 
+in one scene , for example , the bookseller quotes confucius to get his point across , but the older man claims the quote was misinterpreted , and that it means something entirely different . 
+also effective is the way zhang sets up tension within a scene , such as when the bookseller is getting ready to cut off the hand of the unwitting nightclub owner . 
+the nightclub owner is counting out money , slapping each bundle of currency on the table . 
+with every shot of his hand , we can hardly stand the interminable wait before the bookseller is going to pull out his cleaver and exact his revenge . 
+unfortunately , these crumbs are not enough to overcome the rest of the film's shortcomings , and weren't enough to prevent that headache from lingering after i left the theater .