├── .gitignore
├── LICENSE
├── README.md
├── pom.xml
└── src
├── main
└── java
│ └── info
│ └── semanticanalyzer
│ └── classifiers
│ └── weka
│ ├── SentimentClass.java
│ ├── fiveway
│ ├── FiveWayMNBTrainer.java
│ ├── FiveWayMNBTrainerRunner.java
│ └── KaggleCSVReaderFiveWay.java
│ └── threeway
│ ├── KaggleCSVReaderThreeWay.java
│ ├── KaggleCSVWriterThreeWay.java
│ ├── ThreeWayMNBTrainer.java
│ └── ThreeWayMNBTrainerRunner.java
└── test
├── java
└── info
│ └── semanticanalyzer
│ └── classifiers
│ └── weka
│ ├── FiveWayMNBTrainerTest.java
│ └── ThreeWayMNBTrainerTest.java
└── resources
└── en_imdb_sentences.txt
/.gitignore:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | *.class
2 |
3 | # Mobile Tools for Java (J2ME)
4 | .mtj.tmp/
5 |
6 | # Package Files #
7 | *.jar
8 | *.war
9 | *.ear
10 |
11 | # virtual machine crash logs, see http://www.java.com/en/download/help/error_hotspot.xml
12 | hs_err_pid*
13 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/LICENSE:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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/README.md:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | weka-mnb-sentiment-analysis-template-project
2 | ============================================
3 |
4 | The template project for three and five way sentiment classification.
5 |
6 | If you are looking to integrate natural language processing APIs or modules into your projects, check this repo out: https://github.com/semanticanalyzer/nlproc_sdk_sample_code
7 |
8 | The blog post describing this code in English: [http://dmitrykan.blogspot.com](http://dmitrykan.blogspot.fi/2014/04/weka-template-project-for-sentiment.html)
9 | In Russian (блог-пост на русском): [http://habrahabr.ru/](http://habrahabr.ru/post/229779/)
10 |
11 | In order to utilize the kaggle's training set the code is using you need to accept the terms and conditions of the
12 | competition and put the training set train.csv into the kaggle directory.
13 |
14 | The three way model trained using unigrams is as good as the following stats:
15 |
16 | Correctly Classified Instances 28625 83.3455 %
17 | Incorrectly Classified Instances 5720 16.6545 %
18 | Kappa statistic 0.4643
19 | Mean absolute error 0.2354
20 | Root mean squared error 0.3555
21 | Relative absolute error 71.991 %
22 | Root relative squared error 87.9228 %
23 | Coverage of cases (0.95 level) 97.7697 %
24 | Mean rel. region size (0.95 level) 83.3426 %
25 | Total Number of Instances 34345
26 |
27 |
28 | The same training for five way model shows:
29 |
30 | Correctly Classified Instances 104814 67.1626 %
31 | Incorrectly Classified Instances 51246 32.8374 %
32 | Kappa statistic 0.4883
33 | Mean absolute error 0.1916
34 | Root mean squared error 0.3111
35 | Relative absolute error 72.6628 %
36 | Root relative squared error 85.6599 %
37 | Coverage of cases (0.95 level) 96.3732 %
38 | Mean rel. region size (0.95 level) 60.9708 %
39 | Total Number of Instances 156060
40 |
41 |
42 | Feel free to fork and use the code the way you want. The license is ASL 2.0.
43 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/pom.xml:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 |
2 |
5 | 4.0.0
6 |
7 | info.semanticanalyzer.sentiment.english
8 | semanticanalyzer-sentiment-english-template
9 | 1.0-SNAPSHOT
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 | nz.ac.waikato.cms.weka
14 | weka-dev
15 | 3.7.10
16 |
17 |
18 | org.sonatype.sisu
19 | sisu-guice
20 | 2.1.7
21 |
22 |
23 | junit
24 | junit
25 | 4.10
26 | test
27 |
28 |
29 | org.apache.commons
30 | commons-io
31 | 1.3.2
32 |
33 |
34 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/src/main/java/info/semanticanalyzer/classifiers/weka/SentimentClass.java:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | package info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka;
2 |
3 | /**
4 | * Created by dmitrykan on 27.04.2014.
5 | */
6 | public class SentimentClass {
7 | public enum ThreeWayClazz {
8 | NEGATIVE,
9 | POSITIVE,
10 | NEUTRAL,
11 | }
12 |
13 | public enum FiveWayClazz {
14 | NEGATIVE,
15 | SOMEWHAT_NEGATIVE,
16 | NEUTRAL,
17 | SOMEWHAT_POSITIVE,
18 | POSITIVE,
19 | }
20 | }
21 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/src/main/java/info/semanticanalyzer/classifiers/weka/fiveway/FiveWayMNBTrainer.java:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | package info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka.fiveway;
2 |
3 | import com.google.inject.internal.util.Join;
4 | import info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka.SentimentClass;
5 | import weka.classifiers.bayes.NaiveBayesMultinomialText;
6 | import weka.classifiers.evaluation.Evaluation;
7 | import weka.core.Attribute;
8 | import weka.core.DenseInstance;
9 | import weka.core.Instance;
10 | import weka.core.Instances;
11 |
12 | import java.util.ArrayList;
13 |
14 | /**
15 | * Created by dmitrykan on 27.04.2014.
16 | */
17 | public class FiveWayMNBTrainer {
18 | private NaiveBayesMultinomialText classifier;
19 | private String modelFile;
20 | private Instances dataRaw;
21 |
22 | public FiveWayMNBTrainer(String outputModel) {
23 | classifier = new NaiveBayesMultinomialText();
24 | modelFile = outputModel;
25 |
26 | ArrayList atts = new ArrayList(2);
27 | ArrayList classVal = new ArrayList();
28 | classVal.add(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.NEGATIVE.name());
29 | classVal.add(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.SOMEWHAT_NEGATIVE.name());
30 | classVal.add(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.NEUTRAL.name());
31 | classVal.add(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.SOMEWHAT_POSITIVE.name());
32 | classVal.add(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.POSITIVE.name());
33 | atts.add(new Attribute("content",(ArrayList)null));
34 | atts.add(new Attribute("@@class@@",classVal));
35 |
36 | dataRaw = new Instances("TrainingInstances",atts,10);
37 | }
38 |
39 | public void addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz fiveWayClazz, String[] words) {
40 | double[] instanceValue = new double[dataRaw.numAttributes()];
41 | instanceValue[0] = dataRaw.attribute(0).addStringValue(Join.join(" ", words));
42 | instanceValue[1] = fiveWayClazz.ordinal();
43 | dataRaw.add(new DenseInstance(1.0, instanceValue));
44 | dataRaw.setClassIndex(1);
45 | }
46 |
47 | public void trainModel() throws Exception {
48 | classifier.buildClassifier(dataRaw);
49 | }
50 |
51 | public void testModel() throws Exception {
52 | Evaluation eTest = new Evaluation(dataRaw);
53 | eTest.evaluateModel(classifier, dataRaw);
54 | String strSummary = eTest.toSummaryString();
55 | System.out.println(strSummary);
56 | }
57 |
58 | public void showInstances() {
59 | System.out.println(dataRaw);
60 | }
61 |
62 | public Instances getDataRaw() {
63 | return dataRaw;
64 | }
65 |
66 | public void saveModel() throws Exception {
67 | weka.core.SerializationHelper.write(modelFile, classifier);
68 | }
69 |
70 | public void loadModel(String _modelFile) throws Exception {
71 | this.classifier = (NaiveBayesMultinomialText) weka.core.SerializationHelper.read(_modelFile);
72 | }
73 |
74 | public SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz classify(String sentence) throws Exception {
75 | double[] instanceValue = new double[dataRaw.numAttributes()];
76 | instanceValue[0] = dataRaw.attribute(0).addStringValue(sentence);
77 |
78 | Instance toClassify = new DenseInstance(1.0, instanceValue);
79 | dataRaw.setClassIndex(1);
80 | toClassify.setDataset(dataRaw);
81 |
82 | double prediction = this.classifier.classifyInstance(toClassify);
83 |
84 | double distribution[] = this.classifier.distributionForInstance(toClassify);
85 |
86 | return SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.values()[(int)prediction];
87 |
88 | /*
89 | if (distribution[0] != distribution[1])
90 | return SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.values()[(int)prediction];
91 | else
92 |
93 | return SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.NEUTRAL;
94 | */
95 | }
96 | }
97 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/src/main/java/info/semanticanalyzer/classifiers/weka/fiveway/FiveWayMNBTrainerRunner.java:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | package info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka.fiveway;
2 |
3 | /**
4 | * Created by dmitrykan on 27.04.2014.
5 | */
6 | public class FiveWayMNBTrainerRunner {
7 | public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
8 | KaggleCSVReaderFiveWay kaggleCSVReaderFiveWay = new KaggleCSVReaderFiveWay();
9 | kaggleCSVReaderFiveWay.readKaggleCSV("kaggle/train.tsv");
10 | KaggleCSVReaderFiveWay.CSVInstanceFiveWay csvInstanceFiveWay;
11 |
12 | String outputModel = "models/five-way-sentiment-mnb.model";
13 |
14 | FiveWayMNBTrainer fiveWayMNBTrainer = new FiveWayMNBTrainer(outputModel);
15 |
16 | System.out.println("Adding training instances");
17 | int addedNum = 0;
18 | while ((csvInstanceFiveWay = kaggleCSVReaderFiveWay.next()) != null) {
19 | if (csvInstanceFiveWay.isValidInstance) {
20 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.addTrainingInstance(csvInstanceFiveWay.sentiment, csvInstanceFiveWay.phrase.split("\\s+"));
21 | addedNum++;
22 | }
23 | }
24 |
25 | kaggleCSVReaderFiveWay.close();
26 |
27 | System.out.println("Added " + addedNum + " instances");
28 |
29 | System.out.println("Training Model");
30 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.trainModel();
31 | System.out.println("Saving Model");
32 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.saveModel();
33 |
34 | System.out.println("Testing model");
35 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.testModel();
36 | }
37 | }
38 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/src/main/java/info/semanticanalyzer/classifiers/weka/fiveway/KaggleCSVReaderFiveWay.java:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | package info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka.fiveway;
2 |
3 | import info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka.SentimentClass;
4 |
5 | import java.io.BufferedReader;
6 | import java.io.FileReader;
7 | import java.io.IOException;
8 |
9 | /**
10 | * Created by Created by dmitrykan on 27.04.2014.
11 | *
12 | * Reads a TAB separated file of the format:
13 | *
14 | * PhraseId SentenceId Phrase Sentiment
15 | *
16 | */
17 | class KaggleCSVReaderFiveWay {
18 |
19 | private String line;
20 | private CSVInstanceFiveWay csvInstanceFiveWay;
21 | private int step = 0;
22 |
23 | private BufferedReader br;
24 |
25 | void readKaggleCSV(String csvFile) throws IOException {
26 | br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(csvFile));
27 |
28 | line = br.readLine();
29 |
30 | if (line != null) {
31 | if (line.startsWith("PhraseId")) {
32 | line = br.readLine();
33 | }
34 |
35 | if (line != null) {
36 | extractInstance();
37 | }
38 | }
39 | }
40 |
41 | private void extractInstance() {
42 | String[] attrs = line.split("\t");
43 |
44 | if (csvInstanceFiveWay == null) {
45 | csvInstanceFiveWay = new CSVInstanceFiveWay();
46 | }
47 | csvInstanceFiveWay.phraseID = Integer.valueOf(attrs[0]);
48 | csvInstanceFiveWay.sentenceID = Integer.valueOf(attrs[1]);
49 | csvInstanceFiveWay.phrase = attrs[2];
50 | // there is additionally sentiment tag for training data
51 | if (attrs.length > 3) {
52 | Integer sentimentOrdinal = Integer.valueOf(attrs[3]);
53 |
54 | if (sentimentOrdinal <= 4) {
55 | csvInstanceFiveWay.sentiment = SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.values()[sentimentOrdinal];
56 | csvInstanceFiveWay.isValidInstance = true;
57 | } else {
58 | // can't process the instance, because the sentiment ordinal is out of the acceptable range of two classes
59 | csvInstanceFiveWay.isValidInstance = false;
60 | }
61 | }
62 | }
63 |
64 | CSVInstanceFiveWay next() {
65 | if (step == 0) {
66 | step++;
67 | return csvInstanceFiveWay;
68 | }
69 |
70 | int showStatsAt = 1000;
71 | if (step % showStatsAt == 0) {
72 | System.out.println("Processed instances: " + step);
73 | }
74 |
75 | try {
76 | line = br.readLine();
77 | if (line != null) {
78 | extractInstance();
79 | } else {
80 | return null;
81 | }
82 | step++;
83 | return csvInstanceFiveWay;
84 | } catch (IOException e) {
85 | return null;
86 | }
87 | }
88 |
89 | void close() {
90 | try {
91 | br.close();
92 | } catch (IOException e) {
93 | e.printStackTrace();
94 | }
95 | }
96 |
97 | class CSVInstanceFiveWay {
98 | int phraseID;
99 | int sentenceID;
100 | String phrase;
101 | SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz sentiment;
102 | boolean isValidInstance;
103 |
104 | @Override
105 | public String toString() {
106 | return "CSVInstanceFiveWay{" +
107 | "phraseID=" + phraseID +
108 | ", sentenceID=" + sentenceID +
109 | ", phrase='" + phrase + '\'' +
110 | ", sentiment=" + sentiment +
111 | '}';
112 | }
113 | }
114 |
115 | }
116 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/src/main/java/info/semanticanalyzer/classifiers/weka/threeway/KaggleCSVReaderThreeWay.java:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | package info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka.threeway;
2 |
3 | import info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka.SentimentClass;
4 |
5 | import java.io.BufferedReader;
6 | import java.io.FileReader;
7 | import java.io.IOException;
8 |
9 | /**
10 | * Created by Created by dmitrykan on 27.04.2014.
11 | *
12 | * Reads a TAB separated file of the format:
13 | *
14 | * PhraseId SentenceId Phrase Sentiment
15 | *
16 | */
17 | class KaggleCSVReaderThreeWay {
18 |
19 | private String line;
20 | private CSVInstanceThreeWay csvInstanceThreeWay;
21 | private int step = 0;
22 |
23 | private BufferedReader br;
24 |
25 | private int showStatsAt = 1000;
26 |
27 | void readKaggleCSV(String csvFile) throws IOException {
28 | br = new BufferedReader(new FileReader(csvFile));
29 |
30 | line = br.readLine();
31 |
32 | if (line != null) {
33 | if (line.startsWith("PhraseId")) {
34 | line = br.readLine();
35 | }
36 |
37 | if (line != null) {
38 | extractInstance();
39 | }
40 | }
41 | }
42 |
43 | private void extractInstance() {
44 | String[] attrs = line.split("\t");
45 |
46 | if (csvInstanceThreeWay == null) {
47 | csvInstanceThreeWay = new CSVInstanceThreeWay();
48 | }
49 | csvInstanceThreeWay.phraseID = Integer.valueOf(attrs[0]);
50 | csvInstanceThreeWay.sentenceID = Integer.valueOf(attrs[1]);
51 | csvInstanceThreeWay.phrase = attrs[2];
52 | // there is additionally sentiment tag for training data
53 | if (attrs.length > 3) {
54 | Integer sentimentOrdinal = Integer.valueOf(attrs[3]);
55 |
56 | if (sentimentOrdinal <= 1) {
57 | csvInstanceThreeWay.sentiment = SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.values()[sentimentOrdinal];
58 | csvInstanceThreeWay.isValidInstance = true;
59 | } else {
60 | // can't process the instance, because the sentiment ordinal is out of the acceptable range of two classes
61 | csvInstanceThreeWay.isValidInstance = false;
62 | }
63 | }
64 | }
65 |
66 | CSVInstanceThreeWay next() {
67 | if (step == 0) {
68 | step++;
69 | return csvInstanceThreeWay;
70 | }
71 |
72 | if (step % showStatsAt == 0) {
73 | System.out.println("Processed instances: " + step);
74 | }
75 |
76 | try {
77 | line = br.readLine();
78 | if (line != null) {
79 | extractInstance();
80 | } else {
81 | return null;
82 | }
83 | step++;
84 | return csvInstanceThreeWay;
85 | } catch (IOException e) {
86 | return null;
87 | }
88 | }
89 |
90 | void close() {
91 | try {
92 | br.close();
93 | } catch (IOException e) {
94 | e.printStackTrace();
95 | }
96 | }
97 |
98 | class CSVInstanceThreeWay {
99 | int phraseID;
100 | int sentenceID;
101 | String phrase;
102 | SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz sentiment;
103 | boolean isValidInstance;
104 |
105 | @Override
106 | public String toString() {
107 | return "CSVInstanceThreeWay{" +
108 | "phraseID=" + phraseID +
109 | ", sentenceID=" + sentenceID +
110 | ", phrase='" + phrase + '\'' +
111 | ", sentiment=" + sentiment +
112 | '}';
113 | }
114 | }
115 |
116 | }
117 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/src/main/java/info/semanticanalyzer/classifiers/weka/threeway/KaggleCSVWriterThreeWay.java:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | package info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka.threeway;
2 |
3 | import info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka.SentimentClass;
4 |
5 | import java.io.BufferedWriter;
6 | import java.io.FileOutputStream;
7 | import java.io.IOException;
8 | import java.io.OutputStreamWriter;
9 |
10 | /**
11 | * Created by dmitrykan on 27.04.2014.
12 | */
13 | public class KaggleCSVWriterThreeWay {
14 | public static final String CSV_HEADER = "PhraseId,Sentiment";
15 | BufferedWriter bw;
16 |
17 | public KaggleCSVWriterThreeWay(String csvFile) throws IOException {
18 | bw = new BufferedWriter(new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream(csvFile), "utf8"));
19 | bw.write(CSV_HEADER);
20 | bw.write("\n");
21 | }
22 |
23 | public void writeKaggleCSV(KaggleCSVReaderThreeWay.CSVInstanceThreeWay csvInstanceThreeWay, SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz sentiment) throws IOException {
24 | try {
25 | bw.write(String.valueOf(csvInstanceThreeWay.phraseID));
26 | bw.write(",");
27 | bw.write(String.valueOf(sentiment.ordinal()));
28 | bw.write("\n");
29 | } catch (IOException e) {
30 | close();
31 | throw e;
32 | }
33 | }
34 |
35 | public void close() throws IOException {
36 | bw.close();
37 | }
38 |
39 | }
40 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/src/main/java/info/semanticanalyzer/classifiers/weka/threeway/ThreeWayMNBTrainer.java:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | package info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka.threeway;
2 |
3 | import com.google.inject.internal.util.Join;
4 | import info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka.SentimentClass;
5 | import weka.classifiers.bayes.NaiveBayesMultinomialText;
6 | import weka.classifiers.evaluation.Evaluation;
7 | import weka.core.Attribute;
8 | import weka.core.DenseInstance;
9 | import weka.core.Instance;
10 | import weka.core.Instances;
11 |
12 | import java.util.ArrayList;
13 |
14 | /**
15 | * Created by dmitrykan on 27.04.2014.
16 | */
17 | public class ThreeWayMNBTrainer {
18 | private NaiveBayesMultinomialText classifier;
19 | private String modelFile;
20 | private Instances dataRaw;
21 |
22 | public ThreeWayMNBTrainer(String outputModel) {
23 | classifier = new NaiveBayesMultinomialText();
24 | modelFile = outputModel;
25 |
26 | ArrayList atts = new ArrayList(2);
27 | ArrayList classVal = new ArrayList();
28 | classVal.add(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.NEGATIVE.name());
29 | classVal.add(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.POSITIVE.name());
30 | atts.add(new Attribute("content",(ArrayList)null));
31 | atts.add(new Attribute("@@class@@",classVal));
32 |
33 | dataRaw = new Instances("TrainingInstances",atts,10);
34 | }
35 |
36 | public void addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz threeWayClazz, String[] words) {
37 | double[] instanceValue = new double[dataRaw.numAttributes()];
38 | instanceValue[0] = dataRaw.attribute(0).addStringValue(Join.join(" ", words));
39 | instanceValue[1] = threeWayClazz.ordinal();
40 | dataRaw.add(new DenseInstance(1.0, instanceValue));
41 | dataRaw.setClassIndex(1);
42 | }
43 |
44 | public void trainModel() throws Exception {
45 | classifier.buildClassifier(dataRaw);
46 | }
47 |
48 | public void testModel() throws Exception {
49 | Evaluation eTest = new Evaluation(dataRaw);
50 | eTest.evaluateModel(classifier, dataRaw);
51 | String strSummary = eTest.toSummaryString();
52 | System.out.println(strSummary);
53 | }
54 |
55 | public void showInstances() {
56 | System.out.println(dataRaw);
57 | }
58 |
59 | public Instances getDataRaw() {
60 | return dataRaw;
61 | }
62 |
63 | public void saveModel() throws Exception {
64 | weka.core.SerializationHelper.write(modelFile, classifier);
65 | }
66 |
67 | public void loadModel(String _modelFile) throws Exception {
68 | NaiveBayesMultinomialText classifier = (NaiveBayesMultinomialText) weka.core.SerializationHelper.read(_modelFile);
69 | this.classifier = classifier;
70 | }
71 |
72 | public SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz classify(String sentence) throws Exception {
73 | double[] instanceValue = new double[dataRaw.numAttributes()];
74 | instanceValue[0] = dataRaw.attribute(0).addStringValue(sentence);
75 |
76 | Instance toClassify = new DenseInstance(1.0, instanceValue);
77 | dataRaw.setClassIndex(1);
78 | toClassify.setDataset(dataRaw);
79 |
80 | double prediction = this.classifier.classifyInstance(toClassify);
81 |
82 | double distribution[] = this.classifier.distributionForInstance(toClassify);
83 |
84 | if (distribution[0] != distribution[1])
85 | return SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.values()[(int)prediction];
86 | else
87 | return SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.NEUTRAL;
88 | }
89 | }
90 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/src/main/java/info/semanticanalyzer/classifiers/weka/threeway/ThreeWayMNBTrainerRunner.java:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | package info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka.threeway;
2 |
3 | import info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka.SentimentClass;
4 |
5 | /**
6 | * Created by dmitrykan on 27.04.2014.
7 | */
8 | public class ThreeWayMNBTrainerRunner {
9 | public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
10 | KaggleCSVReaderThreeWay kaggleCSVReaderThreeWay = new KaggleCSVReaderThreeWay();
11 | kaggleCSVReaderThreeWay.readKaggleCSV("kaggle/train.tsv");
12 | KaggleCSVReaderThreeWay.CSVInstanceThreeWay csvInstanceThreeWay;
13 |
14 | String outputModel = "models/three-way-sentiment-mnb.model";
15 |
16 | ThreeWayMNBTrainer threeWayMNBTrainer = new ThreeWayMNBTrainer(outputModel);
17 |
18 | int sentimentPositiveCount = 0;
19 | int sentimentNegativeCount = 0;
20 | int sentimentOtherCount = 0;
21 |
22 | System.out.println("Adding training instances");
23 | int addedNum = 0;
24 | while ((csvInstanceThreeWay = kaggleCSVReaderThreeWay.next()) != null) {
25 | if (csvInstanceThreeWay.isValidInstance) {
26 | if (csvInstanceThreeWay.sentiment.equals(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.POSITIVE) && sentimentPositiveCount < 7072) {
27 | sentimentPositiveCount++;
28 | threeWayMNBTrainer.addTrainingInstance(csvInstanceThreeWay.sentiment, csvInstanceThreeWay.phrase.split("\\s+"));
29 | addedNum++;
30 | }
31 | else if (csvInstanceThreeWay.sentiment.equals(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.NEGATIVE) && sentimentNegativeCount < 7072) {
32 | sentimentNegativeCount++;
33 | threeWayMNBTrainer.addTrainingInstance(csvInstanceThreeWay.sentiment, csvInstanceThreeWay.phrase.split("\\s+"));
34 | addedNum++;
35 | }
36 | else {
37 | sentimentOtherCount++;
38 | }
39 |
40 | if (sentimentPositiveCount >= 7072 && sentimentNegativeCount >= 7072)
41 | break;
42 | }
43 | }
44 |
45 | kaggleCSVReaderThreeWay.close();
46 |
47 | System.out.println("Added " + addedNum + " instances");
48 | System.out.println("Of which " + sentimentPositiveCount + " positive instances, " +
49 | sentimentNegativeCount + " negative instances and " +
50 | sentimentOtherCount + " other sentiment instances");
51 |
52 | System.out.println("Training and saving Model");
53 | threeWayMNBTrainer.trainModel();
54 | threeWayMNBTrainer.saveModel();
55 |
56 | System.out.println("Testing model");
57 | threeWayMNBTrainer.testModel();
58 | }
59 | }
60 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/src/test/java/info/semanticanalyzer/classifiers/weka/FiveWayMNBTrainerTest.java:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | package info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka;
2 |
3 | import info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka.fiveway.FiveWayMNBTrainer;
4 | import junit.framework.Assert;
5 | import org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils;
6 | import org.junit.Test;
7 |
8 | import java.io.FileInputStream;
9 |
10 | /**
11 | * Created by Dmitry Kan on 27.04.2014.
12 | */
13 | public class FiveWayMNBTrainerTest {
14 | FiveWayMNBTrainer fiveWayMNBTrainer;
15 | String modelFile = "models/five-way-sentiment-mnb.model";
16 | private static final String PERFOMRANCE_TEST_CONTENT_FILE = "src/test/resources/en_imdb_sentences.txt";
17 |
18 | @org.junit.Before
19 | public void setUp() throws Exception {
20 | fiveWayMNBTrainer = new FiveWayMNBTrainer(modelFile);
21 | }
22 |
23 | @Test
24 | public void testAddTrainingInstance() throws Exception {
25 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.NEGATIVE, new String[] {"dislike"});
26 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.POSITIVE, new String[] {"like"});
27 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.showInstances();
28 | }
29 |
30 | @Test
31 | public void testTrainModel() throws Exception {
32 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.NEGATIVE, new String[] {"dislike"});
33 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.POSITIVE, new String[] {"like"});
34 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.trainModel();
35 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.testModel();
36 | }
37 |
38 | @Test
39 | public void testSaveModel() throws Exception {
40 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.NEGATIVE, new String[] {"dislike"});
41 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.POSITIVE, new String[] {"like"});
42 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.trainModel();
43 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.testModel();
44 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.saveModel();
45 | System.out.println("===== Loading and testing model ====");
46 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.loadModel(modelFile);
47 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.testModel();
48 | }
49 |
50 | @Test
51 | public void testExistingModel() throws Exception {
52 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.NEGATIVE, new String[] {"dislike"});
53 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.POSITIVE, new String[] {"like"});
54 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.loadModel(modelFile);
55 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.testModel();
56 | }
57 |
58 | @Test
59 | public void testArbitraryTextPositive() throws Exception {
60 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.loadModel(modelFile);
61 | Assert.assertEquals(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.POSITIVE, fiveWayMNBTrainer.classify("I like this weather"));
62 | }
63 |
64 | @Test
65 | public void testArbitraryTextNegative() throws Exception {
66 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.loadModel(modelFile);
67 | Assert.assertEquals(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.NEGATIVE, fiveWayMNBTrainer.classify("I dislike this weather"));
68 | }
69 |
70 | @Test
71 | public void testArbitraryTextMixed() throws Exception {
72 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.loadModel(modelFile);
73 | Assert.assertEquals(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.NEGATIVE, fiveWayMNBTrainer.classify("I really don't know whether I like or dislike this weather"));
74 | }
75 |
76 | @Test
77 | public void testArbitraryTextSomewhatNegative() throws Exception {
78 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.loadModel(modelFile);
79 | Assert.assertEquals(SentimentClass.FiveWayClazz.NEGATIVE, fiveWayMNBTrainer.classify("It was a bit annoying experience"));
80 | }
81 |
82 | @Test
83 | public void testPerformance() throws Exception
84 | {
85 | String content = IOUtils.toString(new FileInputStream(PERFOMRANCE_TEST_CONTENT_FILE), "UTF-8");
86 | String[] lines = content.split("\n");
87 |
88 | int wordsCount = getWordsCount(lines);
89 |
90 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.loadModel(modelFile);
91 |
92 | test(lines, wordsCount, content.length()); // warm up
93 |
94 | test(lines, wordsCount, content.length()); // test
95 | }
96 |
97 | private int getWordsCount(String[] texts)
98 | {
99 | int count = 0;
100 | for (String str : texts) {
101 | count += str.split("\\s+").length;
102 | }
103 | return count;
104 | }
105 |
106 | private void test(String[] texts, int wordsCount, int totalLength) throws Exception {
107 | System.out.println("Testing on " + texts.length + " samples, " + wordsCount + " words, " + totalLength
108 | + " characters...");
109 |
110 | long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
111 | for (String str : texts) {
112 | // to print out the predicted labels, uncomment the line:
113 | //System.out.println(threeWayMnbTrainer.classify(str).name());
114 | fiveWayMNBTrainer.classify(str).name();
115 | }
116 | long elapsedTime = System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime;
117 |
118 | System.out.println("Time " + elapsedTime + " ms.");
119 | System.out.println("Speed " + ((double) totalLength / elapsedTime) + " chars/ms");
120 | System.out.println("Speed " + ((double) wordsCount / elapsedTime) + " words/ms");
121 | System.out.println("+++++++++=");
122 | }
123 |
124 | }
125 |
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/src/test/java/info/semanticanalyzer/classifiers/weka/ThreeWayMNBTrainerTest.java:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | package info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka;
2 |
3 | import info.semanticanalyzer.classifiers.weka.threeway.ThreeWayMNBTrainer;
4 | import junit.framework.Assert;
5 | import org.apache.commons.io.IOUtils;
6 | import org.junit.Test;
7 |
8 | import java.io.FileInputStream;
9 |
10 | /**
11 | * Created by Dmitry Kan on 27.04.2014.
12 | */
13 | public class ThreeWayMNBTrainerTest {
14 | ThreeWayMNBTrainer threeWayMnbTrainer;
15 | String modelFile = "models/three-way-sentiment-mnb.model";
16 | private static final String PERFOMRANCE_TEST_CONTENT_FILE = "src/test/resources/en_imdb_sentences.txt";
17 |
18 | @org.junit.Before
19 | public void setUp() throws Exception {
20 | threeWayMnbTrainer = new ThreeWayMNBTrainer(modelFile);
21 | }
22 |
23 | @org.junit.Test
24 | public void testAddTrainingInstance() throws Exception {
25 | threeWayMnbTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.NEGATIVE, new String[] {"dislike"});
26 | threeWayMnbTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.POSITIVE, new String[] {"like"});
27 | threeWayMnbTrainer.showInstances();
28 | }
29 |
30 | @org.junit.Test
31 | public void testTrainModel() throws Exception {
32 | threeWayMnbTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.NEGATIVE, new String[] {"dislike"});
33 | threeWayMnbTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.POSITIVE, new String[] {"like"});
34 | threeWayMnbTrainer.trainModel();
35 | threeWayMnbTrainer.testModel();
36 | }
37 |
38 | @org.junit.Test
39 | public void testSaveModel() throws Exception {
40 | threeWayMnbTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.NEGATIVE, new String[] {"dislike"});
41 | threeWayMnbTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.POSITIVE, new String[] {"like"});
42 | threeWayMnbTrainer.trainModel();
43 | threeWayMnbTrainer.testModel();
44 | threeWayMnbTrainer.saveModel();
45 | System.out.println("===== Loading and testing model ====");
46 | threeWayMnbTrainer.loadModel(modelFile);
47 | threeWayMnbTrainer.testModel();
48 | }
49 |
50 | @org.junit.Test
51 | public void testExistingModel() throws Exception {
52 | threeWayMnbTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.NEGATIVE, new String[] {"dislike"});
53 | threeWayMnbTrainer.addTrainingInstance(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.POSITIVE, new String[] {"like"});
54 | threeWayMnbTrainer.loadModel(modelFile);
55 | threeWayMnbTrainer.testModel();
56 | }
57 |
58 | @org.junit.Test
59 | public void testArbitraryTextPositive() throws Exception {
60 | threeWayMnbTrainer.loadModel(modelFile);
61 | Assert.assertEquals(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.POSITIVE, threeWayMnbTrainer.classify("I like this weather"));
62 | }
63 |
64 | @org.junit.Test
65 | public void testArbitraryTextNegative() throws Exception {
66 | threeWayMnbTrainer.loadModel(modelFile);
67 | Assert.assertEquals(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.NEGATIVE, threeWayMnbTrainer.classify("I dislike this weather"));
68 | }
69 |
70 | @org.junit.Test
71 | public void testArbitraryTextMixed() throws Exception {
72 | threeWayMnbTrainer.loadModel(modelFile);
73 | Assert.assertEquals(SentimentClass.ThreeWayClazz.NEUTRAL, threeWayMnbTrainer.classify("I really don't know whether I like or dislike this weather"));
74 | }
75 |
76 | @Test
77 | public void testPerformance() throws Exception
78 | {
79 | String content = IOUtils.toString(new FileInputStream(PERFOMRANCE_TEST_CONTENT_FILE), "UTF-8");
80 | String[] lines = content.split("\n");
81 |
82 | int wordsCount = getWordsCount(lines);
83 |
84 | threeWayMnbTrainer.loadModel(modelFile);
85 |
86 | test(lines, wordsCount, content.length()); // warm up
87 |
88 | test(lines, wordsCount, content.length()); // test
89 | }
90 |
91 | private int getWordsCount(String[] texts)
92 | {
93 | int count = 0;
94 | for (String str : texts) {
95 | count += str.split("\\s+").length;
96 | }
97 | return count;
98 | }
99 |
100 | private void test(String[] texts, int wordsCount, int totalLength) throws Exception {
101 | System.out.println("Testing on " + texts.length + " samples, " + wordsCount + " words, " + totalLength
102 | + " characters...");
103 |
104 | long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
105 | for (String str : texts) {
106 | // to print out the predicted labels, uncomment the line:
107 | //System.out.println(threeWayMnbTrainer.classify(str).name());
108 | threeWayMnbTrainer.classify(str).name();
109 | }
110 | long elapsedTime = System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime;
111 |
112 | System.out.println("Time " + elapsedTime + " ms.");
113 | System.out.println("Speed " + ((double) totalLength / elapsedTime) + " chars/ms");
114 | System.out.println("Speed " + ((double) wordsCount / elapsedTime) + " words/ms");
115 | System.out.println("+++++++++=");
116 | }
117 |
118 | }
119 |
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/src/test/resources/en_imdb_sentences.txt:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 | plot : two teen couples go to a church party , drink and then drive .
2 | they get into an accident .
3 | one of the guys dies , but his girlfriend continues to see him in her life , and has nightmares .
4 | what's the deal ?
5 | watch the movie and " sorta " find out . . .
6 | critique : a mind-fuck movie for the teen generation that touches on a very cool idea , but presents it in a very bad package .
7 | which is what makes this review an even harder one to write , since i generally applaud films which attempt to break the mold , mess with your head and such ( lost highway & memento ) , but there are good and bad ways of making all types of films , and these folks just didn't snag this one correctly .
8 | they seem to have taken this pretty neat concept , but executed it terribly .
9 | so what are the problems with the movie ?
10 | well , its main problem is that it's simply too jumbled .
11 | it starts off " normal " but then downshifts into this " fantasy " world in which you , as an audience member , have no idea what's going on .
12 | there are dreams , there are characters coming back from the dead , there are others who look like the dead , there are strange apparitions , there are disappearances , there are a looooot of chase scenes , there are tons of weird things that happen , and most of it is simply not explained .
13 | now i personally don't mind trying to unravel a film every now and then , but when all it does is give me the same clue over and over again , i get kind of fed up after a while , which is this film's biggest problem .
14 | it's obviously got this big secret to hide , but it seems to want to hide it completely until its final five minutes .
15 | and do they make things entertaining , thrilling or even engaging , in the meantime ?
16 | not really .
17 | the sad part is that the arrow and i both dig on flicks like this , so we actually figured most of it out by the half-way point , so all of the strangeness after that did start to make a little bit of sense , but it still didn't the make the film all that more entertaining .
18 | i guess the bottom line with movies like this is that you should always make sure that the audience is " into it " even before they are given the secret password to enter your world of understanding .
19 | i mean , showing melissa sagemiller running away from visions for about 20 minutes throughout the movie is just plain lazy ! !
20 | okay , we get it . . . there
21 | are people chasing her and we don't know who they are .
22 | do we really need to see it over and over again ?
23 | how about giving us different scenes offering further insight into all of the strangeness going down in the movie ?
24 | apparently , the studio took this film away from its director and chopped it up themselves , and it shows .
25 | there might've been a pretty decent teen mind-fuck movie in here somewhere , but i guess " the suits " decided that turning it into a music video with little edge , would make more sense .
26 | the actors are pretty good for the most part , although wes bentley just seemed to be playing the exact same character that he did in american beauty , only in a new neighborhood .
27 | but my biggest kudos go out to sagemiller , who holds her own throughout the entire film , and actually has you feeling her character's unraveling .
28 | overall , the film doesn't stick because it doesn't entertain , it's confusing , it rarely excites and it feels pretty redundant for most of its runtime , despite a pretty cool ending and explanation to all of the craziness that came before it .
29 | oh , and by the way , this is not a horror or teen slasher flick . . . it's
30 | just packaged to look that way because someone is apparently assuming that the genre is still hot with the kids .
31 | it also wrapped production two years ago and has been sitting on the shelves ever since .
32 | whatever . . . skip
33 | it !
34 | where's joblo coming from ?
35 | a nightmare of elm street 3 ( 7/10 ) - blair witch 2 ( 7/10 ) - the crow ( 9/10 ) - the crow : salvation ( 4/10 ) - lost highway ( 10/10 ) - memento ( 10/10 ) - the others ( 9/10 ) - stir of echoes ( 8/10 )
36 | the happy bastard's quick movie review
37 | damn that y2k bug .
38 | it's got a head start in this movie starring jamie lee curtis and another baldwin brother ( william this time ) in a story regarding a crew of a tugboat that comes across a deserted russian tech ship that has a strangeness to it when they kick the power back on .
39 | little do they know the power within . . .
40 | going for the gore and bringing on a few action sequences here and there , virus still feels very empty , like a movie going for all flash and no substance .
41 | we don't know why the crew was really out in the middle of nowhere , we don't know the origin of what took over the ship ( just that a big pink flashy thing hit the mir ) , and , of course , we don't know why donald sutherland is stumbling around drunkenly throughout .
42 | here , it's just " hey , let's chase these people around with some robots " .
43 | the acting is below average , even from the likes of curtis .
44 | you're more likely to get a kick out of her work in halloween h20 .
45 | sutherland is wasted and baldwin , well , he's acting like a baldwin , of course .
46 | the real star here are stan winston's robot design , some schnazzy cgi , and the occasional good gore shot , like picking into someone's brain .
47 | so , if robots and body parts really turn you on , here's your movie .
48 | otherwise , it's pretty much a sunken ship of a movie .
49 | plot : a young french boy sees his parents killed before his eyes by tim roth , oops . . . i
50 | mean , an evil man .
51 | he vows revenge on that man and is taught the ways of the musketeer by some old dude who used to be one himself ?
52 | anyway , fourteen years go by and . . . arrgh , well , you know the rest . . . swish-swish-zzzzzzz !
53 | critique : this is a pretty bad movie .
54 | let's see , where should i start ?
55 | okay , first of all , the story is just plain boring .
56 | it's not original , is entirely predictable and lacks energy .
57 | okay , what's next ?
58 | acting , you say .
59 | hmmmm , well , the main actor , justin chambers , is basically an uncharismatic version of chris o'donnell but with less range ( think about that ! ) , and mena suvari , is just plain off .
60 | not as bad as thora birch was in dungeons & dragons , but entirely miscast , with bad deliveries , awful sequences and a piss-poor accent that comes and goes .
61 | now i'm not sure if this was ms . suvari's fault or the director's , but i've definitely seen her at a much higher level than in this film .
62 | the only semi-saving grace actor-wise is tim roth as the irrepressible " bad guy " , but once again , it's not something that we haven't seen before . . . a
63 | thousand times . . . by the same guy ! !
64 | tim , please . . . for the love of god , beg your agent to ask the marketplace for some modern day " american roles " for you as a " nice guy " in a romantic comedy or something .
65 | stretch , dude . . . stretch ! !
66 | we all know that you can do much better than this gunk .
67 | alright , what else was bad in this film ?
68 | oh yeah , the score !
69 | yikes , how's about taking it down a few notches there , fellas ?
70 | this thing blares in your ear whenever it feels the need to accentuate a certain scene , but actually does little more than annoy .
71 | i think it's important for the man behind the music to recognize that this film isn't a " real epic " by any stretch of the imagination .
72 | it's a fluffy rehashed cake-walk created by some " shrewd " studio heads who decided to take advantage of the whole " kung-fu " phenomenon in films , and test it out on an old classic .
73 | dudes . . . you
74 | failed all around !
75 | ( keep reading )
76 | the editing is also pretty shoddy in this movie , the dialogue banal and stilted and the plot problems . . . plentiful !
77 | ( why does the guy on top of the horse carriage just stand there when his opponent takes forever scampering his way back to the top ?
78 | why don't they just cut the mouseketeer's rope at the top of the tower , instead of jumping down on their own chords and fighting him while hanging ?
79 | why doesn't anybody look a day older , when the sequence says " 14 years later " ?
80 | ( at least . . . change
81 | your shirt , man ! )
82 | keep in mind that i have never strayed away from championing certain movies that are created simply for the sake of a " fun time " , but this flick just didn't cut it for me .
83 | it was boring for stretches , the acting was atrocious at times ( the " romantic " scene between suvari and chambers next to the lake reminded me of plays in high school which made you cringe ) , there was little reason to care for anyone and since when were the musketeers fat ?
84 | i will give the movie this much , and that is that its main reason for being ( its " raison-d'etre " , as the french would say ) , its fight sequences , do come through despite the lack of their numbers in the film .
85 | i was hoping that the movie would be packed with cool stuntwork as promoted in its trailer , but what you see there , are essentially the snippets from the two major ( and cool ) swashbuckling sequences from the film .
86 | the first comes right at the beginning of the movie , while the other essentially finishes the film off , hanging from the tower and juggling off ladders .
87 | the ladder sequence itself is a definite keeper but unfortunately the rest of the movie is just regurgitated crap .
88 | and can anyone please tell me how catherine deneuve got her name placed at the top of this film's credits ?
89 | hullo ?
90 | the film is called the musketeer and stars a dude name justin chambers .
91 | deneuve is barely in this movie !
92 | ugh , just another small thing that annoyed me about this trash .
93 | now say it together , gang : " all for one , and one for all . . . we
94 | vow to stay away from it all ! ! "
95 | thank me later .
96 | where's joblo coming from ?
97 | a knight's tale ( 7/10 ) - american outlaws ( 5/10 ) - crouching tiger , hidden dragon ( 7/10 ) - the matrix ( 8/10 ) - the replacement killers ( 6/10 ) - romeo must die ( 3/10 ) - shanghai noon ( 6/10 )
98 | she was the femme in " la femme nikita . "
99 | he was the baldwin in " backdraft , " " sliver , " and " fair game " ( with cindy crawford ) .
100 | together , anne parillaud and william baldwin conspire to make " shattered image " the biggest piece of hooey since the stallone/stone " thriller " " the specialist . "
101 | the film poses the question " what if the life you're living now is really a dream , and your dreams reality ? "
102 | it's either about a woman who's haunted by a recurring ( and recurring and recurring ) nightmare that she's a hired assassin , or it's about a hired assassin who's haunted by a recurring ( and recurring and recurring ) nightmare that she's honeymooning with william baldwin in jamaica .
103 | it doesn't much matter and believe me by the time " shattered image " runs its painful and pedestrian course you won't care .
104 | these two lives , with parillaud looking like siouxsie sioux with a black wig , black emotionless eyes , and black leather clothing in the seattle-based assassin scenes , and moping around like karen carpenter in the jamaica scenes , play out endlessly throughout the film and the result is it's now * twice * as boring as it might have been .
105 | it's not that complicated plots can't be entertaining .
106 | of course it helps if you have interesting characters , crisp dialogue , and a modicum of style .
107 | " shattered image " isn't complex , it's just stupid .
108 | and boring .
109 | parillaud and baldwin , who aren't exactly shakespearean material to begin with , are saddled with such leaden dialogue that their characters have zero chance of breaking free of their cardboard confines .
110 | lines like :
111 | " you don't beg , you insist .
112 | i like that in a woman . "
113 | that's parillaud's character talking . . .
114 | to her cat !
115 | and :
116 | " you're not the reason i couldn't care less about you . "
117 | huh ?
118 | and this wonderful bathroom interchange early in the film :
119 | " if you give me a couple of minutes you know i'll charm the pants off you . "
120 | " i don't have that kind of time . "
121 | talking of pants , parillaud has her clothes off faster than you can say " point of no return . "
122 | we have come to expect this from billy baldwin , but it might have been nice to have learned something about their characters first .
123 | but there's nothing to learn .
124 | karen is as interesting as a cereal box , a someone's-out-to-get-me crybaby who imagines the voice at the other end of the phone , the stranger who sends her flowers , maybe even her husband himself , is her would-be killer .
125 | siouxsie is the chromium cool , tough-as-nails crack killing machine who shoots out a couple of mirrors in order to justify the film's meaningless stock title .
126 | baldwin seems more interested in parillaud's nest egg ( so that he can pave paradise and put up a parking lot ) than he does in her .
127 | each time graham greene shows up he gets killed .
128 | barbet schroeder ( " reversal of fortune " ) co-produced and should be ashamed of himself .
129 | every now and again it's fun to watch a really bad movie .
130 | and every now and again , as " shattered image " makes agonizingly clear , it isn't .
131 | so what do you get when you mix together plot elements from various successful sci-fi films such as close encounters of the third kind , 2001 : a space odyssey , apollo 13 and contact ?
132 | well , whatever it is , you'd sure as hell hope that it would be a thousand times better than this shoddy attempt at such a melange , considering the disastrous results we're left with here .
133 | this is a film that takes a little bit of everything , but ultimately adds up to a lot of nothing !
134 | it's like i said . . . this
135 | movie sucks .
136 | plot : a rescue crew of astronauts is sent down to mars in the year 2020 , after an unknown energy force leads to a loss of contact with the previous gang of space aviators to visit the red planet .
137 | critique : extremely underwhelming is the best way to describe this movie .
138 | uneven , would be another .
139 | the trailer for this movie actually showed some promise , the buzz around it had been so-so , and even the film itself starts off with a decent first twenty minutes , all leading you to believe that it's actually going to go " somewhere " .
140 | but it isn't long before the entire movie downshifts into neutral , features more space walks than anything interesting on the cherry-colored planet , tries too hard to get us into the " pain " of some its characters and unsuccessfully tosses some romance into the mix .
141 | in a sci-fi movie ?
142 | well , i don't know , much of it just seemed like a bunch of nerdies talking techie jargon for about an hour and a half , only to figure out some big secret in the end , a secret which practically had me yawning with excitement .
143 | ultimately , this is a movie that starts off with a decent premise , joins the crew in their " misadventures in space " for the main crux of its journey , and eventually settles down for one of the most anti-climactic endings this side of contact .
144 | mind you , if you enjoyed that film's shrug-of-the-shoulders ending , you might just enjoy this frivolous ditty as well .
145 | of course , i don't remember contact having such obvious and painfully distracting computer generated effects at its end of story .
146 | ugh .
147 | what a friggin' mess .
148 | films like this generally get me wondering about the brass in hollywood again .
149 | didn't anybody recognize the crappiness in this script ?
150 | didn't they read the bad dialogue , the cheezy lines , the obvious derivative nature of the work ( mind you , with a director like depalma at the helm , that ain't saying much ! ) .
151 | of course , you can't really blame the brass for the inclusion of jerry o'connell in this fine crew of thespians .
152 | 'nuff said .
153 | neither can you blame them for depalma cranking up the juice on the film's musical score during the last fifteen minutes , presumably in order to wake the audience up ( okay , we get it brian , this scene is supposed to be powerful . . . wow . . . yawn . . . my
154 | ears hurt ! ) .
155 | so is anything salvageable in this movie ?
156 | sure .
157 | gary sinise does another great job , as does cheadle , the film doesn't completely bore you as much as it just moves along slowly without anything really interesting happening , and yes , the " sand-twister " effect that you see in the commercial is well done .
158 | other than that ?
159 | i guess i could say that i admire how filmmakers have become so much more devious in their product placement strategies . . . oops ,
160 | did i say " admire " , i meant " am disgusted " !
161 | all in all , this movie delivers very little in actual substance , offers two-bit dialogue masked in a lot of sci-fi mumbo-jumbo , pretends to be deep when really it's just sappy , and eventually just settles into an ending which , other than presenting us with a pathetic computer graphic as a part of the story , gives us little more to think about than how we might be able to get our money back for sitting through this rehashed dreck .
162 | go see the ninth gate . . . now
163 | there's a great movie !
164 | and on a personal note , i think it's time for depalma to stop worrying so much about his proverbial 12-minute uninterrupted film sequences , and start worrying more about how crappy his movies are getting .
165 | reindeer games is easily the worst of the three recent films penned by ehren kruger ( scream 3 and arlington rd are the others , each derivative in their own special way ) .
166 | the guy can't seem to write believable dialogue ( sample from reindeer games : " rule #1 : never put a car thief behind the wheel " ) , create multi-faceted characters , or even engineer coherent plots but he sure knows how to pile on numerous nonsensical twists and turns ( no matter if each one deems the actual story increasingly unlikely ) .
167 | his screenplay for reindeer games turns the tables on the audience so many times that watching the film becomes something of a punishment with no reward anywhere in sight .
168 | i can just envision kruger laughing behind his keyboard , " oh you thought my movie was gonna go here , f * ck you jack ass , take that twist , decipher this mother f * cker ! "
169 | it's almost as if the writer were angry at us for shelling out money to see his stupid movie .
170 | and why the hell would anyone want to invest time in a movie when the screenwriter keeps changing his own rules for no reason other than to congratulate himself on how damn clever he is ?
171 | auteur theory be damned ; it's kruger's " style " , not the director's that winds up on screen .
172 | kruger has obviously never paid much mind to the old chestnut " sometimes less is more " .
173 | and his numerous twists can't even claim to be originals ; arlington rd's ending is a direct steal from the much better alan j . pakula thriller the parallax view , and in reindeer games we get this ol' gem ; character incriminates themself by saying something they shouldn't know ( pronouns used to protect the gender of the " character " . . . grammar
174 | be damned ) .
175 | " how did you know that ? "
176 | the stunned protagonist asks , suddenly realizing that the character was in on the whole thing all along .
177 | .
178 | .
179 | since twist endings are currently so in vogue , and seeing as how kruger's screenplays usually come equipped with about three twists per ending , i guess it's no wonder why he works so frequently .
180 | he's quickly becoming miramax's mickey mouse ; the company has already signed him to work on several of their upcoming projects .
181 | this is appropriate considering that miramax ( which used to place their label on some of the most artistically daring films ) has quickly become a grindhouse for coddling foreign imports ( life is beautiful ) and freddie prinze jr . vehicles .
182 | their company's current logo could be " we ride the trends " .
183 | reindeer games stars ben affleck as rudy , a supposedly hardened criminal spending his days and nights behind bars with fantasies of pecan pies dancing atop his head .
184 | although affleck is given some barbed wire tattoos to insinuate bad assness , he plays the role like steve guttenberg preciously mugging through a police academy flick .
185 | affleck is such a puppy dog that it's impossible to believe he could survive in a harsh prison environment without becoming nearly everyone's bitch .
186 | the role itself is so badly written ( the character only grows balls when the plot calls for it ) , the twists so outrageous , and the directing so self consciously gritty that this is about as close to self parody as i can recall a recent " serious " movie getting .
187 | it may have been wiser had the film makers simply went all the way in that direction , casting jerry seinfeld as the hardened criminal and howard stern as the sniveling bad guy ( who's played here by gary sinise in yet another over the top villain performance )
188 | james frain is nick , rudy's cellmate , a manslaughterer who's found a pen pal in the gorgeous ashley mason ( charlize theron ) .
189 | ashley is a prison groupie who sends nick many cheesecake photos of her though she's never seen one picture of him .
190 | which works out fine since the character is killed in a near-riot , and rudy ( who was to be paroled on the same day as nick ) takes his place , which leads to a sudden and very frenzied sex scene between ashley and rudy ( so frenzied it kinda looks like rape ) and a surprise visit from ashley's brother , gabriel ( gary sinise ) , who waltzes into their shabby hotel room flanked by his thuggish co-horts .
191 | he plans to rob an indian casino on christmas eve with the assistance of rudy who he thinks is nick who , according to what he wrote in the letters to ashley , used to work as a guard in the indian casino .
192 | though by the end , the film pulls the rug out from under us so frequently that everything i've described might as well be irrelevant .
193 | this is what you can expect should you chose to take this reindeer on ; several scenes in which , after catching his prey , the bad guy proceeds to stall interminably until the good guy has a chance to kill his captor and crack a stupid one-liner .
194 | included : two ( 2 ) scenes of two ( 2 ) different bad guys explaining their motives to the hero when they should be killing him ( one following the other no less ) .
195 | though it's an action film , the ending is more a talkfest where we get the whole movie explained to us by one flustered character actor after another while affleck looks on , incredulous as the audience .
196 | the flick was directed by john frankenheimer , a straightforward action director who lucked into the manchurian candidate early in his career , fell off the a-list following a string of flops and now , in his old age , is slowly climbing his way back up .
197 | it would be a success story if he were choosing better scripts but his last major film was ronin ( one of those almost but not quite movies ) which followed the island of dr . morneau
198 | ( you remember , the one with marlon brando in mime make-up and a not so flattering moo-moo ) , and now this .
199 | he films action sequences with a minimum of quick cutting which i like considering that nowadays action scenes are commonly comprised of millisecond flash cuts strung together and laid out for a brain-zapped mtv audience to pick apart .
200 | problem is these action scenes ( nearly all failed escapes ) serve no purpose in the story other than to further pad out the running time and to remind the audience that their watching an action movie rather than a filmed radio play .
201 | character problems abound ; rudy is made to shift between sweet boy next door earnestness and hard edged wiseacre , the latter of which is not ( at least at this point ) something ben affleck is capable of pulling off .
202 | the former he can do with ease and often the actor coasts on his lackadaisical charm while those around him growl and swear .
203 | but then suddenly affleck starts growling and swearing alongside them like the class clown imitating a tarantino gangster .
204 | charlize theron , an extraordinary talent , is , like affleck , playing whatever part the script requires her to play , whether it be vulnerability at one moment , anger at the next .
205 | she never has a chance to evince any charm or make much of an impression beyond her obvious physical attributes ( frankenheimer has her needlessly pop her top to further italicize this .
206 | gary sinise has played this role frequently , and here , as in snake eyes , he does the snarling bad guy thing with such over the top vitriol ( the guy must be so incredibly bored of stomping through the same paces that going out of control is the only thing that keeps him interested any more ) , that it becomes more of an annoyance ( oh there he goes again ? ? ? ) than a threat .
207 | these are talented people who made the mistake of jumping on to a script with little but stock characters and a bag of tricks that it dully springs on its audience .
208 | if you're into watching near on two hours of bored , foul-mouthed florida teens having sex , doing drugs , having sex , listening to eminem , having sex , playing video games , having sex , and killing one of their peers , then " bully " 's for you .
209 | based on jim schutze's novelization of a true-life event , " bully " charts the story of a handful of disenchanted teenagers who , in 1993 , murdered their high school bully in cold , calculated blood .
210 | the film could have provided fascinating insights into what turned these aimless kids into premeditated killers .
211 | in the hands of controversial director larry clark ( " kids " ) , however , it has less to say about its subject matter and more to say about the filmmaker's pornographic proclivities .
212 | in terms of the incident and what provoked it , " bully " stirs up nothing new .
213 | the high schoolers are presented as a uniformly screwed up lot--bored with life , not much ambition , promiscuous , profane .
214 | the bully in question , bobby kent ( nick stahl ) , is certainly an unpleasant piece of work but he doesn't exactly tower over his colleagues in the pathological department .
215 | he hounds and harries and humiliates his " best friend " marty ( played by brad renfro ) and marty's girlfriend lisa ( rachel miner ) doesn't care for it at all and comes up with the idea of killing bobby .
216 | simply remove him from the equation .
217 | marty and lisa and a handful of their promiscuous , profane , and stoner friends , plus a recruited hit man ( ? ) , lure bobby to a swamp one night , stab him , beat him over the head with a baseball bat , and dump him into the canal where the sand crabs and the gators , presumably , finish him off .
218 | there's no remorse--the next day they're talking about it as openly as a homework assignment .
219 | they did it because they wanted to , and because they could .
220 | what's most troubling about the film , however , isn't the unsettling subject matter and the matter-of-fact way these young people go about eliminating one of their own but the way in which clark is constantly distracted by his own material .
221 | not only is the nudity plentiful and graphic in " bully " but there's also an uneasy , exploitative feel to it .
222 | gratuitous crotch shots abound ( one of which makes the zipper cut-away in " there's something about mary " look like the height of subtlety ! ) .
223 | clark is so pre-occupied with his female ( predominantly ) leads that you forget , at times , what this movie is supposed to be about .
224 | the stripping bare , literally and figuratively , of these actors ( who are , after all , playing underage teenagers ) becomes harder to watch over time , as you begin to feel for them and question the motives of the man behind the camera .
225 | the conclusion of " bully " offers up literal snapshots of information about the sentences imposed on each of the protagonists for their involvement in the crime .
226 | it's a short sequence of stills--heather : 7 years ; ali : 40 years ; lisa : life imprisonment , for example--but it's infinitely more telling than the 110 minutes of rampant unpleasantness that precedes it .
227 | " bully " aims for truth , exploits it shamelessly , then bludgeons it to death .
228 | " lake placid " marks yet another entry in the series of " predator pics " that were a screen staple in the late 1970s ( post- " jaws " ) and were revived recently by the godawful " anaconda . "
229 | " placid " claims to be a " horror/comedy " -it's directed by the same guy who did " house " -but its attempts at humor are actually less funny than deadpan seriousness of " anaconda . "
230 | paleontologist kelly scott ( bridget fonda ) is sent up to maine to examine a tooth removed from a body that had been bitten in half on the lake .
231 | discovering that the tooth belongs to a crocodile ( which shouldn't even be in this hemisphere ) , kelly goes croc-hunting with game warden jack wells ( bill pullman ) and sheriff hank keough ( brendan gleeson ) .
232 | they're joined by an unwelcome guest , hector cyr ( oliver platt ) , a scholar who worships crocs and searches all over the world for them .
233 | along the way , the merry band meets mrs . delores bickerman ( betty white ) , a weird old lady who lives out on the lake .
234 | you know what to expect from this movie : lots of shots where the camera is the eyes of the predator ( croc cam ) swimming toward someone's dangling legs while " jaws " -like music plays , one character ( hector ) who's obsessed with the croc and stupidly endangers the rest , another character who insists that the predator can't possibly exist .
235 | unlike its slippery cousin " anaconda , " " lake placid " wants to present its formulaic plot tongue-in-cheek , which is self-defeating .
236 | the result is neither scary nor funny ; it's just tedious .
237 | while director steve miner has several horror films on his resume ( including two installments of " friday the 13th " and " halloween h20 " ) , screenwriter david kelley ( best known as the creator of tv series like " ally mcbeal " and " chicago hope " ) doesn't seem to have the stomach for a chomp 'em up flick .
238 | the body count is surprisingly low and doesn't include any of the major characters , and most annoyingly kelly and hector insist that they capture the crocodile alive rather than killing it .
239 | ( " lake placid " manages to have it both ways-i'll let you discover how for yourself ) .
240 | the croc itself is mostly computer-generated , of course .
241 | like the snake in " anaconda , " the thirty-foot monster crocodile doesn't seem real ; it moves too quickly and in ways that seem unnatural .
242 | " lake placid " also offers little explanation for why a giant crocodile is in maine .
243 | there is a lot of semi-mystical mumbo jumbo about how " we really don't know much about crocodiles . "
244 | they would have been better off going with something like the urban myth about alligators in the sewers .
245 | a movie like this doesn't have to offer much of an explanation ( radioactive mutant ?
246 | creature from outer space ? ) , but it does have to give the audience something to hang their disbelief on .
247 | pullman and fonda seem to be plodding through the movie on auto-pilot .
248 | most of the time , they're probably thinking about killing their agents or wondering if making this movie marks the end of their careers .
249 | platt and white , on the other hand , seem to be giving their best efforts , and they manage to squeeze a few chuckles out of this sorry script .
250 | a pseudo-intellectual film about the pseudo-intellectual world of art magazines , high art is as wasted as its drug-addled protagonists .
251 | in the only notable part of the movie , ally sheedy and radha mitchell deliver nice performances in the two leading roles , not that lisa cholodenko's script or direction makes you care much about either character .
252 | living in a world of heroin induced highs , they float along until they fall in love with each other .
253 | this uninviting picture , full of pretentious minor characters , has a receptionist that reads dostoevski and a woman in the restroom line who is a certified genius , having recently been awarded a prestigious mcarthur grant .
254 | 24-year-old syd ( radha mitchell ) , who has a rather bland , live-in boyfriend , was just promoted to assistant editor at the artistic photography magazine " frame . "
255 | although the receptionist is impressed , syd is mainly a gofer for her boss until she meets famous photographer lucy berliner ( ally sheedy ) .
256 | for her to do photos for " frame , " lucy demands that syd be promoted to editor and assigned to her since lucy fancies her .
257 | lucy lives with her current lover , a washed up german actress named greta , played with a frequently indecipherable series of mumbles by patricia clarkson .
258 | the two of them and their friends wile away their time snorting and shooting up dope , usually heroin .
259 | this does not happen in a single episode , but becomes more commonplace than sleeping in the picture .
260 | syd , who lives in the apartment below them , joins in on the fun and becomes a member of the zombie club .
261 | lucy seems pretty happy with her life of drugs , which apparently is funded by her mother .
262 | lucy quit working professionally 10 years ago since she thought she was being " pigeonholed , " and , since her mother has money , we can only assume that that's how lucy supports her habit and procures her living expenses .
263 | a typical scene has the editors arguing about whether a potential photographer's work is transcendental or merely classical .
264 | that no one has a clue as to the dogma they are spouting becomes obvious but not particularly funny .
265 | " your work has a cultural currency that is important now , " is the artist-speak that the frame's manager uses to convince lucy to show her pictures in the magazine .
266 | when the big scene comes in which lucy puts the moves on syd , her idea of a romantic line is , " i want to get high with you . "
267 | in lucy's world , sex and drugs come hand-in-hand .
268 | and the movie , except for the obligatory scene of someone almost overdosing , shows drug usage as being a hip and natural part of the art scene .
269 | this vacuous picture throws in a standard downer ending in an attempt to manipulate our emotions .
270 | in another movie , it might have worked , but in this one the reaction is likely to be decidedly muted .
271 | high art runs 1 : 36 .
272 | it is rated r for explicit sex , pervasive drug use and language and is not appropriate for those younger than college age .
273 | instinct is the kind of movie that inexperienced moviegoers will undoubtedly label as " powerful " or " touching " .
274 | i have a name for it myself : " gross " .
275 | this is the sort of film where somebody stands up to a bully , the bully looks at the " rebel " threateningly , about to hurt him , and then everyone else whom the bully has heretofore controlled stands up too .
276 | how that scene is still present in so many movies today appalls me : aren't present day moviegoers beyond being " inspired " by something like that ?
277 | this is one example ( there are actually some more in instinct alone ) of filmmakers insulting the audience's intelligence .
278 | instinct's plot is brimming with potential : world-renowned anthropologist ethan powell ( anthony hopkins ) disappeared for two years whilst doing research in the jungles of africa .
279 | he was found and is coming back to the united states a convicted killer ; he murdered to african policemen who were allegedly trying to capture him .
280 | after committing a few more brutal acts of violence in the airport , the authorities stick him in a prison's " psychotics ward " .
281 | assigned to do an evaluation on powell is a bright ( or so we are told ) young psychiatrist theo caulder ( cuba gooding jr . ) .
282 | caulder starts out doing the evaluation merely for the purpose of furthering his career .
283 | of course ( and no mainstream filmmaker would ever have it any other way ) he starts really caring for powell and he becomes fixed on helping powell prove that he is not a psychotic and that he should not be in prison .
284 | and then there's the inevitable " heartless meanie " character , in the form of donald sutherland who plays caulder's mentor .
285 | he cares for caulder but does everything he can to discourage him from helping powell .
286 | let's get one thing straight : dr . theo caulder is the most blatantly incompetent psychiatrist i have ever seen , on screen or off .
287 | any good shrink will listen to what his patient has to say no matter the subject because any good shrink will learn a great deal about his patient that way .
288 | not good old theo .
289 | no , he asks purposefully pointed questions and when powell dares to venture to another subject caulder says " we need to talk about this right now . "
290 | this is a flaw only in the sense that it detracts from instinct's already dubious credibility ; unfortunately it's also the least of its problems .
291 | director jon turteltaub , who made the delightful john travolta vehicle phenomenon as well as the surprisingly above-par cool runnings decided to make this movie so shamelessly sentimental that , contrary to what this movie's promotion would have you believe , it has much more in common with patch adams than with the silence of the lambs .
292 | it's not the kind of sentimentality that can almost bring tears to your eyes ( what dreams may come aptly demonstrated that ) but the kind that brings vomit up your esophagus ( excuse the graphic depiction ) .
293 | it aims to " inspire " rather than to touch hearts .
294 | as yoda would say , inspire it does not .
295 | it is the ultimate sign of futility when a screenwriter ( the very experienced gerald di pego ) has to resort to literally telling the audience a movie's story .
296 | indeed , somewhere in the beginning of instinct , one of the characters actually reads aloud the film's plot to another character .
297 | this , like the instance i mentioned in the first paragraph of this review , is a horrid insult to our intelligence .
298 | i am forced to wonder whether turteltaub and di pego did not think that we could figure out what instinct is about simply from regular conversation .
299 | i think that anthony hopkins is one of the greatest screen actors , and he chews the scenery in this movie , brilliant as ever .
300 | oscar winner cuba gooding jr . on the other hand is dreadful .
301 | his performance is at least part of what makes his character seem so incapable of being a shrink .
302 | i liked the guy in jerry maguire as well as in as good as it gets but here he fails to project any shred of credibility or real feeling .
303 | i love animals , and instinct's prominent save the gorillas/live in harmony with nature theme is certainly something i could sympathize with .
304 | however this movie's execution is completely unacceptable .
305 | tone down the violence and this will be a chick flick .
306 | ? 1999 eugene novikov
307 | unfortunately it doesn't get much more formulaic than one tough cop .
308 | there's the renegade cop with the loser partner who has to many problems to explain .
309 | the renegade has to prove his good name and is trapped between the good guys , the bad guys and some woman who really has nothing to do with the story other than being there for the purpose of providing sex for the hero in the middle of the film .
310 | bo dietl ( pronounced deedle , baldwin ) is one tough cop , a guy who is being investigated by hardass fbi agents due to his association with the ny mafia .
311 | on top of that problem , he has a drunk , gambling addicted partner ( penn ) who has a penchant for collecting parking tickets ( i guess cops aren't immune ? ) .
312 | then , throw into the mix the femme fatale ( gershon ) .
313 | right there you have plenty of ammo for a decent cop drama .
314 | but right in the middle of the film , they throw in a completely un-related plot point .
315 | dietl and his partner duke try to solve a case that they have been warned to stay away from .
316 | the film spends over half an hour tracking the case of a nun who was beaten and raped to near death .
317 | once the case is solved , the film shifts focus back to the mafia issue .
318 | whatever neat mesh the screenwriter wanted to create between the two stories failed miserably .
319 | aside from being asked to accept michael mcglone as a mafioso ( an insult if you ask me ) the performances were pretty good .
320 | baldwin , though he occasionally slips into an impression of his brother alec , does a fine job as one tough cop .
321 | penn , who also slips into an impression of his brother sean , is even better as a loser tough guy cop .
322 | what one tough cop lacks is originality .
323 | this film offers nothing new .
324 | nothing that you can't get from any cop film .
325 | it screams sidney lumet all over the place , perhaps because it was produced by marty and michael bregman , producers of lumet's dog day afternoon and serpico .
326 | but even the masterful sidney would not have been able to make one tough cop into a good film .
327 | too much else is lacking .
328 | i also saw the boom mic pop into the top of the frame twice early on in the picture , something that i almost never notice .
329 | but once i saw that , i had it in the back of my mind every time i saw a medium or long shot .
330 | at times , i was hoping to see it .
331 | one tough cop isn't laughable , nor is it a terrible film , but it just isn't unique .
332 | it is a classic example of a film that didn't need to be made .
333 | but one thing is for sure , it could really use a better title .
334 | carry on matron is the last great carry-on film in my opinion .
335 | made in 1972 , it still features most of the regulars of this genre .
336 | sid james plays the head of a gang of crooks intent on stealing contraceptive pills from the local maternity hospital and selling them off to make a profit , kenneth williams is sir bernard cutting , head of the hospital but also a hypochondriac , hattie jacques re-takes her role as matron , and charles hawtrey is the psychiatrist dr . goode .
337 | the jokes come in fast and so do the laughs , with humorous antics between the matron and sir bernard .
338 | this time , williams is after matron ( jacques ) when he needs to prove himself that he is a man after visiting dr . goode .
339 | the doctor ( hawtrey ) is sworn to secrecy : - " i assure you , that anything you say to me today will go in one ear and straight out of the other ! "
340 | bernard thinks he is having a sex change and needs to prove himself .
341 | there are great cameos from joan sims , an expectant mother who is many weeks overdue and is eating constantly in every scene , and from kenneth connor as the expectant father who still thinks he's at work ( at the railway station ) .
342 | sid james' gang including cyril his son ( kenneth cope ) try to find out where the pills are by getting cyril to dress up as a nurse and live in at the nurses home .
343 | he has to share a room with nurse ball ( barbara windsor ) and she soon sees through him !
344 | the film ends with the attempted robbery of the hospital's pills with panic ensuing .
345 | there are good performances by hattie jacques as the matron , however her character seems a little more subdued and quieter than her previous 'matron's' .
346 | williams is , as usual , on top form , but sid james isn't given a very good part in this movie and i would forgive anyone to forget that he was in the movie at all .
347 | the same does not go for charles hawtrey , for although he only first appears in the movie after 30 minutes gone and has scarce screen time , he seems to steal every scene he is in .
348 | by not making use of sid james and barbara windsor's talent to full effect , the film seems to flounder , but it certainly makes up for it with it's good storyline and it's other appealing characters .
349 | this film is genuinely funny and i could watch it again and again and not get bored !
350 | you've heard all the hype .
351 | you've seen all their faces - natalie portman ( the professional ) as queen amidala , liam neeson ( schindler's list ) as qui-gon jinn , ewan mcgregor ( trainspotting ) as obi-wan kenobi , and jake lloyd ( jingle all the way ) as young anakin skywalker .
352 | if you've read any reviews , you've also probably heard that this movie fails to live up to the magic and humanity of the first trilogy .
353 | you also may have heard that this one's too kiddie-friendly , and doesn't have enough content for adults .
354 | believe the hype .
355 | the effects are stunning , the digitalized creatures are amazingly realistic , the lightsaber duels are amazing , and queen amidala's sumptuous robes are fit to be worn by queen elizabeth .
356 | but there's something missing here , and it isn't budget or effects - it's everything money * can't * buy .
357 | the actors struggle as best they can to flesh out broad-stroked and flat characters .
358 | the most successful at this is liam neeson who , as qui-gon jinn , a jedi master to young obi-wan kenobi , has quiet dignity and a wise , commanding presence .
359 | he is the anchor to this movie , as he is the one character who george lucas apparently spent some time fleshing out .
360 | portman's queen amidala and mcgregor's obi-wan kenobi don't fare nearly so well .
361 | amidala , the future mother of luke and leia and the queen of a peaceful planet being invaded by the trade federation ( ? ! ? ) , comes off as stoic , stilted and caricatured ( it appears as though she was a vulcan geisha in a former life ) .
362 | and obi-wan , although mcgregor makes him very endearing , has so little screen time that he's nothing but a robin to qui-gon jinn's batman .
363 | however , mcgregor does struggle manfully to infuse this surprisingly small supporting role with a spark of genuine insight and humanity , and he does a good job .
364 | he also absolutely nails alec guiness' ( obi-wan in episode 4 - 6 ) scottish accent , and that really makes his presence in the film more profound than it might have been otherwise .
365 | in fact , lucas seems to bank on that preexisting knowledge quite a bit , and that's one of the problems with this film .
366 | i would never call myself a " star wars " fan - especially not considering what it means to be a fanatic these days - but i've always enjoyed the films along with everyone else in america .
367 | however , if you are the one person in america who * hasn't * seen the films at all or even recently , or who doesn't bother to brush-up on the names of obscure characters , you may be hopelessly lost .
368 | for example , one of the film's main ( nefarious ) characters is senator palpatine .
369 | for those of you not recently steeped in " star wars " trivia , emperor palpatine is that scary hooded apparition who was darth vader's master in " return of the jedi " and " empire strikes back . "
370 | so , obviously , his appearance in " phantom menace " is meant to stir some echoes of his later role in the series , thus making his role here more meaningful .
371 | a lot of the movie is like that .
372 | r2-d2 and c-3po make token appearances , and it's obvious that lucas is banking on the audience's pre-existing fondness for them . . .
373 | because he doesn't do much to add to it in any way .
374 | same goes for jabba the hutt , who doesn't look as much mean here as he does corpulent and lazy .
375 | even * planets * make foreshadowing guest appearances in this film - tatooine ( the desert world where luke grew up ) , coruscant ( the cloud city from " empire strikes back " ) , and alderaan ( leia's home planet - which we never actually see - that gets blown up in " star wars " ) show up or are mentioned briefly in passing .
376 | what's the result of tying so many plot points and characters to future films ?
377 | the answer is that this one seems surprisingly empty .
378 | there's no meat - no substance - that makes you want to love the characters as they are , not as they will be .
379 | another problem is that there are actually * too many * alien characters in the film .
380 | i was distracted by the fact that two of the main evil characters - strange looking aliens who looked like gila monsters - had mouths that barely moved , making them look more like muppets than actual characters .
381 | and jar jar binks , a silly roger rabbitish amphibious character , is intended as comic relief , but what he really becomes is annoying - and fast .
382 | unlike chewbacca and c-3po , who got their humanity ( if you'll pardon the expression ) from their interactions with the human characters , jar jar is often left to interact mostly with others of his kind , at times making the movie seem like nothing more than a very expensive " teenage mutant ninja turtles . "
383 | furthermore , the dialogue is often stilted and corny , and sometimes downright infantile , thereby rendering some characters into nothing more than bystanders to the plot .
384 | oddly , this isn't just * my * judgment - lucas has said that he designed this film for kids .
385 | well , he's done a good job .
386 | the hero of this film , of course , is young anakin , but it was very hard for me to feel any kinship or identify with an eight-year-old boy .
387 | that's not jake lloyd's fault , though - he does a good job of being a cute kid , which is apparently all lucas asked of him .
388 | that's another mistake , of course , because the cute tyke becomes darth vader .
389 | warning : spoilers ahead ! ! ! !
390 | in my opinion , there was not nearly enough foreshadowing of anakin's future evil in the film .
391 | the boy is all blond flowing hair and rosy cheeks , and there's nothing more than a spark of aggression in him throughout the entire movie .
392 | he has a doting mother ( pernilla august , making her first english- language film ) and is a slave to a gross flying gnome on tatooine .
393 | but the only indication the audience gets that this kid isn't all hearts and roses is yoda's hesitation in allowing him to train as a jedi under qui-gon jinn .
394 | his explanation ?
395 | " his future is clouded . "
396 | ( warning : major spoiler ahead .
397 | enter at your own risk . )
398 | of course , the noble qui-gon dies at the hand of darth maul , a scary-looking sith lord who excels at the jedi arts , but has turned to the dark side .
399 | this dude has maybe two lines in the entire movie , but he establishes his presence through his amazing moves with his double-sided lightsaber , and his scary facial makeup .
400 | because qui-gon never gets a chance to train the young anakin in the ways of the force , obi-wan , qui-gon's young padawan apprentice ( one level below knightdom ) , must take over the training himself .
401 | so , at the end of the movie , we end where the saga actually begins - with obi-wan kenobi and his young apprentice , anakin " darth vader " skywalker .
402 | did this story need to be told ?
403 | i would say no .
404 | but is it a worthwhile movie to see ?
405 | absolutely .
406 | if you don't enter the theater with jedi-size expectations , and you simply want to be treated to an enjoyable visual spectacle , then this is your movie .
407 | the tatooine pod races are a triumph of effects and computer animation .
408 | the digitalized backgrounds on some of the planets are an astonishing sight .
409 | and yoda and young obi-wan are worth seeing for their origins in a simpler , happier time .
410 | above all , this is a fun movie .
411 | not deep , not meaningful , and not profound .
412 | but fun .
413 | maybe next time , lucas will hire lawrence kasdan to co-write the script , and the guy who directed " empire " will direct .
414 | because if lucas does the next one himself , it will be lacking the one thing it needs the most - potential .
415 | : )
416 | if there's one thing in common about all of hollywood's major studios , it's that their productions are moving toward mainstream more and more .
417 | although twentieth century fox and new line cinema have spawned subsidiaries which specialize in independant or controversial motion pictures ( fox searchlight and fine line respectively ) , it's obvious there's no significant movement underway to promote inventive ideas at the theater .
418 | so when a movie like gary ross' pleasantville comes along , wrapped in a blanket of innovative ideas and served up on a platter of fine production , it's a welcome change of pace for all who frequent the cineplexes .
419 | although the atmosphere and buzz about the movie are cheery and lighthearted , pleasantville should not be mistaken for a no-thought movie .
420 | quite the opposite is true , in fact , as director ross skillfully brings a narrative with intense and intelligent undertones to the screen .
421 | the story , both about the joys of living life to the fullest as well as the social ills of segregation , captures the essence of statement-making in the cinema .
422 | not in recent memory has a movie carried such weight of theme into widescale distribution , and even if mass audiences fail to see the ingenuity of ross' work , it is still a testament that his picture was considered worthy enough .
423 | kudos to both he and his production staff for putting together this fine picture .
424 | it stars tobey maguire and reese witherspoon as two nineties teenagers who , through quite a bit of luck , find themselves zapped into a fifties sitcom named " pleasantville . "
425 | maguire , as the reserved bud parker , is perfect for the pseudo-world ; but the rebellious mary sue ( witherspoon ) is not at all made for the father-knows-best times .
426 | it's not long before she sets the town of pleasantville on end , and begins to teach the townspeople - in a quite unlikely way - what life is * really * like .
427 | soon hues of color creep into the black and white world , and while some embrace the change in the passion of realism , others fear the strangeness .
428 | at one end is a soda shop owner-turned-painter named mr . johnson ( jeff daniels ) and at the other end is a close-minded mayor ( j . t .
429 | walsh ) and his chamber of commerce ; but the two sides are simply fronts for a clash of ideas that soon involves the entire town .
430 | fine performances are turned in all around .
431 | maguire and witherspoon are effective as the leads , but the true complements go out to jeff daniels and j . t .
432 | walsh ( in his latest and final posthumous performance ) .
433 | daniels brings an atmosphere of awe , inspiration , and hope to his character , whereas walsh simply drips of sinister closemindedness - almost to the point where you can sense gene hackman's envy .
434 | for daniels , it's his most commendable performance of the last three years - or more - and for walsh , it's a complementary exclamation point on a fine career .
435 | also of lesser note is the supporting role by joan allen , and in viewing the entire cast works well together from start to finish .
436 | there's not much to dislike about pleasantville , and its dynamic nature makes it the perfect movie for those who want serious as well as those who don't .
437 | at first glance , it appears that the home alone movies are brainless slapstick intended for those with minds of 8-year olds .
438 | that's true of home alone 2 and i'd bet money that it's true of home alone 3 ( opening soon ) .
439 | but home alone actually has a lot going for it , and the cartoon slapstick doesn't get in the way .
440 | the mcalisters , all 15 of them , are going to france for the holidays .
441 | four adults and eleven kids are spending the night together before heading to the airport en masse .
442 | the littlest kid , kevin , is the victim of the older kids' cruelty .
443 | kevin's patience runs out when he learns that his plain-cheese pizza has already been eaten , and he's going to have to starve .
444 | he attacks his big bully brother buzz , who had been teasing him .
445 | the fight disrupts the already-chaotic dinner , spilling milk and soft drinks all over the table , a few cousins , and an uncle .
446 | the knee-jerk reaction is for everyone to blame kevin .
447 | nobody came to his rescue when he was being teased , but they all point their fingers when he fights back .
448 | the ultimate punishment comes from mom ( catherine o'hara ) who sends him up to the spare bedroom in the attic for the night .
449 | on his way up the stairs , he tells her that " families suck " and that he hopes never to see any of his family again .
450 | that night the power goes out , knocking out the alarm clocks , so the mcalisters wake up in a big hurry to get to the airport .
451 | in a surprisingly plausible setup , kevin is mistakenly accounted for , and the family heads off without him .
452 | it's interesting that , in a subtle way , his parents never noticed him missing because of their deliberate desire to separate themselves from their children .
453 | first they delegate the headcount to an older sibling , and second , they put all the kids in coach while they fly first class .
454 | they're two-thirds of the way across the atlantic before they realize they are missing a child .
455 | meanwhile , kevin believes that somehow his wish has come true .
456 | he's finally rid of his family !
457 | life is a dream come true .
458 | he can jump on the beds , watch r-rated movies , eat gobs of ice cream and potato chips , and dig through his big brother's secret box .
459 | slowly , the novelty wears off and he settles into the mundane .
460 | he grooms himself , he does the laundry , he goes shopping ( " i bought some milk , eggs , and fabric softener " ) .
461 | he also starts to miss his family , not just for their company , but for the security they bring .
462 | the furnace in the basement is a scary monster , the old man next door is a snow-shovel murderer , and two crooks are trying to break into his house .
463 | macaulay culkin is cute but he isn't much of an actor .
464 | still , we can see that kevin's character grows , thanks to some good direction and editing .
465 | for example , acting has little to do with the emotional impact of the scene where kevin searches out a seasonal santa at night , just as " santa " is getting in his car .
466 | kevin asks the man to pass on his request - he wants his family back - to the real santa .
467 | he learned how to deal with the furnace .
468 | you turn on the lights and it's not so scary anymore .
469 | he goes to a church one evening and there he sees the snow-shovel murderer , who actually turns out to be a nice man .
470 | they talk about their fears and kevin learns that age alone does not make you less afraid .
471 | finally , in the last 20 minutes , kevin confronts his last fear - the bandits , head on ( literally ) .
472 | this last act is full of violent comedic slapstick , and after the movie's genuine dramatic setup , it is dessert .
473 | it's a lot of fun , and it doesn't overwhelm the rest of the movie .
474 | on the whole , home alone is a great holiday movie .
475 | john williams' original score has the sound and feel of holiday music without the disadvantage of being overplayed at the malls , and the christmas setting can put you in the mood for those family gatherings .
476 | but it does have its flaws .
477 | the smallest problem is that culkin doesn't act very well .
478 | as i said before , he is cute , but repeated viewings reveal more about how columbus covered himself than about culkin's insight into his character .
479 | the biggest problem is that during the cartoony coda , the villains threaten kevin's life about five times .
480 | instead of " i'm gonna get that kid " they say " i'm gonna kill that kid . "
481 | some might argue that the tone is the same , but i strongly disagree .
482 | mixing comedy with specific and viable threats of murder is a sociopathic faux-pas .
483 | i'll probably never see home alone 3 , and i wish i had skipped home alone 2 , but i do enjoy home alone almost every year .
484 | don't let your impressions of the others detract from the original , which has much more to offer than cartoon slapstick .
485 | earth is a harsh , unconsoling drama about the time when india gained independence from britain and the ensuing turmoil that engulfed the subcontinent .
486 | people who supposedly loved the same land and the same god found themselves in bitter conflict , as the country divided into factions fighting in the streets : indian and pakistani ; muslim , hindu , sikh , parsee .
487 | the story takes place in lahore , which was indian before partition , and pakistani afterward , regardless of what its citizens might call themselves .
488 | the action is seen through the eyes of lenny ( maaia sethna ) , a young parsee girl , but it is really about her nanny , shanta .
489 | shanta has a small circle of male admirers .
490 | two of the men are suitors : hasan ( rahul khanna ) , a hindu , and dil navaz ( aamir khan ) , a muslim .
491 | the others--sikh , hindu , muslim--are older ; some are married ; but all appreciate shanta , who is played by the stirringly beautiful nandita das .
492 | ( she also starred in deepa mehta's previous film , fire , the first part of a thematic trilogy which will conclude with water . )
493 | in an early scene , the men are sitting in a park talking with shanta and lenny ; political tension in the country is growing as the day of independence nears .
494 | one of the men remarks , jokingly , that their little group is probably one of the last places in the city where the different religions can still get along .
495 | he is wrong : the men make barbed little comments to each other , spoken like jokes , but with an undercurrent of fanaticism .
496 | the tenor of these exchanges grows darker and more bitter as the movie progresses .
497 | it is easy to perceive , in these squabbles , the trajectory which ends in mass violence and slaughter .
498 | the group around shanta represents , in a sense , a united india , and shanta herself the ideal motherland--one which all love , which inspires hindu , muslim , and sikh to live peacably together .
499 | but the circle around shanta is sundered , as is the state .
500 | a sikh is persecuted , hides , then flees .
501 | another man is murdered .
502 | the group of friends will not meet again .
503 | the movie is rife with images of breakage and destruction : a plate shattered on the floor , a stuffed toy torn apart by an upset child , and , most brutally , when the tension escalates into violence , a man is held down , tied between two cars , and ripped in half by the opposing movement of the vehicles .
504 | it is a visceral and effective metaphor for a country which is being destroyed just as painfully .
505 | the crux of earth's plot is the transformation undergone by dil navaz .
506 | his sisters are killed in brutal fashion , by hindus , because they are muslim .
507 | dil navaz seeks solace from shanta , and asks in desperation that she marry him .
508 | but she loves hasan , and tenderly refuses dil navaz's offer .
509 | the combination of familial anguish and romantic rejection twists inside him , and it is easy to see how he is seduced by the growing mob mentality : the muslim cause gives him a motive to vent his anger and hate .
510 | despite the things he later does , it is to the credit of earth that it does not simply denounce dil navaz and those like him , but shows how circumstances can make decent enough men do monstrous things .
511 | the conclusion--the consequence of dil navaz's transformation--is rather abrupt .
512 | the story earth tells does not end .
513 | it just stops .
514 | it is an appropriate finish : giving us closure would have imparted , at least on an aesthetic level , a sense of resolution , of satisfaction .
515 | but there was no resolution for india and pakistan--they have been at war , on a small or large scale , for decades .
516 | since the personal dramas in earth mirror the political struggles of a nation , it is only right that those dramas should have no terminus .
517 | there is no healing to be had , no closure , on any level ( despite the needless , tacked-on ending , with voice-over narration from lenny as an adult , framing the story ) .
518 | earth is , in some ways , an unexceptional movie .
519 | it does not reinvent the wheel , following instead the standard pattern of historical dramas .
520 | but deepa mehta's directon is assured , and the issues she addresses run deep .
521 | earth does for india what movies like zhang yimou's to live and tian zhuangzhuang's the blue kite did for china : they show us the agonies endured by unremarkable people who had the bad luck to be caught up and smashed in the crucible of history .
522 | such films strike me as inherently valuable , even when flawed .
523 | they may be biased or inaccurate , but they bear the weight of human hardship , and this confers on them a nobility and gravity which other , more inventive films , often lack .
524 | it is notable that all three movies were banned in their native countries : the events shown may have happened decades ago , but they still touch a nerve .
525 | the issues tackled in earth have a particular urgency in light of the nuclear test bombings that took place last year .
526 | in the near future , india and pakistan may launch nuclear missiles at each other .
527 | at the time of the tests i had some understanding of the reasons why this might happen ; after seeing earth , i have a much , much better understanding .
528 | after watching the first ten minutes of this japanese film , you will never eat a bowl of ramen the same way again .
529 | there is a scene where an old man is teaching a young one how to eat the soupy bowl of noodles , as a master would teach an eager apprentice .
530 | " you caress the noodles with the chopsticks , " he says , " then put the roast pork on the side of the bowl and apologize to it by saying , 'see you soon . ' "
531 | of course , it's meant to be a parody , but there is an earnestness underneath the silliness that makes you take it with a certain degree of sobriety .
532 | you begin to appreciate the food as not merely something you eat , not something you like , not something you enjoy , but rather something you experience .
533 | experiencing it is a process which engages all of the senses , fulfilling each one on its own terms and weaving them so that the total is a pleasure that is more than the sum of its parts .
534 | trust me , you really want to go find a noodle shop at this point .
535 | juzo itami's tampopo brings the same sense of the serious parody of food to the forefront by making the story follow the pattern of an american western , set in modern day japan .
536 | a stranger , goro ( tsutomu yamazaki ) , comes into town and finds tampopo ( nobuko miyamoto ) , the proprietor of a small , hole-in-the-wall noodle shop , trying to fend off the insults of the local strongman , pisken ( rikiya yasuoka ) .
537 | goro , to defend the honor of this woman and her noodles , gets into a fight with the ringleader and his henchmen , emerging bloodied , but victorious .
538 | goro finds that tampopo's ambition is to have a shop that people would flock to from far away , just to eat a bowl of her ramen .
539 | the problem is , her fare is something less than popular , and less than appetizing .
540 | however , goro agrees to help tampopo in her quest , and in the process they seek the wisdom of an elderly noodle expert , enlist the aid of a wealthy patron , and make friends with the former enemy .
541 | this film is filled with many little scenes which are absolute gems .
542 | take , for example , when tampopo tries to buy the recipe for a delicious soup from another shop owner .
543 | the price is too high , but the owner of the store next door will secretly sell it to her for a more affordable sum .
544 | tampopo meets him at his store late at night , and he leads her to a back room .
545 | she protests , thinking that perhaps this man has ulterior motives , but he insists .
546 | just when she is about to bolt for the exit , he shows her a small gap in the wall adjoining his store with the noodle shop next door .
547 | she peers through and takes notes as she watches the cook make the soup for the next day , her face filled with a joy that can be felt by the audience .
548 | this scene , while comical , is very effective at filling the viewer with a sense of trepidation , then of relief and discovery .
549 | there's also an interesting scene where goro introduces tampopo and her son to a bunch of street people who , despite their economic trappings , are all gourmets and master sommeliers .
550 | we even watch as one of them sneaks into the kitchen of a restaurant and expertly prepares a french omelet .
551 | the scene is meant to bring a laugh , but it also says that no matter whether people are rich or poor , food is something which everyone has in common , and the enjoyment of food is an experience shared by all .
552 | there are also a number of unrelated vignettes appearing throughout the film , which help to illustrate and accentuate the role of food in people's lives .
553 | a particularly effective one involves a wife and mother being tended to in her home by a doctor .
554 | surrounded by her children , she is obviously in her last hours of life .
555 | her husband comes home , and seeing her worsened condition , demands that she get up and make dinner .
556 | the viewer knows the husband's intention is not to be mean ; he is desperate for the normalcy of which he and his family has obviously been deprived , and the wife making dinner is an essential part of this .
557 | in a near miracle , the wife drags herself to the kitchen and prepares a quick meal , then brings it to her awaiting family .
558 | as the family eats , she looks on them and smiles .
559 | preparing food for her family is a joy and a comfort to her , and for a brief moment , she too enjoys the normalcy .
560 | then she falls over , dead .
561 | for a moment , the family is stunned , but then the father yells at the children , " keep eating !
562 | this is the last meal your mother ever made ! "
563 | crying as they do so , the family finishes the meal .
564 | the scene is comical , awkward , moving , and beautiful .
565 | by including the vignettes , itami ran the risk of creating a disjointed film , but surprisingly , they do not interrupt the pacing of the main storyline .
566 | instead , they even help contribute to the idea that tampopo's goal of being able to serve exceptional food is worthy and even noble .
567 | because the film parodies a western , the construction of the plot is fairly predictable , but is still enjoyable as we watch the familiar way in which the " good guys " come together for the final showdown .
568 | in this case , the showdown is against the ramen .
569 | if they eat tampopo's ramen , soup and all , tampopo knows she has succeeded .
570 | it's pretty obvious what the outcome will be , but when a film changes your whole perspective on something you consume every day of your life , you can afford to cut it a little slack .
571 | logical time travel movies are a near-impossibility .
572 | considering that the skeptic's best argument against the possibility of time travel is the idea of altered realities , writing a script that deals with this problem is an imposing task .
573 | occasionally , we get a film that does manage it .
574 | terry gilliam's " 12 monkeys " was one such film .
575 | but more frequently , we get films that don't much deal with it at all .
576 | there is one question to ask in this case : does the film have other virtues that override the existing logical inconsistencies ?
577 | the " terminator " films made up for them with exciting action , " back to the future " did it with an entertaining story , and the new film " frequency " pulls off the trick with a strong package of its own .
578 | is " frequency " filled with plot holes ?
579 | yes .
580 | does it matter ?
581 | not really .
582 | the film opens in october of 1969 .
583 | firefighter frank sullivan ( dennis quaid ) puts his life on the line every time he suits up for his job , then goes home to his loving wife julia ( elizabeth mitchell ) and son johnny ( daniel henson ) .
584 | the double-pronged story flashes forward to 1999 , where johnny ( now jim caviezel ) is all grown up and working as a police detective .
585 | a strange occurrence -- the appearance of aurora borealis over new york city -- allows father and son to communicate through the same ham radio frank used in '69 and that john has found in the present day .
586 | though both are initially skeptical of the idea , john eventually takes this opportunity to warn his father against his impending death in a warehouse fire , and he succeeds in saving frank from certain doom .
587 | now flooded with memories of a full life with his father alive , john is initially overjoyed , until he discovers that the changes to the timeline have been disastrous : a serial killer that would have died has instead lived to kill seven more women .
588 | frank and john now must work together to set things right , with john using the information he has gathered in the future to instruct frank on what to do in the past .
589 | the premise of " frequency " is unusual , and requires getting over one very important mental hurdle to fully accept : john and frank are the only ones conscious of how the timeline has been changed as a result of their actions .
590 | this isn't explained ; you just have to go with it .
591 | when frank doesn't die in a fire , john is the only one who remembers it differently , while everyone else remembers it the new way .
592 | the concept also runs into problems concerning just how synchronous the two realities -- 1969 and 1999 -- are to each other .
593 | sometimes frank's changing the past results in something happening right away in john's world , and sometimes john gets the changes ahead of time .
594 | now , the filmmakers might have perfectly good explanations for this , and i could probably come up with something fairly convoluted ( but nevertheless logical ) if i thought about it hard enough ( for example , the reason john gets advance information of the serial killer's murders was because the change had already happened in frank's world , and john is only witnessing the * projection * of that change ) , but explanations aren't really the point .
595 | when " frequency " gets cooking , it's a riveting little thriller , even if it is confusing .
596 | what matters to a film like this is if the plot makes sense in the moment , and " frequency " works as long as it keeps moving .
597 | the film manages to be engaging despite the logical confusion .
598 | director gregory hoblit and screenwriter toby emmerich structure " frequency " as good hollywood entertainment , establishing decent , likable characters , making us care for them , and setting up a goal to be reached and a conflict to be resolved .
599 | i liked many of the creative touches : the split screens , allowing us to see how the universe is being affected in both realities , and the greater framework of baseball to drive the action forward .
600 | it actually uses the 1969 mets-orioles world series ( the one that featured the amazin' mets ) to great effect -- frank uses john's advance knowledge of the series outcome to convince his friends to believe him .
601 | ( admittedly , this device may only be of interest to a baseball fan like myself . )
602 | i even liked the final scene , which features frank and john both fighting the same man simultaneously in different time periods .
603 | some may find this scene blindingly confusing , as the reality shifts start coming fast and furious , but it does make sense if you think about it ( and give the script a lot of leeway ) , and let's face it : it's a darn cool way to end the film .
604 | there are enough surprises and plot twists in " frequency " to keep you on your toes , and as a result the movie avoids growing stagnant .
605 | the other major thing to appreciate about " frequency " is the handling of the father-son relationship .
606 | quaid and caviezel carry off their parts easily ; it's a rock-solid job from both actors .
607 | the relationship is instantly credible because they find the human truth behind the high concept : how would one react to being able to communicate with a dead relative , or with a future descendant ?
608 | watching the exchanges between frank and john will give you a pretty good idea of how to answer that question .
609 | the credibility of the human relationship is absolutely crucial to the rest of the film ; if we don't believe in the characters , we don't care about the outcome of the thriller plot .
610 | here , we do care , because we like the lead actors .
611 | i also liked some of the supporting cast members .
612 | elizabeth mitchell gets stuck with two thankless roles , playing julia the doting wife * and * mother , but still performs admirably .
613 | andre braugher , late of the television show " homicide : life on the street , " gives a nice supporting turn as frank's best friend and future colleague of john .
614 | he has a lovely scene in a diner in which he tries to explain the situation to julia while frank's world series predictions come true before his very eyes .
615 | braugher strikes the perfect facial expression here , simultaneously dismayed and amused .
616 | perhaps the only thing i didn't like about " frequency " is the overly sentimental coda , during which the camera's focus goes a little too soft and the baseball theme gets carried overboard .
617 | but that's only because the film had already earned a poignancy without resorting to cheap tactics .
618 | i freely acknowledge that " frequency " may best work as a " guy " movie , since it focuses on the very male-oriented idea of father-son relationships ( echoes of " field of dreams " can be easily heard ) , but the underlying concept is universally applicable .
619 | who wouldn't want to speak with a long-dead parent ?
620 | or see how their children turn out ?
621 | " tell me about your life , son " -- excuse me while i mist up .
622 | and don't call me a sissy .
623 | many people dislike french films for their lack of closure .
624 | while possibly shallow , i've often had a desire for a sense of epiphany , or at least a resolution , in the films which i view .
625 | there is no revelation in un coeur en hiver in the traditional ; however , the film is incredibly successful in its passionate dramatization of a passion-denying protagonist , stephane ( daniel auteuil ) .
626 | stephane ( daniel auteuil ) is a master violin maker .
627 | he is passionless about all that which surrounds him except his craft and the music which his craft is responsible for producing .
628 | even the relationship between he and his boss , maxime ( andre dussollier ) is a controlled , and almost manipulated association , highlighted by the fact that stephane permits maxime to win close squash matches .
629 | in the beginning of the movie , stephane is a closed , solitary individual and the audience is carefully left to wonder about the depth of emotion behind this enigmatic man .
630 | camille kessler ( emmanuelle beart ) is a master violinist and the new love of maximes .
631 | maxime is so much in love with camille that he plans to and does leave his wife .
632 | like stephane , camille is outwardly very controlled and reserved , sacrificing all thought and emotion to her violin and the music which emerges .
633 | when stephane and camille meet , there is a recognition of a bonding by both individuals .
634 | however , whereas camille submits to the wild interplay of emotions which she now feels for stephane , stephane only admits that camille is attracted to him .
635 | stephane ignores his feelings for camille , which the audience cannot help but to see is present .
636 | as the movie progresses , the two characters become more and more polarized in their views and emotions for one another .
637 | these two people , with very similar approaches to life initially , react to their new circumstance very differently .
638 | stephane becomes even more rational and controlled , while camille becomes more tempestuous , until she almost borders on suffering a nervous breakdown due to the inability to consummate their relationship .
639 | however , their approach to each other is perhaps not surprising considering their vocation .
640 | the audience is led to believe that stephane may have been a genius as a violinist as well , due to his relationship with a master violin teacher .
641 | however , apparently , he could not be a violinist due to his intolerance for flaws in his playing .
642 | consequently , stephane becomes a precision craftsmen with the instrument and no longer plays .
643 | in contrast , camille had almost given the violin , years earlier .
644 | however , with the aid of her manager , she has progressed to being almost one of the world's finest , successfully submerging herself to her playing .
645 | during the course of the movie , we see both characters evolve as they struggle to meet the challenge of their new emotions .
646 | stephane attempts to remain unchanged .
647 | however , we do see subtle hints of his transformation .
648 | one of the most obvious is when he defeats maxime in squash .
649 | the development of all of the characters , many of which is not included in this synopsis , is incredible .
650 | american movies , with rare exceptions , have not and i would daresay cannot approach foreign films in character development .
651 | in its essence , this movie is about the development and growth of the characters , camille and stephane .
652 | the portrayal of all the other characters in the movie , including a death , is to further the development of camille's and stepahne's characters .
653 | i am not sure why berardinelli says , " at times it becomes difficult to determine whether stephane should be pitied or vilified , and it is to auteuil's credit that he manages to maintain this uncertainty . "
654 | this movie is not about judging stephane's actions as being right or wrong , but about viewing their growth and accepting the characters as who they are .
655 | i find the ending appropriate ; unfortunately , i found the last ten minutes which led up to the final scene to be very unfulfilling .
656 | this portion of the film is where the " sense of closure " could have been successfully accomplished .
657 | unfortunately , there is a hurried and almost a soap opera-type surge of emotions from all of the characters .
658 | while ravel may not be quite as accomplished as schubert or mozart , ravel has his day in this film .
659 | the synergism of the tension of ravel's music and tension on the screen is the best i have ever seen .
660 | the directing in this movie is wonderful .
661 | the actors and actresses are excellent , each playing their part with great sincerity and warmth .
662 | emmanuelle beart's personality is beautiful .
663 | and needless to say , i must say that emmanuelle beart , herself , is beautiful .
664 | besides the near ending , the only other criticism of the movie which i have is that the movie is almost too cerebral .
665 | i almost left with the sense little happened because almost all the changes which occur in the movie happen in deep in their psyches and little in their personalities or the situations which they end as part of .
666 | the one question which i am left with is while they have accepted their lot , has their attitude towards love changed ?
667 | i have several possibilities which i believe the movie hints at , but i am unsure of which the director is espousing .
668 | in summary , this movie is solely about the character growth of two characters who almost develop a relationship .
669 | in the process , we see their attitude towards life and other people .
670 | in itself , i do not believe un coeur is a complicated movie .
671 | where it does become complicated is when we juxtapose the scenes of the movie into the greater walk of life where we , as americans , have preconceived american notions of relationship , love , and people .
672 | i do wonder how the movie translates when viewed within its native french culture .
673 | however , i , bringing my american preconceptions , enjoyed the film .
674 | i would welcome any comments about this movie from any who have seen it .
675 | i'm not quite sure how best to go about writing this review .
676 | i must admit that i was a little disappointed by barry levinson's political satire " wag the dog , " but in retrospect , this has less to do with the film itself than with false expectations i had going into it .
677 | quite a few of the reviews i have read led me to believe that this film was absolutely hilarious and would make me laugh out loud the whole way through , and it didn't do that .
678 | they also led me to believe that it would deliver a vicious and all-too-true attack on the way the american political media works , and it didn't quite do that either .
679 | a few of them even suggested that it would prove a worthy successor to stanley kubrick's " dr .
680 | strangelove " in the tradition of political black comedy , and it most definitely didn't do that .
681 | that said , " wag the dog " is actually a very clever satire on the shady manipulations of political figures and those who assist them .
682 | the story revolves around the attempts of political spin doctor conread brean ( robert deniro ) to distract the american public from the accusations that the president , who is up for re-election in two weeks , sexually harassed a young girl in the oval office .
683 | the accusations , the script suggests , are probably untrue , but as brean so pointedly puts it , that isn't particularly relevant : the scandal is likely to derail the president's campaign regardless of its truth or falsehood .
684 | brean , along with his assistant ( anne heche ) , decide to contact hollywood producer stanley motss ( dustin hoffman ) to enlist his help in concocting enough propaganda and special-effects trickery to make it appear that the u . s . is going to war with albanian terrorists and thus propel the president to victory on a wave of patriotic fervor .
685 | as i said , " wag the dog " is not quite as laugh-out-loud hilarious as i had expected , but there are some genuinely funny moments to be found here , such as when , in an echo of a familiar movie clich ? , the camera pans out over an urban sunset to the strains of uplifting , inspirational music , then cuts to a studio to reveal that the singing is coming from a group of musicians whom motss has assembled to perform " we have the right to fight for democracy . "
686 | another scene shows us how , with modern editing equipment , an actress running across a sound stage with a bag of potato chips can be turned into a frightened young girl and her kitten fleeing a terrorist attack on her village .
687 | the most consistently effective gag revolves around the propaganda team's attempt to forge a fictional war hero out of sgt .
688 | william " old shoe " schumann ( woody harrelson ) , an ex-military officer who turns out to be a first-class psycho .
689 | of course , not everything goes as planned ; the cia , for example , realizes what's going on and strikes a deal with the president's electoral opponent to report to the media that the " fighting " has ended , forcing motss and brean to come up with a new angle on the supposed albanian crisis .
690 | still , even with the cia's involvement , the film falls a little short in terms of making this scenario believable .
691 | regardless of the official word from the president or the cia , wouldn't the major media outlets have eastern european correspondents who could verify that there is , in fact , no fighting going on in albania ?
692 | the film never addresses this question , nor does it show the reactions of the american public to the news of the apparent war except for a few scenes which border on the farcical , such as when basketball fans litter the court with shoes in support of the aforementioned sgt .
693 | schumann ; we are apparently meant to assume that everyone is buying it .
694 | there was also an instance , towards the end of the film , in which one of motss's forced reinventions of the story seems to contradict what he and brean had been selling to the public thus far and could conceivably have given the game away .
695 | with these plot holes , " wag the dog " doesn't quite work as a satire of american politics , but it does send up the mentality that might lead to these kinds of machinations in the first place .
696 | brean and his advisors never seem concerned that what they are doing is unethical ; rather , they worry about how convincing it will be and whether or not they have enough money to pull it off .
697 | the film takes a decidely dark turn towards the end , as we learn how far they are willing to go in order to keep the propaganda campaign a secret .
698 | motss and his hollywood buddies , meanwhile , seem completely out of touch with the rest of the world and just see this undertaking as another creative project .
699 | in fact , one of the sources of conflict in the film is motss's increasing restlessness with the idea of not being able to take credit for producing the fake war ; in his mind , it is the greatest work of art he has ever created .
700 | i think it's fair to say that " wag the dog " underachieves a little bit : more attention to the public reaction and tighter plotting might have made this into a four-star film and a classic satire .
701 | still , the issue of an american president using war and patriotism to distract from scandals or domestic unpopularity is a very real one .
702 | wag the dog takes the issue one step further and asks , what if the war wasn't even real ?
703 | with this premise and the talented cast , the film still delivers more consistently than most , whatever its flaws .
704 | synopsis : cro-magnon ayla loses her mother to an earthquake and escapes certain death by a lion .
705 | reluctantly rescued by a neanderthal clan who likes to have sex doggy-style , ayla grows up to become a blond , feminist supermodel who challenges the neanderthal patriarchy by throwing rocks and giving birth without a mate .
706 | comments : allow me to state for the record that i find daryl hannah an appealing presence in movies .
707 | she proved quite charming as the intelligent astronomer in the romantic comedy roxanne and equally creepy as pris in the sci-fi classic blade runner .
708 | the clan of the cave bear clearly tries to capitalize on hannah as a selling point : the poster art bears a striking closeup of hannah in tribal paint and the video box prominently features her name in lettering the same size as the title .
709 | not even her starring role in this turkey , unfortunately , can save it from being an unbelievable exercise in cheese .
710 | it's so uniquely bad ( a film dealing with prehistoric man that actually tries , and miserably fails , to be serious ) that it's oddly fascinating .
711 | the ridiculous attempt at drama here leaves the audience somehow transfixed , wanting to see how this dud plays out .
712 | the clan of the cave bear is based upon a popular novel by jean m . auel .
713 | to this day , the book possesses a loyal cult following .
714 | i remember a dear friend of mine had a dog-eared copy of the novel she had read as a child with all the so-called dirty parts blacked out with marker by her grandmother .
715 | i have never read this book , but i sure hope it's 10 , 000 times better than its film adaptation .
716 | if not , then i'm at a complete loss to explain its popularity .
717 | the clan of the cave bear immediately opens with a comically absurd scene .
718 | a young ayla , looking much like drew barrymore in e . t . ,
719 | tramps about in the woods .
720 | with her cute little ponytails and fur wrapped about her , the audience's expectations of a convincing portrayal of prehistory are immediately shattered .
721 | what follows is a laughably choreographed sequence in which an earthquake swallows up ayla's mother ( a blonde with fur pants . . . er ,
722 | leggings ) .
723 | tearful ayla looks on as the cameraman shakes the camera . . . well ,
724 | as the earthquake slowly recedes .
725 | a hungry lion becomes interested in her for lunch , but the screaming six-year-old manages to outrun the king of the wild and find a safe haven .
726 | i won't detail the story any further ; this seems enough to illustrate my point .
727 | this movie is really stupid .
728 | it never even gives the audience a chance to suspend their disbelief .
729 | also , the obvious comparison between the appearance of cro-magnon man in prehistory and the rise of feminism in our century is about as subtle as burning a wonderbra in front of charlton heston .
730 | the movie doesn't just suggest this message ; it whacks the message into the audience with a two-by-four .
731 | a blond , gorgeous woman challenges the social laws of a bunch of people in gaudy brown wigs .
732 | she's of the " new people " ; they're of the " old people " with " the memories . "
733 | yep .
734 | we get it .
735 | we get it .
736 | the clan of the cave bear apparently received an academy award nomination for best make-up , which surprises me .
737 | the movie depends upon a lot of make-up obviously , but much of it is unconvincing .
738 | as stated before , daryl hannah is daryl hannah here ; she looks like she just stepped out of the shower all the time .
739 | the rest of the characters have dark make-up of some sort smeared over them to look like dirt .
740 | the face-painting that's occasionally seen is perhaps the only notable work here in my mind .
741 | this movie also suffers from its new age trappings .
742 | maybe the music sounded a lot more fresh or original during 1985 , but now it sounds dated and cliched , like poorly conceived elevator music .
743 | add to this the film's faux-mysticism , including spirit animals and dream visions , and a narrator who sounds like a psychic you'd expect to hear on a 1-900 number , and you get a movie that has serious problems being serious .
744 | the clan of the cave bear is rated r , though it's probably one of the most inoffensive offensive films i've seen in quite a while .
745 | it contains several scenes of sex sans nudity .
746 | the violence mostly consists of hunting scenes .
747 | the funniest moment of the movie occurs when a neanderthal in love with ayla attempts to rescue her from a ferocious bear .
748 | the bear bites his head off and the audience sees it rolling about .
749 | although this may sound gratuitous , i'm sure , it's so cheesy that it probably won't bother most people .
750 | the clan of the cave bear is a bad movie .
751 | however , as i wrote at the beginning of this review , it does have the distinction of originality .
752 | typically when i think of bottom-of-the-barrel films dealing with early man , fantasy movies involving dinosaurs ( who did not exist at the same time as man ) and raquel welch come to mind .
753 | the clan of the cave bear tries so hard to be serious that , though it's so bad , the audience is still interested by the unique setting and characters of the movie ( which is why i awarded this turkey two stars ) .
754 | i have to think that fans of the book would be disappointed with this film version ; however , i'm only basing this observation on the fact that the book is almost invariably better than the movie .
755 | i shudder to think that it could be otherwise . . .
756 | if anything , " stigmata " should be taken as a warning against releasing similarly-themed films relatively close to one another .
757 | of the four supernatural horror flicks released this year , it is clearly the worst .
758 | i suppose i should have seen this coming .
759 | after all , " blair witch " thoroughly creeped me out , " sixth sense " was mildly spooky , and then " stir of echoes " had its moments , but wasn't anything i'd lose sleep over .
760 | clearly , the quality of the horror this summer has slowly been dropping .
761 | is it then any surprise that " stigmata " is the dullest , most horribly executed piece of mtv-influenced tripe i have seen in a long while ?
762 | no , not really .
763 | patricia arquette plays frankie page , a hairdresser from pittsburgh who receives a rosary as a gift from her globe-trotting mother .
764 | as it turns out , the rosary belonged to a recently-deceased brazilian priest .
765 | the priest's church had been under investigation by father andrew kiernan ( gabriel byrne ) because of the mysterious appearance of a bleeding statue .
766 | father kiernan is an investigator who has made a career out of disproving supposed religious signs , but this time he believes there is something to the bleeding statue .
767 | his investigation is soon called off , however , when the frankie starts exhibiting signs of the stigmata , in which a person is inflicted with wounds like that of jesus christ .
768 | father kiernan is initially skeptical of frankie' s story , considering she's an atheist , but once he witnesses the stigmata attacks himself , he dedicates himself to finding out what is going on .
769 | he eventually begins to suspect that his boss , cardinal houseman ( jonathan pryce ) , is concealing something that could bring down the catholic church .
770 | as it turns out , the dead priest had been working on the translation of a " fifth gospel " before they were excommunicated .
771 | the new rupert wainwright music video .
772 | .
773 | .
774 | i mean film " stigmata " is the sort of film that starts off ok and only gets worse .
775 | indeed , it would have been good if it were a music video , because it's only interesting for about five minutes .
776 | i'm not sure what wainwright is trying to prove with his endless parade of slow-motion , double-exposure , and extreme close-ups ( whoaaaaaa ! ! ! ! ) , other than the fact that he has the most swelled head of any director in hollywood and , yes , he has been to film school .
777 | his camera trickery is interesting for a little while , but eventually , it becomes headache-inducing .
778 | what this film needed is a second audio track to be played over the dialogue ( such as it is ) , with wainwright screaming at the audience , " see ?
779 | look at what i can do !
780 | i'm an ex-cellent dir-ect-or . "
781 | maybe then he'd explain why he decided to start half of his scenes with slow-motion shots of water dripping in reverse , or why he included random superfluous shots as that of an egg frying ( ooh , scary ! ) .
782 | if there was some underlying meaning behind all this camera trickery , i didn't see it .
783 | just when you thought it was safe to get involved in the story , here comes a double-exposure shot of two patricia arquettes collapsing into bed for no reason whatsoever .
784 | arrrrrrrghhhh .
785 | .
786 | .
787 | then again , the superfluous camera trickery wouldn't bother me if " stigmata " had a story or characters that were remotely engaging .
788 | though wainwright's vanity certainly doesn't help , he does seem to have been given a nearly unworkable script .
789 | where are plot continuity and character development when you need them ?
790 | case in point : frankie page is the character that ( i assume ) we are supposed to identify and sympathize with , but we aren't given any back story on her character , or any reason to like her .
791 | the extent of her character development seems to be that she is a hard-working hairdresser ( who can somehow afford a cavernous apartment on the top floor of her building ) and she's kind of cute , so let's start the bleeding !
792 | the fact that she's clearly not the brightest bulb in the drawer doesn't help , either .
793 | according to frankie page , what is the first thing to do after receiving mysterious wounds on your wrists and back ?
794 | go clubbing !
795 | sure , that makes sense .
796 | arquette , byrne , and pryce give it the old college try , but their characters are so one-dimensional that they just appear to be sleepwalking .
797 | scenes between arquette and byrne that were probably supposed to be sexually charged fall almost embarrassingly flat , because the setup of the romantic subplot is so clumsily handled that it almost reaches the point of becoming laughable .
798 | even though frankie page's life is falling apart before her very eyes , she still finds the time to hit on a priest who wanders in to her hair salon .
799 | even more curiously , he seems to be interested in her advances .
800 | father andrew's religious doubt pops up so suddenly that it seems more silly than dramatic .
801 | as for pryce , he may as well wear a curled mustache and cackle , " i'll get you , my pretty , " for all the depth his cardinal houseman is afforded .
802 | trust me , i'm not revealing anything by telling you pryce turns out to be a villain .
803 | what's worse , after being faced with dull characters and the prospect of having annoying camera tricks and loud music jammed down our throats , we now have to contend with a story that starts off in one direction , veers off in another , then another , and ends up being totally incomprehensible .
804 | first of all , the film doesn't even bother to explain what should be very simple plot details . how does frankie get the stigmata merely by touching a rosary ?
805 | how come an atheist like her was chosen , since father andrew mentions that only very devout believers have ever received stigmata ?
806 | actually , i'm not sure what frankie was posessed by .
807 | supposedly , stigmata occurs when one is posessed by the holy spirit , but the film later has her being posessed by the dead priest , and later by some evil spirit ( i think ) .
808 | which one is it ?
809 | the answer to this question , of course , is very simple : the possessing entity in each scene is determined by whichever effects and flashy camera work mr . wainwright wants to use this time .
810 | furthermore , the ending is a ridiculously neat little wrap-up , and the filmmakers compound this problem by ultimately turning the film into a diatribe against the catholic church .
811 | if you do any research at all about the gospel of st . thomas , you'll find that it is not being suppressed by the church ( as the film seems to claim ) , but that it is readily available at your local library .
812 | there's nothing the catholics need to worry about , though .
813 | " stigmata's " religion is so off-base that it can't be confused for anything remotely resembling the real catholic church .
814 | if they wanted to portray catholic priests as mobsters , they should have gone all-out and equipped them with sharkskin suits and tommy guns , which would have been far more interesting .
815 | i'm not catholic ; in fact , i don 't care much for the catholic church , but its cartoonish misrepresentation in this film should not be considered realistic by any means .
816 | it's rare to see a film that fails on as many levels as " stigmata " does .
817 | it' s not thought-provoking , though it would like to be , and it is definitely not scary , though it pretends to be .
818 | i'm not sure why they tried to pass this off as a horror film , because there is absolutely nothing scary about the story .
819 | maybe it's an attempt to cover up the fact that none of the scenes have any dramatic weight whatsoever .
820 | the initial shock of seeing arquette covered with blood is dulled by the fact that it happens over , and over , and over .
821 | like so many films of the mtv generation , this one suffers from overkill .
822 | so much is overdone in " stigmata , " that it eventually has no effect on the audience , leaving us to pick out the film's ( many ) flaws .
823 | i'm also still trying to figure out why the quotation they take from the gospel of st . thomas is so earth-shattering .
824 | when we finally hear it , the saying sounds like something every five-year-old learns on their first day of sunday school , which means that for all its flash , the whole film is really much ado about nothing .
825 | the dog days of summer usually produce one monstrous dog , and " stigmata " is it .
826 | two party guys bob their heads to haddaway's dance hit " what is love ? "
827 | while getting themselves into trouble in nightclub after nightclub .
828 | it's barely enough to sustain a three-minute _saturday_night_live_ skit , but _snl_ producer lorne michaels , _clueless_ creator amy heckerling , and paramount pictures saw something in the late night television institution's recurring " roxbury guys " sketch that would presumably make a good feature .
829 | emphasis on the word " presumably . "
830 | _a_night_at_the_roxbury_ takes an already-thin concept and tediously stretches it far beyond the breaking point--and that of viewers' patience levels .
831 | the first five minutes or so of _roxbury_ play very much like one of the original " roxbury guys " skits .
832 | with " what is love ? "
833 | blaring on the soundtrack , the brotherly duo of doug and steve butabi ( chris kattan and will ferrell ) bob their heads , scope out " hotties " at clubs , and then bump a select few with violent pelvic thrusts .
834 | there is one crucial difference , however--these guys speak .
835 | that little fact has been used as justification for the film's existence , that the butabis' newfound capacity for speech would open up a whole new set of doors for the characters .
836 | the doors opened by director john fortenberry and screenwriters steve koren , ferrell , and kattan are new , that's for sure , but they all lead to comic dead ends .
837 | there is no story per se , only a loosely structured and linked series of subplots .
838 | the brothers literally run into ( or , rather , get run into , as in by car ) richard grieco of _21_jump_street_ fame , and through him they gain entrance into the exclusive roxbury club .
839 | there , they meet a hotshot club owner ( chazz palminteri , conspicuously uncredited--can you blame him ? ) , who takes an interest in an idea of theirs .
840 | meanwhile , the bros' overbearing father ( dan hedaya ) wants them to stop clubbing .
841 | when doug refuses and the dimwitted steve obeys his father , a rift is created between the two .
842 | the narrative messiness of _roxbury_ would have been forgivable if all that went on were the slightest bit funny , but virtually none of it is .
843 | the assembled press audience mostly sat stonily silent throughout the entire film , with the one big exception being a big laugh near the end .
844 | alas , the joke--a rather lazy takeoff on _jerry_maguire_--will only strike a chord with people who have seen that film .
845 | granted , a lot of people _have_ seen _jerry_maguire_ , but the fact that the film's best joke is completely dependent on one's familiarity with another film says a lot about _roxbury_'s lack of inspiration .
846 | that lack of inspiration can be traced back to the insipid characters themselves .
847 | like too many of the skits on the current incarnation of _saturday_night_live_ , " the roxbury guys " is a one-joke sketch that never once suggests that the characters have enough comic life in them to survive outside of the sketch context .
848 | after watching one of the " roxbury " skits on snl , this is what you come away with from the characters : they bob their heads to " what is love ? " ,
849 | bump unsuspecting women , and . . . that's all .
850 | after watching _a_night_at_the_roxbury_ , you'll be left with exactly the same .
851 | glory--starring matthew broderick , denzel washington , and morgan freeman--is the true story of the 54th regiment of massachusetts , the first black fighting unit recruited by the north during the civil war .
852 | broderick plays robert gould shaw , the young white officer who led the black soldiers into battle .
853 | shaw , the son of well-to-do abolitionists , hailed from boston high society .
854 | the letters he wrote home to his parents during the war are on display at harvard , and were , evidently , the inspiration for glory .
855 | as the film begins in 1862 , shaw is a captain in the northern forces .
856 | like private eriksson ( michael j . fox ) in casualties of war , shaw initially is naive and idealistic about the war--that is , until his company is attacked by enemy forces .
857 | shaw experiences first hand the horror and chaos of battle , witnessing mass slaughter and receiving a minor wound himself when a bullet grazes his neck .
858 | soon after his recovery , shaw is promoted to colonel and assigned to enlist and train blacks in the war effort .
859 | glory is the story not only of colonel shaw , but also of the black soldiers who laid down their lives to free their brothers from slavery .
860 | the film periodically jumps between shaw's point of view and the perspective of the black soldiers .
861 | the movie introduces us to a handful of black recruits , and we follow them from their enlistment through basic training and finally into action .
862 | the large black cast is uniformly outstanding , especially washington who is electrifying as a runaway slave with a big mouth .
863 | he is brash and pushy , always getting into trouble and always looking for a fight .
864 | his bitter , tough guy facade is really just a mask for his loneliness and vulnerability .
865 | washington provides much of the film's intensity and emotional power .
866 | in one heartbreaking scene , he is whipped for allegedly deserting the army .
867 | when he removes his shirt to receive the punishment , you cringe at the sight of his back , which is riddled with ugly scars from his days as a slave .
868 | it makes your blood boil .
869 | the humiliation of the beating is far more traumatic than the actual physical pain it brings ; a tear rolls down washington's cheek--and will probably run down your cheek as well .
870 | the episode becomes even more tragic when we learn that washington wasn't deserting the army at all ; he left camp to look for shoes because his feet were covered with oozing sores .
871 | freeman is , as usual , a strong presence , even in a small supporting role .
872 | he plays a grave digger who has buried more white soldiers than he cares to remember .
873 | he quickly becomes a leader among the black soldiers , holding the group together and serving as a liaison to the white officers .
874 | colonel shaw recognizes freeman's leadership ability and promotes him to sergeant major , making him the first black officer in the army .
875 | andre braugher makes an impressive film debut in the role of thomas searles , a free black who is one of shaw's close childhood friends .
876 | searles is educated and refined , like a white man , prompting washington to nickname him " snow flake . "
877 | the burning question is whether searles is tough enough to survive basic training and to kill in combat .
878 | the road from marching drills to battle action is a bumpy one for the black regiment .
879 | the soldiers suffer innumerable hardships , but somehow they never lose their morale .
880 | the army treats the black soldiers like second class citizens , subjecting them to racism and discrimination .
881 | they are paid only $10 a month , whereas their white counterparts earn thirteen , and , for a long time , they have to go without shoes , guns , or uniforms .
882 | to make matters worse , the white military hierarchy is extremely reluctant to allow the blacks into action , preferring instead to use them for manual labor .
883 | eventually , however , the regiment receives its boots , uniforms , rifles , and right to fight , thanks to the stubborn resolve of colonel shaw .
884 | shaw has absolute faith in his soldiers , and he fights tooth and nail to get them what they deserve , even if it means threatening a general with blackmail .
885 | broderick , in fact , is most convincing in the scenes where shaw stands up for the regiment .
886 | unfortunately , however , broderick's uneven performance is , in many respects , the weak link in the movie .
887 | in an effort to look more mature , broderick sports a mustache and a goatee , and throughout the film he slips in and out of a phony boston accent .
888 | he is never altogether convincing as shaw since much of the time his emotions seem forced .
889 | the film places too much weight on broderick's character and not enough on the black soldiers , who are more intriguing .
890 | glory regains lost ground with its harrowing depiction of war .
891 | the movie shows the devastation of war without resorting to the unnecessarily graphic gore which marred born on the fourth of july .
892 | glory does not try to rattle you with nauseating blood and guts .
893 | except for a few bullet wounds and one exploding head , the film , for the most part , leaves the gore to your imagination , which is not to say that the battle scenes in glory are timid .
894 | to the contrary , they are chaotic and horrifying ; it's just that director edward zwick ( the co-creator of " thirtysomething " ) films them with far more subtlety and restraint than oliver stone could ever muster .
895 | the key to glory is the group dynamic among the black soldiers .
896 | the movie depicts some of ( but not enough of ) their customs and rituals .
897 | in one scene , for example , the soldiers motivate themselves by singing prayers around the campfire .
898 | each man has a chance to relay a few words of inspiration .
899 | a couple of the movie's most touching moments involve young black children looking up to the black soldiers with awe , disbelief and pride .
900 | the regiment's greatest triumph comes when the soldiers distinguish themselves in battle , thereby earning the respect of their white peers and earning the honor of leading the climactic assault on fort wagner .
901 | like any war film , glory has its share of gloom and despair , but ultimately it proves to be a truly uplifting experience and an important history lesson , a valuable reminder that despite what the history books say ( or , more precisely , what they do not say ) , blacks played a critically important role in the north's victory over the south--forever changing the evolution of america .
902 | i think the first thing this reviewer should mention is wether or not i am a fan of the x-files .
903 | first , let me assure you that no prior experience with the series is required to fully enjoy this movie .
904 | the producers are not stupid , making a movie just for fans of the series is not profitable .
905 | you have to reach for a larger audience .
906 | therefore , the movie is quite user-friendly .
907 | altough , non-fans will only fail to understand certain emotions behind the looks many characters exchange .
908 | but fear not , duchovny and another man later on provide more than adequate background info on what is going on .
909 | you will never feel as if you just walked in on the third act of some great opera .
910 | in any case , the answer is no .
911 | i am not a fan of the x-files , i only watch it when nothing else is on and i prefer millennium .
912 | however , since the fox network as been so kind as to air several key episodes for several weeks before the movie's opening weekend i took that opportunity to test the movie .
913 | i taped all of these episodes and watched them only after seing the movie , i am glad to report that i learned nothing new .
914 | everything you need to know is explained to the viewer by duchovny and others .
915 | i know i am going maybe a bit too far to make my point but everybody should get the chance to experience this movie .
916 | warning : major spoilers follow !
917 | please do not read to fully enjoy this movie , you must not be able know what is coming , what exactly is over that hill and what that weird " hummm " sound is all about .
918 | you have been warned .
919 | the x-files is what a summer should be .
920 | exciting , scary , great special effects ( unlike other summer movies the effects do not take over the movie and are only there when it is really necessary ) and good performances .
921 | this is coming from a guy who thinks david duchovny is the human equivalent of a wooden plank .
922 | from start to finish , this movie does not let go of you .
923 | when i compare it with last summer's movies the best way to describe it would be : take the excitement and great score from face/off and the deadly use of sound from event horizon .
924 | this flick is scary , not in a b movie kind of way where you always know where and when the critter will jump at our heroes .
925 | in fact , the first time the critter in this movie makes an apperance it is totally out of the blue .
926 | you might as well bring ear plugs because this thing is louuuudd !
927 | the last time a monster scared me that much was when i first saw aliens as a six year old kid .
928 | you know , when you are affraid to put your feet on the floor because the creature might be under the chair , or when you keep trying to cover your throat with your shirt ?
929 | so yeah , the x-files is scary .
930 | and guess what ?
931 | you never even have to see the monster but your imagination works overtime and it sure beats having to watch a flawed , computer generated , babyzilla , it looks like you could walk right through it not even scarier than your grandma in undies type of monster .
932 | do not think that the x-files is a monster movie .
933 | in fact , the creature is there for maybe three minutes total .
934 | no , the x-files is definately a mulder episode of the series .
935 | scully is at his side , of course , but gillian anderson gets maybe half the screen time .
936 | she has a couple of good scenes with duchovny , but she gets kidnapped during the last half hour of the movie so she does not get to do much .
937 | no , this is mulder's time in the spotlight .
938 | by now , you have heard of the scene where mulder " showers " independence day .
939 | if you have not then i will not spoil it for you , let's just say that due to recent events mulder should be " showering " godzilla instead .
940 | to those of you wondering if mulder discovers that the truth is indeed out there . . . who
941 | cares ! ?
942 | if he did find it the series would over anyway so what are you complaining about ?
943 | the dialogue in interesting and the director is marvelous .
944 | the camera is almost always looking over the shoulder of our heroes so we feel as if we are right there with them when they open a door or climb a hill .
945 | the script is spotless , every thing that happens happens for a purpose .
946 | if you are confused by something , do not worry because it will all become clear later on but , and i cannot stress this enough , pay attention ! ! !
947 | unlike most summer movies , the dialogue is twice as important as the effects .
948 | miss one vital piece of information and , like most people who talk during movies , you will go home and tell all your friends how this movie made no sense .
949 | also , to those people who need to go to the bathroom during movies . . . don't !
950 | the person who watched the movie with me had to go twice and twice she missed an important conversation .
951 | there is no time to take a breather between scenes because , again unlike most summer movies ( godzilla anybody ?
952 | ) the x-files does not need to fill scenes between the suspense and the action with useless subplots , every scene is crucial and serves a purpose .
953 | who needs to see the blond chiouaoua have a " big emotional scene " between godzilla attacks ?
954 | so far this summer i have seen only one movie who ranks higher on my list of movies i'd recommend and that is the truman show but it only wins by a nose .
955 | but the truman show is not what i would call a summer movie , the x-files is .
956 | what more do you ask from a summer movie other than the chance to be excited ?
957 | cool effects ?
958 | it's got some .
959 | pulse pounding ?
960 | hell yes !
961 | strangely enough , i think that fans of the series will hate this movie while non-fans will have a good time .
962 | it does not provide answers to the show's many questions , the status quo remains nearly the same and , no , mulder and scully do not get together .
963 | rating : four and a half out of five stars for the best movie yet this summer , several jump right out of your seat thrills , many " whoah , i never saw that one coming ! "
964 | moments , four " holy shit , where the hell did that come from " and one heck of an ending .
965 | you may wonder where this movie lost half a star .
966 | well , i swore never to give a movie the full five stars so i had to find something about the in his ice truck , the tracks it leaves in the snow behind him go on for several miles but then they just stop .
967 | it's pretty obvious the film's makers drove the truck for several miles to give the appearance that mulder had been driving for a long time , but in the end it looks like mulder just dropped from the sky and started driving .
968 | ingredients : down-on-his-luck evangelist , church
969 | synopsis : sonny dewey ( robert duvall ) is a tireless texas pentecostal preacher who unexpectedly catches his wife ( farrah fawcett ) in bed with another guy .
970 | in a regrettable crime of passion he takes a baseball bat to the guy's head , and suddenly finds himself a fugitive for murder , and estranged from his wife and two kids .
971 | to atone for his sins , sonny flees to a rural bayou town in louisiana and baptizes himself as a new creature - - the apostle e . f . as the apostle e . f . sonny's main mission is to revive an abandoned church community and preach the gospel at the local radio station .
972 | soon he sets about resurrecting the one way road to heaven holiness temple .
973 | but sonny knows his time is short ; one day the police will find him .
974 | opinion : this movie is a thought-provoking look at an evangelist in real life terms .
975 | i believe that robert duvall ( who is the producer , director , writer , and main star of the apostle ) deserves an oscar for his performance as sonny the religious crusader - - a performance which is so complex and realistic it ranks as one of the finest acting performances on film .
976 | duvall's portrayal of a true believer is authentic , superb , and inspired ; it offers the audience a completely honest look at southern religion , as well as a portrait of a fallible , complicated man driven by his beliefs .
977 | incidentally , in real life duvall was just as 'driven' in getting the project underway .
978 | since no major hollywood studio wanted to risk financing a complex movie about an evangelist , the apostle as a project lay dormant for almost 13 years before duvall was able to get it done , paying for its production with his own money ( about five million dollars ) .
979 | in terms of hard-hitting realism and character portrayal the apostle would rank as one of the best movies of this decade , and i emphatically recommend the apostle for connoisseurs of stage and fine acting on film .
980 | similarly , those with a steep background in pentecostal christianity would find the apostle a thought-provoking experience .
981 | on the other hand , the apostle's main strength - - duvall's preaching - - is also what limits the apostle's target audience .
982 | in terms of plot and pure entertainment value , the apostle is definitely not for everyone .
983 | teenagers , action fans , comedy fans , and people who find church completely boring should stay far away from this movie , since three quarters of the film is watching sonny preach at church .
984 | in other words , the apostle is a four star performance , but with a very limited audience .
985 | if there is one thing that bothers me about hollywood films it's their predictable endings .
986 | the devil's advocate has the atypical hollywood ending , when everything that should happen does .
987 | unfortunately for the devil's advocate , this ending nearly collapses in on itself , and ruins the entire film .
988 | nevertheless , the film does provide two and a half hours of pure entertainment ( note to self : kill whomever was in charge of the previews for this film ) .
989 | i don't think i was quite prepared for this movie because the trailers made it appear to be some supernatural horror film about satan .
990 | well , it does contain this element , but what is not mentioned in the ads is the other plot elements ( and seemingly more interesting ones at that ) .
991 | the devil's advocate begins in florida with an ongoing trial in session .
992 | kevin lomax ( keanu reeves ) is the defense attorney , working for a client whom has been accused of raping a young girl .
993 | he ends up with a not-guilty verdict , despite an emotional testimony from the victim ( heather matarazzo ) .
994 | he leaves the courthouse with his lovely wife mary ann ( charlize theron ) where he is approached with an offer to travel to new york city to help choose a good jury .
995 | he accepts ( mainly after seeing the paycheck he will receive ) and he flies to new york with his wife .
996 | after proving his worth for selecting juries ( and his perfect winning streak in court ) , the head of the firm , john milton ( al pacino ) , asks him to work permanently as a criminal lawyer .
997 | he graciously accepts , where he is treated almost as a god .
998 | he is given an incredible apartment ( which is bigger than my entire house now ) , and a hefty paycheck .
999 | his life seems to be on the rise .
1000 | and of course , his life suddenly begins to waver and slowly decline .
1001 |
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