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the movie has a script ( by paul pender ) made of wood , and it's relentlessly folksy , a procession of stagy set pieces stacked with binary oppositions .
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a pathetic exploitation film that tries to seem sincere , and just seems worse for the effort .
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at some point , all this visual trickery stops being clever and devolves into flashy , vaguely silly overkill .
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despite some charm and heart , this quirky soccer import is forgettable
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meyjes's movie , like max rothman's future , does not work .
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what's needed so badly but what is virtually absent here is either a saving dark humor or the feel of poetic tragedy .
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schneidermeister . . . makin' a fool of himself . . . losin' his fan base . . .
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an ambitious , serious film that manages to do virtually everything wrong ; sitting through it is something akin to an act of cinematic penance .
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not once does it come close to being exciting .
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a frankenstein mishmash that careens from dark satire to cartoonish slapstick , bartleby performs neither one very well .
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it plays like a big-budget , after-school special with a generous cast , who at times lift the material from its well-meaning clunkiness .
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there's something not entirely convincing about the quiet american . and that holds true for both the movie and the title character played by brendan fraser .
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one of those strained caper movies that's hardly any fun to watch and begins to vaporize from your memory minutes after it ends .
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needed a little less bling-bling and a lot more romance .
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the ending doesn't work . . . but most of the movie works so well i'm almost recommending it , anyway -- maybe not to everybody , but certainly to people with a curiosity about how a movie can go very right , and then step wrong .
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it's hard to believe these jokers are supposed to have pulled off four similar kidnappings before .
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i'm not exactly sure what this movie thinks it is about .
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cal is an unpleasantly shallow and immature character with whom to spend 110 claustrophobic minutes .
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so brisk is wang's pacing that none of the excellent cast are given air to breathe .
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the bottom line , at least in my opinion , is imposter makes a better short story than it does a film .
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some elements of it really blow the big one , but other parts are decent .
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it is just too bad the film's story does not live up to its style .
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unless you're a fanatic , the best advice is : 'scooby' don't .
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a cautionary tale about the folly of superficiality that is itself endlessly superficial .
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for single digits kidlets stuart little 2 is still a no brainer . if you're looking to rekindle the magic of the first film , you'll need a stronger stomach than us .
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shreve's graceful dual narrative gets clunky on the screen , and we keep getting torn away from the compelling historical tale to a less-compelling soap opera .
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contains a few big laughs but many more that graze the funny bone or miss it altogether , in part because the consciously dumbed-down approach wears thin .
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nothing more than a widget cranked out on an assembly line to see if stupid americans will get a kick out of goofy brits with cute accents performing ages-old slapstick and unfunny tricks .
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this is a film tailor-made for those who when they were in high school would choose the cliff-notes over reading a full-length classic .
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the movie is undone by a filmmaking methodology that's just experimental enough to alienate the mainstream audience while ringing cliched to hardened indie-heads .
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a jumbled fantasy comedy that did not figure out a coherent game plan at scripting , shooting or post-production stages .
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a sad and rote exercise in milking a played-out idea -- a straight guy has to dress up in drag -- that shockingly manages to be even worse than its title would imply .
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personal velocity ought to be exploring these women's inner lives , but it never moves beyond their surfaces .
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we hate [madonna] within the film's first five minutes , and she lacks the skill or presence to regain any ground .
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sounding like arnold schwarzenegger , with a physique to match , [ahola] has a wooden delivery and encounters a substantial arc of change that doesn't produce any real transformation .
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two big things are missing -- anything approaching a visceral kick , and anything approaching even a vague reason to sit through it all .
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a fascinating but choppy documentary .
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scarcely worth a mention apart from reporting on the number of tumbleweeds blowing through the empty theatres graced with its company .
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the doofus-on- the-loose banter of welcome to collinwood has a cocky , after-hours loopiness to it . and as with most late-night bull sessions , eventually the content isn't nearly as captivating as the rowdy participants think it is .
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too stagey , talky -- and long -- for its own good .
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apparently reassembled from the cutting-room floor of any given daytime soap .
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the sinister inspiration that fuelled devito's early work is confused in death to smoochy into something both ugly and mindless .
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despite auteuil's performance , it's a rather listless amble down the middle of the road , where the thematic ironies are too obvious and the sexual politics too smug .
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director boris von sychowski instead opts for a routine slasher film that was probably more fun to make than it is to sit through .
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. . . little more than a well-acted television melodrama shot for the big screen .
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never comes together as a coherent whole .
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an unintentionally surreal kid's picture . . . in which actors in bad bear suits enact a sort of inter-species parody of a vh1 behind the music episode .
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first , for a movie that tries to be smart , it's kinda dumb . and second , what's with all the shooting ?
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don't even bother to rent this on video .
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there is something in full frontal , i guess , about artifice and acting and how it distorts reality for people who make movies and watch them , but like most movie riddles , it works only if you have an interest in the characters you see .
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this is the kind of movie that gets a quick release before real contenders arrive in september .
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not counting a few gross-out comedies i've been trying to forget , this is the first film in a long time that made me want to bolt the theater in the first 10 minutes .
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plays like one long , meandering sketch inspired by the works of john waters and todd solondz , rather than a fully developed story .
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the film doesn't have enough innovation or pizazz to attract teenagers , and it lacks the novel charm that made spy kids a surprising winner with both adults and younger audiences .
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a mawkish self-parody that plays like some weird masterpiece theater sketch with neither a point of view nor a compelling reason for being .
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an average b-movie with no aspirations to be anything more .
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bartlett's hero remains a reactive cipher , when opening the man's head and heart is the only imaginable reason for the film to be made .
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gibney and jarecki just want to string the bastard up .
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the plot is plastered with one hollywood cliche after another , most of which involve precocious kids getting the better of obnoxious adults .
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less worrying about covering all the drama in frida's life and more time spent exploring her process of turning pain into art would have made this a superior movie .
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a film that suffers because of its many excesses .
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too bland and fustily tasteful to be truly prurient .
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in any case , i would recommend big bad love only to winger fans who have missed her since 1995's forget paris . but even then , i'd recommend waiting for dvd and just skipping straight to her scenes .
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depicts the sorriest and most sordid of human behavior on the screen , then laughs at how clever it's being .
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nijinsky says , 'i know how to suffer' and if you see this film you'll know too .
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'cq may one day be fondly remembered as roman coppola's brief pretentious period before going on to other films that actually tell a story worth caring about
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the only thing scary about feardotcom is that the filmmakers and studio are brazen enough to attempt to pass this stinker off as a scary movie .
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. . . stale and uninspired .
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a dreary movie .
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. . . the story simply putters along looking for astute observations and coming up blank .
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instead of contriving a climactic hero's death for the beloved-major- character-who-shall- remain-nameless , why not invite some genuine spontaneity into the film by having the evil aliens' laser guns actually hit something for once ?
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it just didn't mean much to me and played too skewed to ever get a hold on ( or be entertained by ) .
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this action-thriller/dark comedy is one of the most repellent things to pop up in a cinematic year already littered with celluloid garbage .
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mib ii is a movie that makes it possible for the viewer to doze off for a few minutes or make several runs to the concession stand and/or restroom and not feel as if he or she has missed anything . that's because relatively nothing happens .
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no amount of arty theorizing -- the special effects are 'german-expressionist , ' according to the press notes -- can render it anything but laughable .
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blue crush follows the formula , but throws in too many conflicts to keep the story compelling .
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boyd's screenplay ( co-written with guardian hack nick davies ) has a florid turn of phrase that owes more to guy ritchie than the bard of avon .
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there's not a spark of new inspiration in it , just more of the same , done with noticeably less energy and imagination .
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jackson shamefully strolls through this mess with a smug grin , inexplicably wearing a kilt and carrying a bag of golf clubs over one shoulder .
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a moving picture that does not move .
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ruh-roh ! romething's really wrong with this ricture !
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its salient points are simultaneously buried , drowned and smothered in the excesses of writer-director roger avary .
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i'm not sure these words have ever been together in the same sentence : this erotic cannibal movie is boring .
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'god help us , but capra and cooper are rolling over in their graves . '
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. . . an hour-and-a-half of inoffensive , unmemorable filler .
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is it a comedy ? a drama ? a romance ? a cartoon ?
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ze movie starts out so funny , then she is nothing .
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did the film inform and educate me ? yes . did it move me to care about what happened in 1915 armenia ? no . and that is where ararat went astray .
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it's a bad sign in a thriller when you instantly know whodunit .
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has a customarily jovial air but a deficit of flim-flam inventiveness .
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eight legged freaks won't join the pantheon of great monster/science fiction flicks that we have come to love . . .
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it gets the details of its time frame right but it completely misses its emotions .
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who , exactly , is fighting whom here ? ah , yes , that would be me : fighting off the urge to doze .
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a kilted jackson is an unsettling sight , and indicative of his , if you will , out-of-kilter character , who rambles aimlessly through ill-conceived action pieces .
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contrived , awkward and filled with unintended laughs , the film shows signs that someone other than the director got into the editing room and tried to improve things by making the movie go faster .
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starts out with tremendous promise , introducing an intriguing and alluring premise , only to fall prey to a boatload of screenwriting cliches that sink it faster than a leaky freighter .
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the film lapses too often into sugary sentiment and withholds delivery on the pell-mell pyrotechnics its punchy style promises .
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the only question . . . is to determine how well the schmaltz is manufactured -- to assess the quality of the manipulative engineering . average , at best , i'm afraid .
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this movie is so bad , that it's almost worth seeing because it's so bad .
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a crisply made movie that is no more than mildly amusing .
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