Can you guess what movie or TV show we’re watching? We’ve turned on subtitles (when available) not to give you a clue, but to enhance that WTF effect! Leave your best guess in the comments to prove your true Flick Attackosity!
All posts by Rod Lott
Five Days (2007)
Even the most die-hard of armchair sleuths would be intimidated by a 300-minute mystery. While your schedule and your ass may be unable to take Five Days all in one sitting, your mind and your curiosity will want to. A production of the great BBC, the Gwyneth Hughes-penned miniseries is comprised of five one-hour episodes, each depicting a single day in the aftermath of a crime.
That crime is the sudden, shocking disappearance and presumed murder of Leanne Wellings (Christine Tremarco), a twice-married mother of three who vanishes while buying flowers from a roadside vendor, leaving her two youngest children waiting in the car. The kids make their way toward home, but they, too, are soon missing.
Hot-tempered husband/father Matt (David Oyelowo) is torn up at the prospect of losing his entire immediate family, while also considered a possible suspect by the authorities leading the investigation (Hugh Bonneville and Janet McTeer). Their widening net weaves in encounters with journalists, a potential pedophile, a nursing home resident (Edward Woodward) and one horny young woman (Sarah Smart) with a secret.
While full of twists and revelations, Hughes’ screenplay doesn’t ignore characterization, and there are plenty of people you get to know in that amount of time. The day-an-episode structure could be a gimmick, but she smartly avoids that, mostly in making those days not consecutive, which heightens the drama and asks viewers to fill in part of what happened in the time that elapsed. A second season, with a new story and characters, has yet to play the States. —Rod Lott
Derailed (2005)
Based upon James Siegel’s 2003 bestselling thriller — and believe me, we’ll get to that in a sec — Derailed stars Clive Owen as a happily married ad exec who nonetheless gives in to urges with a mysterious, seductive woman he meets one morning on the train to work. That woman is played by a severely miscast Aniston — not a person one to whom would readily affix the adjectives “mysterious” or “seductive.” “Cloying” and “overrated,” perhaps, but she’s way in over her head here.
Before she and Clive can do the deed, their hotel room is intruded upon by a robber-cum-rapist, who adds insult to injury by then proceeding to engage in an ever-escalating game of blackmail. This thorn in their side is played by Vincent Cassel, the wiry little laser-dancing Frenchman from Ocean’s Twelve, and thus marks the first glaring diversion from the source material. In the book, Aniston’s character is raped repeatedly over an afternoon by a black man. For whatever reason — I’ll take political correctness for $500, Alex — the race has undergone a literal whitewashing.
Otherwise, the first two-thirds stick pretty close to the book, even lifting entire scenes of dialogue. Unfortunately, what was punchy on the page drags in the hands of director Mikael Håfström, which does the abrupt, condensed ending no favors. In Siegel’s book, there were several endings, but each with a purpose, adding layer upon layer to an already suspenseful story. Here, it’s your standard revenge climax, and by cutting so much out of it, it’s bereft of the logic the author brought to it.
You may be enticed to rent Derailed by the cover tease of its “unrated” version, but all this amounts to are some quick shots of Cassel dry-humping Aniston, which is more nauseating than anything. The tagline is “They never saw it coming,” but you don’t have to see it at all. Even the less-seasoned viewers among us can guess the film’s “big twist.” –Rod Lott
Psychomania (1973)
Even if it weren’t the only British supernatural horror film involving hippie bikers and a frog demon, Psychomania would likely be the best British supernatural horror film involving hippie bikers and a frog demon ever made.
The Living Dead is a group of young bikers with custom-made skull-and-crossbones helmets that make them look like cartoon characters. They’re led by the well-to-do Tom, who’s itching to commit suicide because he believes he’ll rise again and become invulnerable. Because his mom is a spiritual loon who has made a pact with the aforementioned frog demon, he does and does (after his compadres bury him on his hog and wearing his full biker regalia).
When he informs the others of his newfound power, one girl says, “Oh, wow! What are we waiting for?” and drives herself straight into a moving van. When she, too, resurrects not long after her funeral, the other members off themselves as well — in an absurdly comic sequence — by jumping off buildings and chaining bricks to their bodies as they swim. Meanwhile, the police are pissed because the now-true-to-their-name Living Dead delight in murdering innocents and destroying grocery stores.
What’s not to love? —Rod Lott
1 DVD I Had to Destroy So No One Could Ever Watch It Again, Even by Accident
