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

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Appointment with Danger is one of those movies that come along every so often: one from which you don’t expect more than a mildly diverting 89 minutes, but turns out to be a small gem. The cast includes Alan Ladd and some favorite character actors — Jack Webb, Harry Morgan, Paul Stewart, Jan Sterling — that I’d like to kick back and have a beer with. The picture was credited as being film noir, so why not take a chance?

Ladd is Al Goddard, a postal inspector no one likes, sent to Gary, Ind., to investigate the murder of one of his colleagues. He finds that the only witness is a nun, Sister Augustine (Phyllis Calvert). As soon as they meet, you suspect that he will end up carrying an unlightable torch for her, but it doesn’t happen. They are both too dedicated to their jobs for such foolishness. Besides, she’s already married.

She saw only one of the killers (Morgan), but the other one (Webb) thinks she should be killed just to be on the safe side. Goddard goes undercover as a bent government man in order to find out what these crooks are up to, and how to stop it.

The pleasure comes from the obvious fun the cast is having and the surprisingly sharp dialogue, like Goddard defining love as the feeling a man has for a gun that doesn’t jam, and later, a great line perfectly delivered. When the crooks capture the nun, they decide to kill her, then Goddard talks them out of it and one of them turns to her and says, “Sister, you’re either very lucky or you’ve been living right.” To a nun, he says this, and no one onscreen reacts, despite the fact that it’s the dumbest thing they’ve ever heard. —Doug Bentin

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There’s not a single likable character in Marc Schölermann’s Pathology. Not a one! Ostensibly, the lead character of med student Ted Grey should be, but they cast Milo Ventimiglia. Oops! His brand of acting — squinting, really — only worked for him in TV’s Heroes, and nowhere else.

Ted’s new to the bestest pathology tract in the country, where his fellow students are all like, “to hell with the Hippocratic Oath — let’s fuck around and play some reindeer games with these here corpses, aight?” Their unofficial leader, Jake (Michael Weston), introduces Ted to the game they play after hours: autopsy! See, they kill random people and bring them in to see who can guess how they offed them. When did Quarters go out of style?

But, wait, there’s more! They also engage in group activities like smoking crack and having sex on the slabs. Why? The only good reason I can think of is because this was written by the reigning kings of over-the-top cinema, Neveldine/Taylor, who wrote and directed the Crank films and Gamer; it’s too bad they didn’t direct this one, too, because it could stand to be more outlandish. Redeeming quality: Ol’ Dr. Giggles himself, Larry Drake, pops up as a fat bastard credited as Fat Bastard.

It’s a mess — and not just because of all the bodies being cut open — but I get what Ventimiglia saw in the project: free feels. In the first scene, his hand slips underneath fiancée Alyssa Milano’s shirt and works itself all over her left boob; later, he’s all over the bared breasts of Lauren Lee Smith. It’s a living. —Rod Lott

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The original 1978 I Spit on Your Grave — aka Day of the Woman — is one of those films you either get or you don’t. Those who don’t have an understandable tendency to call it one of the worst films ever made, while those of us who do passionately defend it as a misunderstood masterpiece. It’s a movie that contains what may be the most difficult 32 minutes of screen time I’ve ever sat through, but it also always has me shouting “Fuck yeah!” by the end. It’s a coarse, primal work that touches upon all of the worst human emotions, but I always leave it feeling inspired, rather than debased.

It’s not simply about rape and revenge, but what we must do to survive in a brutal, unfair world that couldn’t care less if we live or die. Jennifer Hills’ solution to this existential dilemma is not the right or moral one, but I understand it. As disturbingly bittersweet as her triumph is at the end, it remains a triumph nonetheless.

And now here is where I’m supposed to tear apart the 2010 remake as a sacrilegious travesty of the original, but I can’t do it. Despite its slickness, its changes, its post-Saw emphasis on ironic carnage, the story still moved me. Jennifer’s tale is one I will always find affecting, no matter how different the packaging. Eschewing the surprisingly vibrant colors of the original, the new version replaces the grueling naked cruelty with more overt violence, which I think actually makes it more palatable to a mainstream audience.

The chief difference is the treatment of its protagonist. In the first film, we saw Jennifer slowly heal and rebuild herself after the attack, and stayed with her as she killed her rapists, while in the remake, she (Sarah Butler) essentially disappears after the attack, only to turn up later as a force of vengeance who seems less human and more like a rampaging spirit (à la High Plains Drifter or The Wraith). It also adds a disturbing — and perhaps unnecessary — touch by suggesting that Jennifer’s revenge possibly has extended beyond the five men who’ve earned it. —Allan Mott

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This is the one about Paul Conroy (Ryan Reynolds), an American civilian truck driver who is captured by Iraqis and buried alive in the desert with an active cell phone, a cigarette lighter and a flask. He awakens in a plain wood coffin with no idea how he got there. He receives a call from the guy who buried him demanding “five million money” by 9 that night — two hours — or he will be left to die. The Iraqi also demands that his victim record a video on the cell phone.

And that’s it for Buried’s 95-minute running time. We never leave the coffin, but director Rodrigo Cortes and screenwriter Chris Sparling find excuses for Paul to call his wife, the FBI, a hostage negotiator, the kidnapper and the HR director of the company he works for.

When I first saw the movie’s trailer, which includes the moment when an asp slithers into the coffin through a crack, I thought the film would be a tough sell — not because it plays so strongly on the common fear of enclosed places, but because its lack of action would bore younger audiences.

As it turns out, the picture recouped only a third of the three million money it cost to make. It’s pretty intense and Reynolds turns in a better performance than you’d ever have given him credit for, but stick it out to the end and you’ll see why it flopped. The question is, how did anyone ever think it wouldn’t? —Doug Bentin

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