tomer_israeli Someone in this forum gave this film 3 out of 5 after explaining why the first three eps are awesome while the other two are not. I thought that was cute.Also, a lot of people have been talking about certain hints of interrelated movies, etc. I love it when it happens. When different movies, shows and actors are interrelated. Sometimes it's by mistake. Other times it's specific clues embedded.I didn't find any connection between The Bedroom Window (starring Steve Gutenberg) and 5ive Days, but I won't be surprised any of you would. And I'll tell you why. But this post includes a significant 5ive Days spoiler from the third ep, and a very slight spoiler from Bedroom Window (that won't ruin the movie for you).There is a scene in which Steve Gutenberg is following a person who he suspects as a serial rapist and murderer. He follows him to a club, and they both stand on two different ends of the place, each trying to blend in. In the center there is a girl who is acting very seductively. She dances with all the guys, etc, acting very sexually. She has the same bracelets on her arm as Mandy Murphy from 5ive Days.In a later scene, Steve Guttenberg notices that near this club there is a big commotion. It's a crime scene. The cops are taking a body out of the place. They accidentally get the stretcher out of balance and the victim's right arm is falling off the sheet, just hanging. Again, we see the bracelets.Hutton in 5ive Days and Guttenberg in Bedroom Window both connected the body under the sheet with a person they met earlier. Hutton also verified that it actually was the person he thought it was. Guttenberg didn't have to. Anyway, I can't believe it was a coincidence. No way! Same friggin scene! A body under a sheet, on a stretcher, with about five hundred tons of bracelets on the right arm.

windchimes This is an awesome movie. I taped it when it was on television and I liked it so well I bought the DVD. It is one of those movies I can't get enough of and I have watched it several times. The actors are fantastic - that little girl is a magnificent actress. Timothy Hutton really shows what he is capable of. I was not familiar with Kari Matchett, but I would like to see more of her work. Randy Quaid was perfect as the stereotyped detective.The soundtrack (which I am still trying to find) is great - perfectly placed songs and music. The music enhanced the film rather than just disappearing into the background.If you have the opportunity to get the DVD, do. I watched the commentary and although I don't usually like to watch those (I hate knowing the secrets - I want to keep the magic), I did thoroughly enjoy the information. Their methods of shooting with multiple cameras and the time sequencing was explained and I'll always wonder why every film isn't made with multiple cameras. It really elevated this movie into an unforgettable film.I highly recommend this film to anyone. Don't be turned off if you don't like Sci-Fi - this is a movie for anyway who just wants to escape into an engrossing story.

Li-1 Rating: ** out of ****The two-hour Sci-Fi Channel made-for-TV movies may almost always suck, but you can usually rely on their miniseries for quality acting, writing, and special effects (I loved Taken and Children of Dune, really liked Dune, and there is nothing currently on TV that can compete with the new Battlestar Galactica). Five Days to Midnight breaks the channel's success streak, proving to be easily its worst miniseries to date. 5DTM stars Timothy Hutton as J.T. Neumeyer, a physics professor with a young daughter (I forget the actress's name, but she looks a lot like a young Drew Barrymore) and a life insurance agent named Claudia for a girlfriend (Kari Matchett). While visiting his late wife's grave on a Monday morning, his daughter discovers a briefcase nearby. Upon opening the case, J.T. is a little shocked to discover that the contents are files pertaining to his own murder, which will occur in five days, at 3:55 A.M. on Friday.He initially laughs it off as a hoax, but when a few of the little "prophecies" come true, he becomes a fast believer and sets out to find out who would murder him and why. He has only a few clues, but there is a list of suspects: Carl Axelrod, an eccentric student of his; Brad, his financially desperate brother-in-law; Roy Bremmer, a man he's never even heard of; and even his own girlfriend Claudia, who is not all that she appears to be. With the clock ticking down and only the help of a homicide investigator (Randy Quaid), J.T.'s obsession with saving his own life may come at the cost of many others.Undeniably, 5DTM boasts one of the niftier premises in recent memory. Playing like a mix of Minority Report meets 24, the combination of sci-fi and mystery has always appealed to me, so there's no question that a good portion of the miniseries is genuinely engaging and entertaining (mostly in the beginning and middle segments). A lot of the series is intentionally predictable, and in a fun way, like you just know that gift from his girlfriend will be the same parka he wears in that photo from the briefcase where he's lying dead, or the car his girlfriend rented will be that green Cherokee in that other photo, and so on and so forth. 5DTM also has fun with the implications of possible time travel and the changes one could set forth in the fabric of time. I was also thankful for the fact that a lot of the characters actually caught on to the possibility of time travel quickly and even accepted it without much question.There are a lot of decent to good performances, especially Timothy Hutton, who capably handles the functions of a likable everyman. The girl who plays his daughter is terrific as well, and Kari Matchett would be a dead-on match for Naomi Watts if she had a smaller nose and slightly larger cheeks. Angus Macfadyen makes for a menacing villain as Bremmer, who's so evil he clearly can't be Neumeyer's killer.Unfortunately, the miniseries begins to stumble by the second half of 'Day 4,' and is just a complete and utter mess by 'Day 5.' The writers can't seem to be able to keep much consistency in the film's concept of time travel. Without giving much away, when certain changes are made to the timeline in the film's climax, newspaper articles and photos from the future are also altered to fit the new timeline (kind of like in Back to the Future), and the changes occur immediately. However, in 'Day 2,' Neumeyer changes a woman's fate, preventing her from getting killed by a collapsing tree. After this change in time, his daughter then reads all the newspaper articles from the file the next day, which still state that the woman died because of the tree. Wouldn't that portion of the article have been altered?The climax is just terrible (moderate spoilers in this paragraph), with every major suspect conveniently converging in the same location with murder on their minds. Just as bad, at least three of the potential killers wouldn't have even targeted Neumeyer if not for the intervention of the briefcase itself, and the one suspect that continuously threatens his life also seems most likely to the deed, but a tacked-on, idiotic surprise revelation completely disregards that possibility, placing the blame firmly on one of the characters that wouldn't have killed him if not for the briefcase's intervention. I can't think of any plausible reason this person would have killed Neumeyer prior to the appearance of the briefcase, but a bullet that conveniently fits into a gun is supposed to lead us to believe it was this one character all along.The identity of the killer is perfectly predictable, since it's always the person we're least likely meant to suspect. Even though I came to the realization very early, I still doubted myself because, as stated earlier, there's just no reason this person would have any true motivation to kill Neumeyer without the briefcase.It's unfortunate, but with such an awful ending, I just can't go out of my way to recommend 5DTM. It's not the movie's only major flaw, the miniseries is constantly padded to fill its allotted running time, and the director goes insanely overboard on the choppy slow motion, often ruining any developing suspense or momentum. Had the miniseries been about forty-five minutes to an hour shorter, I might have said yes as a video rental, but unless if you've got lots of time to kill, this isn't rewarding enough to spend the time and money.

copygeek Spoiler Alert I'm not a big Timothy Hutton fan, but 5 Days to Midnight really impressed me with his performance.The mini series which aired on Sci Fi Channel in the US, revolves around Physics Professor JT Neumeyer, whose wife died giving birth ten years ago to daughter Jesse Tracy Neumeyer, played exquisitely by Gage Golightly(who looks strikingly like Drew Barrymore). On the ten year anniversary of his wife's death (and daughter's birth) JT and Jesse visit the gravesite and find a sleek metal briefcase with JT's name on it.Eventually, JT opens the case and finds a homicide case file with photos of him, dead with a bullet in his head. Initially, JT thinks this is a hoax created by a psychologically disturbed student in his class, Carl Axlerod. However, things start to happen exactly as the contents of the briefcase suggest, and JT realizes that his death by the end of the week may be unstoppable.During the week, JT enlists the help of Police Detective Irwin Sikorski (played by the ever spectacular Randy Quaid)whose name was mentioned in the homicide file. Sikorski helps JT learn that his girlfriend, Claudia Whitney, is not who she says she is. Claudia is married to a Chicago crime lord, Roy Bremmer, who has tracked Claudia to Everett, Washington (the town where JT and Jesse live) where she fled to escape him. Meanwhile, it turns out that JT's brother in law, Brad Hume, a fellow professor at the college who lives a life of luxury, is going broke on bad stock picks and sees the metal briefcase that JT found as his ticket out of bankruptcy. The briefcase, it seems, is made of a futuristic composite of carbon nanotubes and if Brad can back-engineer it he could sell the patent rights for millions of dollars.JT and Jesse attempt to flee the city to escape destiny, but things go awry, leaving JT to face the possibility that he will end up dead on the stage of the sleazy strip joint Buck Naked, just as the file predicts.If this comes out on DVD, it would definitely be worth a rental, though I hope to purchase it if it is released.