Eric Shapiro is an excellent fantasist who churns out one great short story after another. In making the jump to storytelling for the big screen, he proves he can wring suspense visually, too. He directs Rule of Three from a script by his wife, Rhoda Jordan, although the idea generated with him.

And it’s a terrific idea, taking place almost entirely within one hotel room, but in three points of time involving three sets of characters. First, there’s Jon (Ben Siegler), a father distraught over his missing daughter, Lo (Jordan). Frustrated that the detectives are dragging their feet, he goes to the desert hotel where she was last seen and finds a vaguely threatening note promising him closure at 3 p.m.

Second are Lo and her boyfriend (Cary Woodworth), attempting to coerce one of their friends into a threesome, and finally finding a willing partner (Tiffany Shepis). Finally, there’s a sad-sack loner (Lee Schall) attempting to buy roofies for a girl he likes, so he calls a delivering drug dealer (Rodney Eastman, I Spit on Your Grave) who says, “The truth is a lot like pussy: It’s always a little uglier when you shine some light on it.” The link between the first groups of people is obvious, but the second? Your initial thoughts are incorrect.

Shapiro’s too smart for that. Although at times too slowly paced, this quiet thriller lulls you into a false sense of complacency, generating a rhythm that suggests the night is going to pass uneventfully. It’s not, and this is a good thing; it’s called unpredictability. Shapiro and Jordan have a last-minute ending in store that you’re not likely to see coming; as they pull those strings tight into a double knot, you’ll be shocked, yet you’ll smile at being cleverly duped. —Rod Lott

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When a thriller set beneath Papua New Guinea name-checks National Geographic magazine not once, but twice, it’s safe to say the focus might be on pretty pictures than pulse-quickening. Such it is with Sanctum, an Australian film to which James Cameron has attached his name as executive producer, because the guy gets erect for projects dealing with underwater exploration.

But don’t expect The Abyss. Fantastic Four‘s Ioan Gruffudd plays a billionaire financing a cave-diving scubafest that takes expert Frank (Richard Roxburgh) and his crew through tight squeezes as they venture through heretofore unexplored territory. Disaster strikes when a cyclone up top floods the caverns.

From there, it’s a swim for survival, with nature providing just as much conflict as Frank’s whiny, put-upon son (Rhys Wakefield). Any guess as to whether he and Pop will work things out by the end? Originality is not Sanctum‘s strong suit. I’m not sure it has one, but if it does, it’s in making viewers queasy with claustrophobia. (That could be because I was weak from hunger.)

Bad dialogue clashes with bad acting from all involved except Roxburgh. Gruffudd overacts to the point of being a cartoon (can we call a ban on all Apocalypse Now references in helicopter scenes from here on out?) and Alice Parkinson, as his girlfriend, reads her lines as if she’s expecting to be dubbed. And sorry, Jim, but the 3-D isn’t All That. Sanctum may not stink, but it sinks. —Rod Lott

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How can you tell Lipstick was made in the ’70s? Two out of the three credited experts are male. Back then, you could make a movie about rape and still barely consider the female point of view. This probably explains why it’s best remembered today as a lurid melodrama, and not the call to social action some of those involved clearly wanted it to be.

In the film, Margaux Hemingway plays a model whose life is torn apart when she is raped by a psychotic music teacher (Chris Sarandon). When the jury buys his lawyer’s argument that she was asking for it by having a vagina, she is suddenly unemployable and ready to leave town after her last photo shoot.

Tragically, however, Sarandon is in the same building as the shoot and decides to attack Margaux’s adolescent sister (her real-life sibling, Mariel). Knowing the law isn’t on her side, Margaux decides to grab a shotgun and ensure Sarandon never hurts anyone else ever again (by shooting him in the balls).

Lipstick ends with the jury exonerating Margaux via an obviously last-minute voiceover. Apparently, the irony that she might go to prison after her attacker was freed was too much for audiences to take, and the producers decided to go with a happier ending. This irony might have gone a long way toward justifying the film’s long middle stretch of interminable courtroom scenes, but we’ll never know. Instead, the end result is a mostly terrible movie with a handful of effectively gripping scenes that can only be recommended to die-hard fans of the rape-revenge genre. —Allan Mott

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The 1970s were ripe for great crime movies. Telefon may not be the pinnacle of the genre, but it’s good. It’s an unlikely vehicle for star Charles Bronson, as a KGB agent (but with no accent) trying to stop World War III by defeating rogue Russian Donald Pleasence, who’s using the telephone to dial up various Yankees who unknowingly have subliminal missions buried in their brains.

When Donald calls and recites a Robert Frost poem, it triggers them to enter a trance and embark on a suicide mission, whether that be taking out a military installation, an oil refinery or a phone company. It’s awfully repetitive, especially for a Don Siegel film, but its ‘70s tough-as-nails attitude cannot be denied.

Lee Remick, however beautiful, is clearly miscast as Bronson’s American agent who goes undercover with him (but thankfully, not under covers). If anything, Telefon serves as proof that Tyne Daly (here a CIA analyst) was ugly long before she got portly. —Rod Lott

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Britain’s Jekyll may be the best movie never made of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, because it was actually a made-for-television miniseries. The BBC six-parter is a true reinvention of both concept and character, making for a most unpredictable ride.

Front and center is James Nesbitt (Match Point) as Jekyll, a doctor who’s keeping quite the secret from his lovely wife (Gina Bellman, TV’s Leverage) and their two sons. He’s spending time with another lovely, younger woman (Michelle Ryan, TV’s Bionic Woman). Oh, they’re not having an affair — he’s hired her to keep him and everyone else safe from his other, not-better half, the lecherous, fanged gadabout who calls himself Hyde.

But this is not the Jekyll/Hyde tale you’ve seen dozens of times before, unless there’s one I don’t know about where Hyde kills a lion, tosses the supposed king of the jungle onto the van of his would-be captors, and then sings a spirited round of the “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” while standing atop the zoo’s caged den. Not a one of its six hours is a repeat of any before it.

In fact, what begins as a suburban horror story flips its switch into sci-fi mode as the high-tech conspiracy against Jekyll grows deeper and his origins are told in time-tripping fashion. Nesbitt plays both sides of the coin to excellence; his Hyde is a saucy, sexually charged ball of confidence and venom, giving the show a darkly comic veneer. The epic comes from the diabolically creative mind of Steven Moffat, who more recently took the same purists-be-damned, start-from-scratch approach to the world’s greatest detective with the BBC’s brilliant Sherlock. No shit! —Rod Lott

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