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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Blaxploitation by way of the backwoods, Poor Pretty Eddie’s setup is tried and true: An outsider, en route to her vacation destination, has car trouble, causing a Deliverance-esque detour into dementia via a Southern-fried Podunk town and the racist, hillbilly denizens who hold court (literally).

Here, our victimized traveler is Liz Wetherly, a national recording sensation played by Leslie Uggams, who does battered and numb so convincingly, you’ll wonder if she took lessons from Tina Turner, bringing a disturbing grindhouse gravitas to the increasingly outlandish escapades. The titular Eddie (Michael Christian) is a delusional wannabe rockabilly singer in the key of an Eddie Cochran, just waiting for his big break. He’s been leading around sloshed sugar mama Bertha (Shelley Winters), who hopes to marry her poor, pretty Eddie.

When Uggams is towed into town by Ted Cassidy (Lurch from The Addams Family), Eddie recognizes the star and tries to seduce her. Baffled when his booty call is shot down, he resorts to forceful, nonconsensual boot-knockin’. It’s surely one of the most surreal rape scenes on film, as it’s spliced with an equally graphic slow-mo scene of Cassidy breeding his dog!

I guarantee there was no “test screening” for the very un-PC Poor Pretty Eddie, aka Redneck County, a shocking trip even today. It makes my heart yearn for the era of the drive-in. Where else could you see the likes of Lurch, Winters, Slim Pickens and Dub Taylor in one movie? —Joshua Jabcuga

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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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