The most claustrophobia-inducing film I’ve ever seen, 93 minutes entirely inside a coffin, with one actor who can barely move, lit mainly by his Zippo lighter but often in total darkness, Buried adds one more cinematic chapter, for the politically minded, to the story, Why We Shouldn’t Be In Iraq. Along the way, his phone calls – on a cell phone left in the coffin by his ransom-minded captor – point up the daily selfishness and occasional duplicity in the outside world, without distracting our focus from the panicked, desperate Everyman, buried alive. While American heartthrob Ryan Reynolds is good, if not great, as the captured truck driver, it is interesting that the movie – a metaphor for U.S. involvement in the Middle East? – is a Spanish production, directed by Rodrigo Cortes.

Written, directed and starring Ben Affleck, this could be added to the list of recent vanity projects, especially since his character is the only one who gets away. The star for me, however, was Rebecca Hall, who got to portray big-time ambivalence, and did it beautifully. The bank robbery scenes were far-fetched, but that didn’t bother the University of Minnesota football players who cheered the robbers in preparation for their game with USC the next morning. Jeremy Renner is deserving of Supporting Actor awards for his performance, but overall the flick wasn’t up to the Dennis Lehane standard.

     More than a harmless piffle, this Will Ferrell-Mark Wahlberg comedy was replete with cute moments and laugh-out-loud jokes. I know, because I was the only one in the theater. (Several days later I watched Caddyshack via Netflix. By comparison, that movie was stupid – the Rodney Dangerfield character embarrassing. I didn’t cringe once at The Other Guys.)

     A showcase, if not vanity project, for Patricia Clarkson, the movie stands or falls on how you view her character’s actions. We’re handicapped by not knowing much about where she comes from and what her husband is like, until it is too late. But existing in a kind of vacuum doesn’t excuse her blithe ignorance of her surroundings – walking into a men-only coffee shop, walking down the Cairo streets showing cleavage, hopping onto a bus to Gaza without guidance or help. I didn’t see Siddiq Ali’s lure as lover (but the women I was with did). So without a compelling romance or an understandable central character, all that was left was a formulaic travelogue, in which each scene was too obviously designed to show off a Cairo tourist attraction – mosque, felucca, souq, pyramids, etc. I’m only surprised they didn’t go to the Cairo Museum to see King Tut.

Are foreign films more “realistic” because a) they stick to more realistic plots – e.g., no gratuitous car-chase scenes; or b) because they use actors I’ve never seen before? If Matt Damon had played the young prison guard and Bruce Willis the tough-guy prisoner, would I have reacted as I did to Julianne Moore and Annette Bening in The Kids Are All Right? Instead, I had no doubt that everyone in this Spanish flick, from the scrungiest prisoner to the federal negotiator, was exactly whom they were portraying. Beyond that, the setup was brilliant: the day before he is to start working, Juan Oliver is caught in a prison riot. To avoid certain death, he pretends to be a new prisoner and because of his quick wit and courage becomes an adviser to Malamadre, the head thug, in negotiations with the authorities. You can see his mind working as he weighs the consequences of every word and action, and it is the finest of lines he walks. But everyone on both sides of this standoff is faced with excruciating life-or-death decisions, and most often with two masters to serve. Nothing turns out as expected, but we don’t feel cheated. We feel we have witnessed a scintillating story, expertly played.