"Buried" lead

Last night I saw a film called "Buried" about this blue collar truck driver hired as a private contractor in Iraq who gets buried alive for ransom by insurgents and ends up for pretty much the whole movie [spoiler!] stuck in a coffin-sized crate.

This is entertainment? It was like spending the night in my apartment.

Then I started to notice some other recent movies with similar premises. Like "Devil," in which a bunch of people get trapped in a stalled elevator with Satan. Or the upcoming  "127 Hours," based on a true story, in which a hiker gets pinned under a rock and must ponder desperate measures to escape.

That last one sounds a little like last year's "The Canyon," 

in which a yuppie couple suffer a similar fate. Other recent films along these lines include  "Frozen,"

in which some teenagers are stranded on a ski lift, or "Open Water"

from a few years back, in which a couple are accidentally abandoned in the ocean while on a tourist  scuba diving expedition .

This is not escapism. This is no-escapism. Why would people pay money to see something like this?

But then I saw another movie this afternoon, a documentary by Charles Ferguson called "Inside Job,"

which goes over, yet again, how the economy went in the shitter over the past couple of years, this time explaining it in terms that even I could understand. And about how all the people responsible for this travesty were not only not punished, but are being rewarded with bonuses adding up to billions of dollars. And worst of all, are still in charge of the system that they so royally fucked up already.

Talk about no escape. Compared to what these bastards are doing to the country, and to the world, the guy in "Buried" actually gets off pretty easily.