60-second cinema

8 out of 10 Great. Great story. Great actors ( Mortensen , Cassel ). Great director ( Cronenberg ). Great, messy fight scene (cf The Bourne Ultimatum ). Possibly even worth a nine. I'll elaborate later. Update: I actually did elaborate later, but a dropped connection meant my work-of-a-lifetime review disappeared into the ether. Now I'm too depressed to write it again. Maybe later. I'll make sure it hits the top of the feed when I do.

5 out of 10 A thoroughly depressing tale of surveillance from the days of the Stasi , told slowly and with barely even a flicker of dark humour. In fact, perhaps the only uplifting bit of the whole thing came in literally the last second of the film and, on balance, it wasn't worth the wait. There have been a lot of good things said about The Lives of Others, but unfortunately, it ended up living up to my expectations rather than my hopes. That's not to say it's a bad story or poorly acted, for it was neither; just that I got very little out of it. Am I right to mark it down just because it wasn't a happy film? I dunno, but the score reflects my level of desire to see it again.

10 out of 10 Caught this while channel-surfing last weekend and realised I just had to watch it again. And you know what? It's still a great film. In fact, it struck me just how little it had aged. For something that came out of the 80's, that's no mean feat. Granted, some of the leading lady's fashion choices were noticeably... wrong (shoulder pads ahoy!), but on the whole, it could've been from any era. Of course, a large part of what makes it work so well is Tom Hanks . He's utterly believable as a suddenly-grown-up boy and makes the film the charming experience it is. Yes, it's a bit cheesey, but so what? It works, dammit. Top marks.

1 out of 10 Dear Sean, Gimme my goddamn two hours back. Tell you what - watching Zeta-Jones stick her bum in the air , twice, was fun - I'll settle for an hour 55. Yours, Lindsay