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Average User Score: 9 (21 sources)

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Stubob1983

-1

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A very good drama with a great story. I don't watch many foreign films but I like this one.

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Posted mar 10, 2008 5:13 am pt

heyhammy

-1

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This is an AMAZING film! Most well written stories derive from novels, but this screenplay should be the seed to a great book. That sentiment alone should speak for how compelling, brilliant and irresistably touching this film is. Go see it! It's...
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This is an AMAZING film! Most well written stories derive from novels, but this screenplay should be the seed to a great book. That sentiment alone should speak for how compelling, brilliant and irresistably touching this film is. Go see it! It's probably better than all five movies nominated for an Oscar in the best film category (this is up for best foreign film).

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Posted feb 20, 2007 2:03 pm pt

Irongrinder1

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In the DDR the stasi runs its espionage business on everyone they think are against socialism. One of the victims is a writer for the theater who gets one of the most thorough stasi agents on his back. Is he clean or not?

The movie...
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In the DDR the stasi runs its espionage business on everyone they think are against socialism. One of the victims is a writer for the theater who gets one of the most thorough stasi agents on his back. Is he clean or not?

The movie keeps the tension high the whole time with great performances of Sebastian Koch and Ulrich Mühe. They make you wonder what their characters would be like if not for the stasi. It's actually terrifying how much the Stasi did to keep the people in check and the situations (sometimes even funny ones) that evolved out of all the spying.

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Posted feb 3, 2007 5:48 pm pt

• [+] The New Yorker
  
  100
  If there is any justice, this year's Academy Award for best foreign-language film will go to The Lives of Others, a movie about a world in which there is no justice.

  by Anthony Lane | Read Full Review »
• [+] The New York Times
  
  100
  The easy, complacent distance that informs much historical filmmaking is almost entirely absent from this supremely intelligent, unfailingly honest movie.

  by A.O. Scott | Read Full Review »
• [+] Wall Street Journal
  
  100
  Rather than dwell on the darkness and squalor, von Donnersmarck has fashioned a genuinely thrilling tale, leavened with sly humor, that works ingenious variations on the theme of cat and mouse, speaks to current concerns about personal privacy and illuminates the timeless conflict between totalitarianism and art.

  by Joe Morgenstern | Read Full Review »
• [+] USA Today
  
  100
  A thoroughly compelling political thriller, at once intellectually challenging and profoundly emotional.

  by Claudia Puig | Read Full Review »
• [+] TV Guide
  
  100
  A tense and tightly plotted fictional thriller is based on real tactics used by the Stasi -- East Germany's secret police force -- to spy on and interrogate their own citizens.

  by Ken Fox | Read Full Review »
• [+] Slate
  
  100
  It's an intricate, ambiguous and deeply satisfying movie, a tautly plotted tale of state surveillance and personal betrayal that ultimately becomes an ode to the transformative power of art.

  by Dana Stevens | Read Full Review »
• [+] Time
  
  100
  Smartly crafted, impeccably acted, The Lives of Others packs a subtle punch, from its creepy first images to its poignant finale.

  by Richard Corliss | Read Full Review »
• [+] San Francisco Chronicle
  
  100
  A great film, the best I've seen since Terrence Malick's "The New World," and far and away the richest and most brilliantly acted picture to be released this Oscar season.

  by Mick LaSalle | Read Full Review »
• [+] Washington Post
  
  100
  To watch "Lives" is not just to enjoy a fabulously constructed timepiece; it's to appreciate a deft cautionary tale.

  by Desson Thomson | Read Full Review »
• [+] Portland Oregonian
  
  100
  It's so full-blooded, smart, sexy, tense and absorbing, so cleverly written and shot and cut, so filled with superb acting and music, so perfect in its closing moment, that it surely ranks with the most impressive debuts in world cinema.

  by Shawn Levy | Read Full Review »
• [+] Philadelphia Inquirer
  
  100
  Lives is a best-foreign-film nominee competing in a year that at least three movies in this category are stronger than Oscar's best-picture contenders.

  by Carrie Rickey | Read Full Review »
• [+] Baltimore Sun
  
  100
  The unique, serious fun of this movie - and forbidding reputation aside, it is exhilarating - lies in the way that Wiesler, Dreyman and Sieland end up collaborating unknowingly on their own Design for Living (for a while, it's like Noel Coward for moral cowards).

  by Michael Sragow | Read Full Review »
• [+] Film Threat
  
  100
  von Donnersmarck creates a milieu so realistic that the attention-worthy setting becomes just a backdrop, while an intricate tale, as suspenseful as it is humanistic, takes over.

  by Matthew Sorrento | Read Full Review »
• [+] Empire
  
  100
  Already fêted, von Donnersmarck's debut sets a closely focused, personal story against a more expansive backdrop of politics and power games -- a moving, enlightening tale of recent times.

  by Alan Morrison | Read Full Review »
• [+] Chicago Sun-Times
  
  100
  A powerful but quiet film, constructed of hidden thoughts and secret desires.

  by Roger Ebert | Read Full Review »