Sad stuff: the DVD release of The Lives of Others happens to more or less line up with the surprising and untimely death of its star, Ulrich Mühe, who succumbed to stomach cancer a few weeks ago, only a day after discussing his illness for the first time. Mühe was a well-known actor and activist in his native East Germany, where he was apparently informed on by not only fellow actors in his troupe, but his wife.

In The Lives of Others, from first-time director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, Mühe plays a buttoned-down Stasi agent charged with spying on a German playwright, and his performance makes the film. If you didn’t catch it in theatres, it’s well worth seeing, for both Mühe and the fascinating, meticulously recreated world of the DDR—the movie has some of the most interesting production design in recent memory, especially if you’re interested in the way things looked behind the Iron Curtain.

Guillaume Canet’s Ne le dis à personne is an enjoyable, if overlong, French thriller about a doctor (François Cluzet, who looks weirdly like Dustin Hoffman) whose wife (Quebec’s own Marie-Josée Croze) is killed by a serial killer, only to apparently re-surface eight years later. The suspense keeps you going to a point, and there’s a cracking chase scene, but the movie overstays its welcome just a bit.

by MARK SLUTSKY