If, like me, you've suspected that films are getting longer, Variety brings confirmation. This summer, movies are on average 14 minutes longer than they were five years ago. The mean running time of this season's cinematic output, the industry rag calculates, is 120 minutes. To my mind, that's about 21 minutes too many.

There's a place for long movies, but the licence to go into three-digit minute counts should be strictly limited to quality directors. Something as distinctly unambitious as the Pirates of the Carribean sequel should never have been allowed to go on anything like as long as 150 minutes. (I do know someone who went for a repeat viewing, but that was "because the air conditioning is great and I fancied a siesta".)

It's painful, of course, to watch your baby get cut: all the effort, all the planning; the blood, the sweat etc. ("Don't cut that line. That line is pivotal! Not that scene - the character development is critical. Not that tracking shot - any fool can see it's integral to the mise en scene!")

Well, tough. It's probably heresy to utter it at the NFT, but I'm all for producers breathing down the necks of indulgent offenders. The sweaty presence of a Weinstein (was it one of those brothers who used to describe movies' running times in terms of bladder capacity - a "two-pee flick" and so on?) in the edit suite chopping out the ephemera is a Good Thing. If the rest is really worth watching, I'll catch it in the director's cut.

I don't yet have the statistics to prove it, but I'd wager that a similar bug has infected the theatre. The last three or four plays I've seen have set my stomach grumbling as they entered their 180th minute.

Raise your glasses, then, to Atom Egoyan's magnificent staging of Beckett's Eh Joe, which had the critics in raptures. Running time? Half an hour.