The Outfit review - threadbare tailor-gangster yarn

★★ THE OUTFIT Mark Rylance lifts tale of cross-stitches and double-crosses in Fifties Chicago

Mark Rylance lifts a tale of cross-stitches and double-crosses in Fifties Chicago

“A man walks in,” Leonard (Mark Rylance) begins. “What about him can you observe? What does a man like to be? And who is he underneath?” Leonard is, in common parlance, a Savile Row tailor – “a cutter from the Row,” he insists – fetched up for murky reasons in 1958 Chicago, where his shop’s best customers are sharp-dressed Mob clan the Boyles.

Compartment No. 6 - strangers on a Russian train sweetly connect

Long-distance travel makes hearts grow fonder

Juho Kuosmanen’s Cannes Grand Prix-winner observes two strangers on a train, taking the arduous journey from Moscow to Arctic Murmansk in 1998. Laura (Seidi Haarla) is a Finnish student hoping to study ancient rock paintings, Ljoha (Yuriy Borisov) a skinhead Russian miner. Their first encounter is disastrously un-cute, as he leeringly suggests she’s heading north to sell herself, pawing her lap for emphasis.

DVD Special Feature: Abel Ferrara returns to the underground

★★★ DVD SPECIAL FEATURE Abel Ferrara returns to the underground

Lockdown thriller 'Zeros And Ones' reflects the abiding concerns of a director caked in New York grime

Zeros And Ones’ poster alludes to Gerard Butler blockbusters (“The Vatican Has Fallen”), but Abel Ferrara’s name guarantees grungier fare. The sleaze of old Times Square still clings to the director, though he’s now a 70-year-old avant-pulp eminence living in Rome.

Blu-ray: Shoot the Messenger

★★★★ BLU-RAY: SHOOT THE MESSENGER Dizzying, thought-provoking meditation on race, education and mental health

Dizzying, thought-provoking meditation on race, education and mental health

“Everything bad that has happened to me has happened because I’m black,” laments teacher Joseph Pascale (David Oyelowo) in Shoot the Messenger, directed by Ngozi Onwurah in 2006 from a script by the late Sharon Foster. Handsomely produced and visually stylish, it was originally broadcast by the BBC.

The Audition review - love and hate at music school

★★★★ THE AUDITION Nina Hoss gives humane warmth to a tortured violin teacher

Nina Hoss gives humane warmth to a tortured violin teacher

If Roman Polanski had directed Whiplash, something like this study of music’s psychological cost might have resulted. Ina Weisse’s film is more incremental and naturalistic, as violin teacher Anna (Nina Hoss) gives special attention to teenage protégé Alexander (Ilja Monti), to the jealous resentment of son Jonas (Serafin Mishiev), while nervously returning to the stage herself.

Morbius review – not so super

★★★ MORBIUS The anti-hero's hurried debut is an opportunity lost

The anti-hero's hurried debut is an opportunity lost

Following the much-maligned Venom (2018) and Venom: Let There Be Carnage (2021), the third film in Sony’s Spider-Man Universe stars Jared Leto as Nobel Prize-winning scientist Dr Michael Morbius. Suffering from a rare blood condition that threatens to take his life, Morbius self-enrols in an experimental cure, combining his DNA with that of a vampire bat and so destining himself for a future as a living vampire.

Blu-ray/DVD: The Invisible Life of Eurídice Gusmão

★★★★ THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF EURIDICE GUSMAO Fever dream melodrama in Fifties Brazil

Cannes prize-winning, fever dream melodrama follows two sisters in Fifties Brazil

Karim Aïnouz’s Cannes Palme d’Or winner and Brazilian Oscar entry is advertised as “a tropical melodrama”, and its Rio seems barely to have left the jungle. We first meet sisters Eurídice (Carol Duarte) and Guida (Julia Stockler, pictured below) becoming separated in lush foliage’s deep greens and humid shadows, and they will go on to live tragically parallel lives, crushed by patriarchal crimes while retaining rebel sparks.