THE OUTFIT ***

 In this cleverly title picture Mark Rylance is the bespoke tailor in 1950's Chicago who finds himself caught in the middle of a gang war. "The Outfit" of the title could refer to the kind of outfit who kill people or to the kind that Rylance makes in his workshop. The action never leaves said workshop yet director Graham Moore never lets the tension flag.

Rylance, as ever, is superb and there's excellent supporting work from Zoey Deutch as the receptionist in over her head and from Dylan O'Brien, Johnny Flynn and a delightfully over-the-top Simon Russell Beale as various goodfellas. There's also a very nice streak of black humour running through the film and while this may be a 'small' picture it is, in its own way, close to perfect.

PINOCCHIO *

A very different take on "Pinocchio" which, despite the inevitable cuteness, (those awful kid's voices, some terrible songs), is also much darker than expected. Producer, co-director and co-writer Guillermo Del Toro has chosen to set it in fascist Italy, (Mussolini himself is a character), and death, real and imaginary, is never far from the surface. It certainly looks amazing and is something of a technical marvel but both children and their parents will surely miss the fairytale magic that made the Disney version unique.

This might well have seemed like a good idea but that mixture of cuteness and ghoulishness never really gels and its all-star cast struggle to bring it to life, (Ewan McGregor makes for a very annoying cricket). I'm also not sure young kids will get it nor am I sure adults will appreciate Del Toro's messing with familiar material. Indeed it's something of a mess if, at times, a brilliant one.

WHITE NOISE ****

Noah Baumbach's most ambitious film to date is this comedy adapted from Don DeLillo's supposedly unfilmable novel. "White Noise" is in some parts Spielbergian sci-fi and Godardian fantasy with even a dash of Altman thrown in for good measure and you may have trouble finding the Baumbach we all know and love in this heady brew...or perhaps not. Baumbach was always at his best lampooning a certain kind of American lifestyle and this really is a brilliant satire.

Baumbach finds fun in all sorts of places; a disaster movie scenario, a send-up of academia, consumerism and the pharmaceutical industry and once again makes great use of Adam Driver's hang-dog persona and Greta Gerwig's vacant kookiness. He also casts Don Cheadle beautifully against type.

He and Driver are professors in the 'College on the Hill', Cheadle specialising in celebrity studies and Driver in Hitler studies, (apparently Driver's so charasmatic in his work that no-one can mention Hitler's name without a nod in Driver's direction). It may also be Baumbach's most accessible movie to date despite its unlikely source, very funny in a New Yorker kind of way and even serious enough to touch a nerve now and then. It may not be quite in the class of "Marriage Story" but it does confirm Baumbach as one of the best directors in America today.

CRIMES OF THE FUTURE *

 Many have tried but few do 'body-horror' quite like David Cronenberg so I suppose fans should welcome "Crimes of the Future" as a return to the kind of movies that turned us on, or indeed turned us off, Cronenberg in the first place. This is a sci-fi movie grounded in some kind of reality. Yes, there are 'monsters' but the monsters are us, recognizably human, but transmogrified into something beyond what we are now.

You see, humans are growing new organs and the most famous of these is Saul Tenser, (Viggo Mortensen, looking rather disinterested in what's going on). Saul has his new organs removed by his glamorous assistant Caprice, (Lea Seydoux), in a public display, captured mostly on people's mobile phones, which they call 'performance art'. Once upon a time this would qualify as a 'freak-show' but in this age of political correctness there are no longer any 'freaks'; vive la difference!.

You might say with this movie Cronenberg is challenging us to look at the human body differently and defying us to put words like 'freak' or 'deformed' out of our minds entirely or more cynically you could say he was exploiting his characters, feeding on our desire for the bizarre. Is "Crimes of the Future" any less of a horror film than "Shivers" or indeed "Freaks" or even "Nosferatu"?

It seems we love, not only to be frightened, but to be disturbed and it seems once again Cronenberg is out to disturb us. Unfortunately it also seems he may be out to bore us; there are no 'frights' in this horror film which moves at a funereal pace, an exploitation picture that is pretentious enough to think we should take it seriously and it is likely its limited appeal will be only to diehard Cronenberg fans. I doubt if anyone else will consider it one of his better pictures