DVD

It’s grim in parts of London. That’s the main takeaway from Disobedience (15) I’ve seen three-month-old washingup water look more inviting than the skies on show here. No wonder local girl Ronit (Rachel Weisz) fled to Manhattan. But with the death of her rabbi father (Anton Lesser), she’s obliged to return and feel uneasy all over again. Her unease isn’t prompted just by the weather. The locals look at her no less coldly. Except for Esti (Rachel McAdams). Esti might be married to the sternly disapproving rabbi wannabe Dovid (Alessandro Nivola), but she can’t take her eyes off Ronit. They have a past, it seems, but even after one of the steamiest hotel bedroom sessions the movies have ever given us, do they have a future? Such is the question that motors the second half of Sebastián Lelio’s quietly sensational drama. It’s a long second half. Disobedience outstays its welcome because Lelio doesn’t know when to end it. But try taking your eyes off McAdams and Weisz (whose brainchild this adaptation of Naomi Alderman’s novel the picture was) as they time and again serve up what is still the cinema’s most special effect – human faces coming to terms with the world. We’re out of the world with First Man (12)

a biopic of Apollo astronaut Neil Armstrong. As our man on the Moon, Ryan Gosling, pictured, is light of foot, but his mournful mush is a bad fit for Armstrong’s legendary pep. That ennui infects the whole of Damien Chazelle’s picture, and what is plainly intended as a fizzy anniversary tribute to the great fantasy of the past century turns out morose and, well, moony. Don’t miss Human Desire (PG) Fritz Lang’s noirish take on Zola’s La Bête

Humaine. It includes a stellar cast (Gloria Grahame, Glenn Ford, Broderick Crawford) and a trainline headed straight for doom. Unmissable.