DVD: A Serious Man, For retail & rental, (Universal)

The Coen brothers' deadpan tragicomedy stars a terrific Michael Stuhlbarg as a Midwestern physics lecturer whose solid mid-1960s life is knocked sideways by an unfaithful wife, a hapless brother, a lawn-annexing neighbour, a blackmailing student, and more besides.

The razor wit and Coenish idiosyncrasies are often hilarious, but they can't dispel the perennial suspicion that the brothers make their films up as they go along, without quite knowing why.