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Steadfast 1950s housewife Vera Drake (Imelda Staunton) cleans for posh folk, cooks for her tight-knit family and offers warmth and an endless stream of tea.

Unbeknown to her family, she also provides basic abortions for young women. And when she's caught, it causes a furore that no amount of tea can dampen.

Mike Leigh's passion for the working-class milieu here pushes close to stereotyping: the employers are as hard and glittering as their jewellery, while the Drakes are all salt-of-the-earth types incapable of expressing their feelings. The result is lots of chat but not much insightful conversation.

Staunton is superb but her character's inability to explain her behaviour to her loved ones (or us) contrasts unpleasantly with her drawn-out, talky trial and it's frustrating to never really comprehend a course of action that has torn her life apart.

Extras: Documentary.
Rating: ***

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Sixty years ago, as World War II ended, a young Italian director took to the streets to make a film about the Italian resistance and the desperate choices people must make in wartime. Rome, Open City, based on a true story and shot in real streets and houses in a pseudo-documentary style, helped launch Italian Neo-Realist cinema and remains as startling as it was influential.

In fact, many thought it was a doc but the three screenwriters included a young Federico Fellini. Anna Magnani shines as a pregnant bride caught up in the resistance but the whole cast is superb.

The film's style and substance sing with the contributors' joy at their longawaited freedom.

Extras: Recent making-of doc The Children Of Rome, Open City.
Rating: *****

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Ian McEwan's superb novel about obsessive passion, Enduring Love, is dumbed down by Roger (Notting Hill) Michell, although the central performances are excellent and the cinematic opening scene is beautifully rendered.

Daniel Craig is the academic haunted by his inability to prevent a hot air balloon accident; unfortunately, it's not just his guilt that's haunting him.

Fellow bystander Rhys Ifans seems to pop up wherever Craig goes and his persistence soon starts to eat away at Craig's relationship with artist Samantha Morton.

Ifans is rather over the top as stalker-geek but the tension is genuine and the underlying question - how responsible are we for our and others' lives? - adds meat to a crowd-pleasing broth.