TWO of the most interesting releases of recent months arrive on DVD this week. One: a curious rewrite of the Bonnie and Clyde legacy. The other: interesting for all the wrong reasons.

First up, from director Melina Matsoukas, Queen and Slim boasts fascinating visual panache, sharp writing and a delightful study of gorgeously performed characters. Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya and relative newcomer Jodie Turner-Smith prove equals in excellence as the titular outlaws, with each speaking volumes as much through Lena Waithe’s script as their well judged mannerisms.

Opening in the midsts of a chronically poor Tinder hookup - ‘I liked your picture...I felt sorry for you’ - the film introduces its leads splendidly. Nuggets of their personal histories drift through the sieve of conversation and intelligently so. Note that Waithe never tells directly of Queen’s estrangement from her family but clues enough are there for sound inference. Likewise, the telling exchange in which Slim reveals his motivation for choosing the location of the date to be not budget - as Queen expects - but black ownership. It is this aside too that forewarns of the danger to come. Unlike Bonnie and Clyde, Queen and Slim fall out of legal morality by forced hand. Indeed, the plot itself is served as apt metaphor for a world in which the pair perceived criminality by the privileged white was inherent from birth.

Things ramp up from tender unromantic comedy to crime thriller at alarming speed, prompted by a pull over for the Tinder crossed lovers by Sturgill Simpson’s Officer Reed. A Country star and Grammy winner by trade, Simpson is but one in a raft of impressive cameos brought together for the film. Chloë Sevigny appears late in the film as wife to a friend played by Red Hot Chilli Peppers’ bassist Flea, whilst the ever excellent Bokeem Woodbine features earlier as Queen’s supremely dodgy Uncle Earl.

Many a face, both black and white, come to the aid of Matsoukas’ outlaws across the film but most interesting are those who come to see Queen and Slim as catalysts to some rejuvenated Black Power movement. Matsoukas stumbles slightly in the climax of the confab - direct comparisons made to sexual awakening are clumsy - but the arc proves no less thematically satisfying as a whole.

Also this week: Cats. And that’s enough said about it already.