It's a mid-life crisis picture that finds tight-ass electrical engineer Al Fountain (gawky John Turturro) thinking he's losing his mind when he sees bicycles ridden backwards and coffee that flows out of cups. When the job he's on is unexpectedly cancelled, Al decides to take a few days before returning home and runs into "The Kid" (Sam Rockwell), a flaky delinquent living wild in the woods. From there DiCillo's punchline isn't hard to write.

All of which does tend to mean Box of Moonlight isn't quite as ferociously original as maybe this erstwhile Jarmusch cameraman would like to believe. Its message is a simple - if uplifting - one, but the chief joy of the film comes from the genuinely winsome atmosphere with which it's infected. Rockwell and Turturro play a smilesome script to the hilt, and the film finds yet another winning part for DiCillo regular Catherine Keener. But it's the writer's quirks (the axe-wielding OAP God-botherers are particularly good) and his ability to instil the piece with a timeless, vaguely melancholic air than wins through. The end is glib and faintly unpalatable, but otherwise this is yet another modest but appetising offering from one of US indie's brightest stars.