Deborah Ross

The Program, as directed by Stephen Frears, is a biopic of Lance Armstrong, the American cyclist and ‘sporting hero’ who came back from cancer to win the Tour de France seven times before he was exposed as a drugs cheat. It is a thrilling fall-from-grace story, the sort that brings you out in goosebumps just thinking about it — to know you have cheated, to know you are about to be found out, to live with having been found out; how might any of this feel? This should have served Armstrong up on a plate, but it somehow doesn’t. It covers the ground, but it’s underpowered dramatically. It’s like watching a perfunctory documentary, acted out. It doesn’t give us the man. I wanted to see him unravel.

99 Homes is an American drama about house repossession. Bummer, you might think, but here is what you don’t yet know: films about house repossessions can be electrifying. Or at least this one is. Set in 2008 or thereabouts, against the backdrop of the real-estate bust and ensuing foreclosure crisis, this has much to say about a system that allows the rich to get richer while the poor get shat on (basically), but, above and beyond that, it is also nail-bitingly tense, as gripping as any thriller, and it will totally tear your heart out. In terms of impact, it may even be the Cathy Come Home of our times.

Legend is a biopic of the Kray twins starring Tom Hardy as Reggie and Tom Hardy as Ronnie, so it’s buy one get one free, and this offer will sell the film. It sold it to me, who would otherwise have little interest in the Krays, and was never moved to correspond with either (see Harry Mount's Arts Feature; I did once write to David Cassidy, but did not receive a reply). So it’s Hardy’s performance(s) that’s the draw, and Hardy is dazzling because Hardy is dazzling, not because Legend is especially dazzling.

Andrew Haigh’s 45 Years stars Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay as a long married couple whose relationship is disturbed by a letter relating to his first girlfriend, a German who died in the Swiss alps 50 years earlier. Aside from that, not much happens. A shopping trip to Norwich is about as exciting as it gets, on the action front. But this is one of those ‘inaction films’, as I call them, in which nothing happens, but everything happens; it is simple yet absorbingly profound. And it will resonate. It will resonate afterwards and it will resonate the next day and it will resonate the day after that. In fact I am still resonating, and rather wish I wasn’t, so I could move on with my own life. It’s rare for a film to affect me in this way.

Gemma Bovery is a modern-day refashioning of Gustave Flaubert’s literary masterpiece Madame Bovary, and while such refashionings can work well in some instances — Bridget Jones as Pride and Prejudice, for example, or West Side Story as Romeo and Juliet, if we want to go further back —this is not one of those instances. Instead, this is that other kind of instance; the one that desperately makes you wish they’d left well alone. It’s based on the graphic novel by the writer-artist Posy Simmonds which, in turn, was based on her comic strip in the Guardian.

The Legend of Barney Thomson is the directorial debut of actor Robert Carlyle, and it’s one of those black comedies about a serial killer in which, as the bodies pile up, plausibility edges closer and closer to the window until it flies out completely. (No. Wait. Come back! I’ll massage your feet!) This wouldn’t, in fact, matter at all if there were something else to hang onto; if the characters were involving, or the story was told with wit, zip and panache, but it just monotonously drones on. The central figure is a barber so I guess you could say this is Sweeney Plod rather than, you know, that other one.

True Story is based on the book True Story, which is itself based on a true story, so there is a lot of truth knocking about, I guess you could say, but absolutely none of it is at all interesting. It sounds as if it will be fascinating, as it’s about the disgraced New York Times reporter Mike Finkel’s relationship with Christian Longo, a man accused of murdering his wife and three children, but it goes absolutely nowhere. At one stage someone says to Finkel about Longo, ‘He doesn’t deserve to have his story told,’ to which Finkel replies, ‘Everyone deserves to have their story told,’ to which I would have said, had I been asked, ‘None of you deserves to have your story told. Now, all of you, go away and behave.

If heartwarming, against-the-odds, triumph-over-adversity, wrong-side-of-the-tracks films float your boat and you are in no way demanding then The Choir is your boat floated, pretty much, but otherwise it’s nothing we haven’t seen before, hundreds of times. This is one of those films that appears to have never watched any other films, or it surely wouldn’t have bothered. My own particular boat, as you’ve probably already surmised, was not floated. It didn’t even leave the dock. Chances are, it may even be all rusted up by now. I was initially attracted to seeing this film because 1) I do adore Dustin Hoffman and 2) I do adore choirs and 3) I honestly had no idea quite how rubbish it would be. Dustin Hoffman. Choirs. What’s not to love?

Asif Kapadia’s documentary about Amy Winehouse, whom Tony Bennett describes as ‘one of the truest jazz singers that ever lived’, and who died of alcohol poisoning at 27 (FFS), is masterly and gripping, which is a pity, as you can’t look away. You will want to look away, and may even yearn to do so once the heroin comes into play, and the crack, and that husband and that gig in Belgrade, when she was all unsteady, shuffling and broken beneath the big hair, but you can’t. Oh, Amy, I kept thinking, if only — if only — you’d said, ‘Yes, yes, yes’. It is almost unbearable in this way.

The writer and director Peter Bogdanovich has made three of my favourite films of all time (The Last Picture Show, Paper Moon, What’s Up, Doc?) but I don’t think I’ll be adding his latest, She’s Funny That Way, to the list. It’s a screwball comedy of the old school and, although it is slightly intriguing at first, where is all this manic activity going? You get your answer after 96 minutes. The answer is: absolutely nowhere. Set in New York, it stars the British actress Imogen Poots laying on a Brooklyn accent with several trowels and also a spade. (Oh, how one yearns for just the one trowel.) She plays Izzy Patterson, a ‘call girl’ — never ‘prostitute’ in these instances — and straight off I’m in trouble.

Mr Holmes stars Ian McKellen as the great detective in his old age and while it could have proved a touching character study — who are you, not just when your mind starts to fail, but when the mind for which you are famed starts to fail? — it veers off in so many tedious directions that the end product is lumbering and leaden and will require 22 espressos thrown back in quick succession beforehand, along with several Red Bulls, if you are to have any hope of staying awake. (I did not know this beforehand, and therefore dozed quite significantly.) You know, if I were invited to give a talk at some film school, which still hasn’t happened, weirdly, I would say, ‘Kids, before you point a single camera, sit down and ask yourselves: what is this film about?

With Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Act of Killing you’d be minded to think that’s it, that’s the Indonesian genocide (1965–66) done, but now he’s returned with a second film that is equally stunning, equally riveting — in its horrifying way — and equally unforgettable. To have one such film in you, but two? I think it is now safe to conclude: there are good documentary makers and there are excellent documentary makers and then there is Joshua Oppenheimer, who is amazing.

Queen & County is John Boorman’s follow-up to his 1987 semi-autobiographical film Hope & Glory, although why a sequel now, after 28 years, I don’t know. (We’re not in regular contact.) I can only tell you that if you absolutely loved the first film, as I did — and still do — the news I’m about to deliver is not great, but there’s no avoiding it, so here you are: this is tonally confused, emotionally unengaging, doesn’t seem relevant in any way, and as for Bill, who was once so bright and charming and promising, he’s nothing special any more. I don’t know what I expected him to turn out like, but dull? I didn’t see that coming, I confess.

Man Up is a British rom-com starring Simon Pegg as Jack and Lake Bell as Nancy. Nancy’s problem, at the outset, is that she is 34 and still single — has yet to ‘man up’ — and is therefore a failure, and if you can buy that as a premise for a film, then that’s your look-out. I’m old and I’m tired and I can’t be always telling you what’s right and what’s plain wrong. So it opens with Nancy, who is single (at 34!; the horror!), attending a friend’s engagement party and refusing to come down from her hotel room as her love life, we are given to understand, has been somewhat disastrous and now she has a pathological fear of putting herself out there.

Firstly, a message to all Marvel fanboys: there is nothing for you here. Nothing. No CGI, no endless battles, no superheroines with their boobs on show, no deafening soundtrack and no Andy Serkis popping up for reasons I still can’t fathom, and don’t care to fathom anyhow. So go away and heckle someone else, unless you want to stick around, in which case, be warned: this is a proper film with proper acting and it even comes with a proper story that makes proper sense. Some films are like this, you know. This adaptation of Thomas Hardy’s novel is directed by Thomas Vinterberg, scripted by David Nicholls, and stars Carey Mulligan and Matthias Schoenaerts, the hunk du jour who is everywhere at present.

Avengers: Age of Ultron is the second film in the Avengers franchise, as written and directed by Joss Whedon, and stars Robert Downey Jr as Tony Stark (Iron Man), Chris Evans as Captain America, Chris Hemsworth as Thor, Scarlett Johansson as Black Widow, Jeremy Renner as Hawkeye and Mark Ruffalo as Dr Bruce Banner, aka the Incredible Hulk, who probably had to be included, as no one would have wished to piss him off. (‘IF HULK NOT IN MOVIE HULK WILL THROW CAR!’) I am not among the target audience for this particular genre, but I attended with my son (22), which was useful, as I found it confusing — a lot of prior knowledge is assumed — and he was able to fully debrief me afterwards as to who was who, and where Samuel L.