On the Basis of Sex (12A)***

Dir: Mimi Leder

With: Felicity Jones, Armie Hammer, Kathy Bates

Runtime: 120 minutes

MIMI Leder’s biopic of Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suffers from a clear case of terrible timing. Focussing on her entry to Harvard Law School in 1956 as one of only a handful of women, On the Basis of Sex goes on to chart Ginsburg's first years as a law professor, leading up to the point when she takes on one of the many cases which were to boost equal rights for millions of American women. With RBG (or “The Notorious RBG” as she is famously nicknamed by a generation of new young admirers), played by Felicity Jones, the film also covers her years as a young mother and wife, when she was successfully juggling all manner of responsibilities. At one point, with her husband sick, she attends his law lectures, plus her own, and looks after a baby. Jones delivers her usual winning performance as the fiercely intelligent Ginsburg, with Armie Hammer excellent as husband Martin, the love of RBG’s life. Adding to the mix is Kathy Bates as fellow legal pioneer Dorothy Kenyon. So what is the problem? There are three. First, constitutional law does not riveting dialogue make. Second, when not being dull the film plays like an afternoon movie. Three, the documentary RBG, now out on DVD, told the judge’s story brilliantly and is up for two Oscars on Sunday. Tough luck.

Capernaum (15)****

Dir: Nadine Labaki

With: Zain Al Rafeea, Yordanos Shiferaw, Fadi Kamel Yousef

Runtime: 126 minutes

ANOTHER in the running for a statuette at the weekend, this one for best foreign film, is Nadine Labaki’s blistering drama. Already a jury prize winner at Cannes and a host of other film festivals, Capernaum (“chaos”) is the story of 12-year-old Zain (Zain Al Rafeea), a Lebanese boy whose parents’ idea of good child care includes chaining up toddlers and making Zain collect drugs which they then sell. Unable to stand it at home any longer, tiny Zain ends up on the streets, where he has the good fortune to be taken in by an Ethiopian migrant worker, Rahil (Yordanos Shiferaw). For a while things begin to look up as she works and he looks after her baby, but it is not to last and Zain finds himself in ever more dire straits. Ultimately, he settles on a radical solution to his woes, one that involves the courts. Asked why he wants to sue his parents, the boy replies: "Because I was born." Labaki’s film, shot in a Lebanon crowded with Syrian refugees, is a harrowing, heartbreaking watch that makes Dickens even at his angriest look mild. Unforgettable, and the cast, all non-actors, are uniformly excellent and all too convincing.