THIS week sees the release of a ‘brand new’ twist on the classic Cyrano de Bergerac story. From debutant feature director Toby MacDonald, Old Boys sees Alex Lawther play chronically bullied public schoolboy Amberson, who winds up as the unlikely matchmaker for Jonah Hauer-King’s top jock sports champ Winchester when a French girl comes to town.

We all know that Amberson is a much better match for Agnes (Pauline Etienne) – and that Winchester is deficient in the English language, never mind the French – but that’s rather the point. At its own gentle pace, Old Boys totters along toward inevitably. A messy final act does little to dissuade feelings that MacDonald’s film lacks energy and bravura. Certainly, there are more exciting ways to employ these talents.

Hauer-King’s terrifically foppish performance is a revelation and Lawther charms. Whereas others have been won over by Old Boys in the months since its Edinburgh Film Festival debut last year, I was left feeling rather flat. A pity.

Also out this week is On the Basis of Sex. Anyone who saw Betsy West and Julie Cohen’s terrific, Oscar-nominated documentary RBG will loosely know the plot of this dramatised alternative. Felicity Jones stars here as United States’ Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, the trailblazing liberal judge renowned in America for her habit of forcefully expressing her dissent at court decisions with which she disagrees.

Whilst Ginsberg is today a pop culture icon, On the Basis of Sex sees director Mimi Leder wind back the clock to 1970, when her gender was enough for high powered men to dismiss her capabilities. Adapted for screen by Daniel Stiepleman, the film tells of Ginsberg’s legal battle to see Charles Moritz - a man from Denver who had to hire a nurse to help him care for his aging mother so he could continue to work - receive the tax deduction denied to him as a man.

It’s a worthy drama and should do well. Perhaps awards success was, at one time, the studio’s dream for On the Basis of Sex but instead they have themselves a mid-tier affair. Not bad at all.

And, finally, Liam Neeson this week returns to revenge thrillers with Cold Pursuit. The bad publicity surrounding recent confessions from Neeson might seem to be a hindrance but no one would’ve been talking about the film without it.

Toby Symonds