Elbowings, buttings, anklings, maimings, studdings, anarcho-thespian handbaggings – the figure formerly known as the man in black is the thin line between the beautiful game and the collapse of civilised society as we know it. And what is his reward? Players abuse him. Crowds bay for his blood. Presidents call for his execution (Polish ones do anyway).

Notwithstanding legends of earlier generations such as Fangio or Jim Clark, it's Ayrton Senna whose name commands the most mystique in the annals of Formula One motor racing. Nor is his reputation limited merely to so-called "petrolheads". Away from the track, he became a kind of deity in his native Brazil, both for his racing feats and his charitable endeavours now continued by the Instituto Ayrton Senna.

There have been stunning films about surfing, like Riding Giants, and also at least one masterpiece about the slums of Rio - City of God. This documentary combines both. It focuses on the lives of two teenage boys, Fabio and Naama, and their dream of escaping the violence of Rio’s slums by carving out a career as surf pros. The only obvious alternative is a life of crime in the pay of drug gangs in the favelas, where the statistics say 15,000 are killed by guns in Brazil every year. The boys are, the film implies, surfing to save their lives.

Which came first? The low national self-esteem or the shit national football team? Is it possible, in the interests of blending in with one’s countrymen, to stimulate in oneself a love of the beautiful game? And can Britishness be boiled down to an application test? Total Football, from the two-man company Ridiculusmus, is a fleet-footed comedy which investigates the shifting parameters of what it means to belong in a country where symbols of national pride are hard to come by. Unless you count Wayne Rooney.

To the relief of many an international batsman, there has never been anything to rival the stupendous West Indies teams which bestrode Planet Cricket with intimidating ferocity from the late Seventies into the Nineties. Fire in Babylon is the story of the side that Clive Lloyd built, and the way it became a formidable socio-political force in the Caribbean as well as a sporting global superpower.

Can one enjoy watching a film supposedly about dance in which competition and being Number One is all and the word “artistry” is not mentioned once? And in which performers are nameless numbers? And the documentary-maker shows not a scintilla of curiosity about why this might be? One might, if it were handled with a twisted sense of humour and cutting observation.

Following yesterday's season-opening Australian Grand Prix, McLaren's team boss Martin Whitmarsh was extremely unhappy that his driver Jenson Button had been given a drive-through penalty. Button had overtaken a Ferrari by cutting a corner, and should have yielded the position back, but McLaren requested guidance from the race controllers. Instead, all they got was a punishment from the stewards which retarded Button's progress by 23 seconds. "I feel a bit harshly treated," moaned Whitmarsh.

At first sight, “Afghanistan cricket team” might be labled along with “The kosher guide to cooking pork” or “How to keep your promises, by N Clegg”. But in 2008, Taj Malik, an Afghan player passionate about the game, decided to try to take his national team into the world’s elite level and this film (part of the Storyville strand), by three young film-makers, Tim Albone, Leslie Knott and Lucy Martens, followed their efforts over two years.

A paean to working-class bellicosity set (and shot) in the rundown industrial town of Lowell, Massachusetts, David O’Russell’s boxing film The Fighter relishes its brawls. In one inspired scene, a character is unceremoniously slammed to the ground and punched repeatedly in the face. Not Queensberry Rules? That’s because the assailant is the eponymous pugilist’s girlfriend and her victim one of his seven sisters, who have arrived on her porch with their mother one morning to wrest him away from the siren’s clutches.

Made with the same furious energy which has characterised so much of Danny Boyle’s output, 127 Hours goes from the macro to the micro. It opens with a pounding split-screen assault of imagery depicting the frenetic, dehumanising nature of modern life, before closing in on one man’s five-day ordeal in a crack in the earth. In Boyle’s exuberant interpretation of Aron Ralston’s real-life story, what starts out as a cruel lesson in the perils of hubris quickly reveals itself as a life-or-death scenario.