Michelle Williams is simply a revelation as Marilyn Monroe in Cranford director Simon Curtis’ My Week with Marilyn, embodying the iconic Hollywood sex symbol with such emotional and psychological acuity that she instantly erases the memory of decades of bad Monroe impersonators.

The movie itself is a lush and enchanting bit of behind-the-scenes showbiz lore, based on the memoirs of the late filmmaker Colin Clark. An Oxford grad, Clark (Eddie Redmayne) hustles his way into a job as third assistant director on Sir Laurence Olivier’s 1957 film The Prince and the Showgirl, where he soon finds himself running interference between the legendary Shakespearean (played with delicious brio by Kenneth Branagh) and Monroe, who shows up chronically late and in the company of a massive entourage of handlers. As young Colin increasingly becomes Marilyn’s sole confidant, through his eyes we see the fragile soul behind the brassy facade, and realise that the greatest role of her tragically short career was that of Marilyn Monroe herself. (Notes by Scott Foundas.)