My Week with Marilyn After staring down the monotonous terrain of pioneer-era Oregon in Meek’s Cutoff, Michelle Williams takes on the role of Marilyn Monroe in the true-life tale My Week with Marilyn. To capture the bombshell’s mannerisms, Williams pored over vintage footage alongside director Simon Curtis, resulting in an astoundingly convincing portrait of the ’50s icon. Neatly sidestepping the unwieldy burden of a full-scale biopic, the film focuses on several turbulent months in 1956 when Monroe traveled to England to film The Prince and the Showgirl with director Laurence Olivier (embodied with suave hauteur by Kenneth Branagh). The story unfolds from the viewpoint of Colin Clark (Eddie Redmayne), a naïve on-set assistant who finds himself in Monroe’s romantic graces as she struggles with her demons. Though enraptured by the starlet, Clark keeps his narrative gaze trained on the clashes between the director and his leading lady, offering an eyewitness account of the tensions that pushed Norma Jeane Baker ever deeper into depression. —Nadeska Alexis

Immortals Unsavvy audiences will be wowed by Immortals, a surprisingly brutal swords-and-sandals epic set on the edges of monolithic seaside cliffs. Where did they find such breathtaking locations, and how did they lug a film crew there? They didn’t. Like more and more modern mythmaking, Immortals was shot on a soundstage in Montreal; those awesome locales are nothing more than a green screen and a mainframe. Don’t despair, though, you’re still in for a bloody good time. The tale of a peasant named Theseus (Henry Cavill, in a warm-up to his coming role as Superman), tapped by the gods to defend Greece from the demonic King Hyperion (Mickey Rourke, relishing being the heel), Immortals will remind viewers of that other slow motion-saturated Spartan saga, 300. Director Tarsem Singh—the phantasmagoric visualist who brought us The Cell—treats every thundering shot like a pristine, celestial tableau. Unyielding carnage never looked so good. —Ben Barna
 
The Descendants Alexander Payne (About Schmidt, Sideways) has yet to make a bad film, and The Descendants keeps his golden streak alive. It’s the slow-burn story of Matt King (George Clooney), a humble lawyer trying to be a better father and husband in the face of trauma: His wife is in a coma from which she may never recover. The revelation that she was having an affair sets off a chain of events wherein King and his two temperamental daughters crisscross their home state of Hawaii in a quest for closure. Actress Shailene Woodley gives a breakout performance as the older of the two daughters, undergoing a profound transformation by the film’s end. Payne’s trademark balancing act—between melancholy and offbeat humor—is on full display, too. But it’s Clooney who does the heavy lifting. It’s not easy for a star of his magnitude to disappear into a character, but with Matt King, Clooney manages to become—gasp—just a regular guy, albeit one with the weight of the world on his shoulders. —BB
 
Melancholia For gloomy people, the end of the world is a comforting thought: What’s there to lose when you’re eternally mourning all mankind? In Lars von Trier’s latest tour de force, we’re made to consider fear and depression versus the manufactured happiness of everyday life. From the “doomsday ballet” entrée, a series of foreshadowing shots set to a swelling classical overture, Melancholia is an all-consuming experience. The first act drops you into a wedding  ceremony filled with empty rituals that send the bride, Justine (Kirsten Dunst), spiraling. The second act centers on Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), who can’t cope with the threat of a previously undiscovered planet slouching toward Earth. While one character is consumed by fear, the other is comforted by the high-stakes drama, creating a tension so penetrating you can’t shake it. The cinematography of Manuel Alberto Claro makes you feel like a mote-like speck in a volatile universe; you have no choice but to bring your own anxieties to the surface and release them. —Hillary Weston
 
A Dangerous Method If you’re looking for graphic, infectious David Cronenberg, forget it — the only horror you’re going to find here is Keira Knightley’s jutting jaw. Though plenty cerebral, A Dangerous Method is noteworthy for the filmmaker’s restraint. Based on Christopher Hampton’s play The Talking Cure, the film opens with a hysterical Sabina (Knightley) as she visits Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender) for treatment. He finds himself seduced not only by the challenge of the case, but by the patient herself—an intelligent woman with a deep-seated masochistic fetish. In a series of endless conversations between Jung and mentor Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortensen), the film tries to shed light on the mysteries of the human mind. In the end, though, it would do better to remember the heart. —HW