The 2012 Best Actress Oscar race begins with this miraculous performance by Michelle Williams as Marilyn Monroe. We have yet to see Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher in Iron Lady, or Glenn Close in male drag in Albert Nobbs, but even those esteemed actresses will be hard-pressed to equal the alchemy with which the always intelligent and gutsy Williams transforms herself into that most dreamy, luscious, needy, and yet valiant of all Hollywood screen goddesses. Directed with grace and economy by TV veteran Simon Curtis, from a smart, touching script by Adrian Hodges, the film is adapted from the memoir,
This is one movie from action director Roland Emmerich in which nothing blows up—except the crackpot theory that Edward DeVere, 17th Earl of Oxford, wrote the canon of plays and sonnets historically attributed to William Shakespeare. This hothouse melodrama of Tudor intrigue, sex, and politics, scripted by John Orloff, is based on the controversial "Oxfordian" theories. It's all sheer humbuggery, but still an entertaining spectacle: the costumes are exquisite, there are breathtaking overhead shots Elizabethan London, and it's populated by a bunch of attractive young actors on their way up. Oxford (Rhys Ifans) has written in secret, ever since being fostered into the Puritan household of Queen Elizabeth's counselor, William Cecil, where poetry was forbidden. However, the dashing young Oxford (Jamie Campbell Bower) charmed the lusty, poetry-loving young queen (Joely Richardson).
