By Christopher Wallenberg
09 Oct 2011

	Kevin Spacey
	photo by Aubrey Reuben

Set in the high-stakes world of the much-reviled financial industry, "Margin Call" stars a slew of actors who regularly shift between stage and screen work — Zachary Quinto (of last season's Off-Broadway revival of Angels in America), Kevin Spacey (A Long Day's Journey Into Night, A Moon for the Misbegotten), Jeremy Irons (The Real Thing, Richard II) and Stanley Tucci (Broadway's Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune). The thriller, which opens Oct. 21, entangles the key players at an investment firm during one perilous 24-hour period in the early stages of the 2008 financial crisis. Entry-level analyst Peter Sullivan (Quinto) unlocks information that could prove to be the downfall of the firm. A roller-coaster ride ensues, as decisions both financial and moral catapult the lives of all involved to the brink of economic and personal disaster.

Indie queen Michelle Williams, whose expressive face and eyes are capable of projecting a deep well of emotional turmoil, may get all the attention (including a possible third Oscar nomination) for the high-profile upcoming release, "My Week With Marilyn" (opening Nov. 4). In the film, Williams will embody Marilyn Monroe, once the most lusted-after woman in the world. But the film also features another breakout performance by the Brit actor Eddie Redmayne, seen on Broadway in Red as Mark Rothko's art assistant, who finds his voice as his confidence grows. In "My Week With Marilyn," Redmayne plays a 23-year-old Oxford student who befriends Monroe while he's working as a lowly assistant on the set of her film, "The Prince and the Showgirl." When her new husband, playwright Arthur Miller, departs England during their honeymoon to return to the States, Monroe is desperate to escape from the Hollywood hangers-on and the pressures of work. So Clark takes the opportunity to introduce Monroe to some of the pleasures of British life during an idyllic week. The film is based on the published diary of the real-life Colin Clark and stars Kenneth Branagh as Laurence Olivier, with whom Monroe clashed, The History Boys' Dominic Cooper as the famed photographer and Monroe confidante Milton Greene, as well as veteran stage luminaries Judi Dench, Zoe Wanamaker, Derek Jacobi and Simon Russell Beale.

	Joely Richardson and Jamie Campbell Bower in "Anonymous."
	Columbia Pictures

While "My Week With Marilyn" is based on reportedly real events from the life of an American icon, the upcoming film "Anonymous" (opening Oct. 28) wades into the speculative search for the supposed true identity of the greatest literary icon and playwright of the English-speaking language: William Shakespeare — a man who left school at the age of 13 and never traveled abroad. The debate about whether or not a man named William Shakespeare actually wrote the plays — and if not, who was the real author? — has been raging for centuries amongst scholars and other assorted experts. A painstakingly researched book by Brenda James and William Rubinstein, "The Truth Will Out," made a persuasive case several years ago for Sir Henry Neville, a prominent Elizabethan diplomat and member of Parliament. Others have argued for Sir Francis Bacon and even Queen Elizabeth I herself.

Set in the political snake-pit of Elizabethan England, "Anonymous" borrows the popular theory that Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford (Rhys Ifans) and a member of Elizabeth I's Court, was the author, with the real William Shakespeare a lucky actor who got to put his name on the greatest works of literature in the English-speaking language. Directed by disaster movie maven Roland Emmerich, the film posits the fanciful theory (worthy of one of the Bard's most preposterous plots) that Oxford was not only the real Shakespeare but the illegitimate son of Queen Elizabeth I, and that the couple had an incestuous relationship that produced a son, the Earl of Southampton. In the end, the film may not be about who really wrote the plays, but with cloak-and-dagger political intrigue, illicit romances, and power-grabbing schemes to steal the throne, "Anonymous" certainly sounds like a wild ride. Along for the journey are veteran stage thespians Vanessa Redgrave, Joely Richardson and Derek Jacobi.

	Ellen Barkin in "Another Happy Day."

Onetime screen vixen Ellen Barkin captured this year's Tony for Best Actress in a Featured Role in a Play for her hair-raisingly volcanic turn as a wheelchair-bound AIDS doctor-turned-crusader in Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart. This fall, she will blast onto the big screen in "Another Happy Day," which sounds anything but. A black comedy about a family gathering that turns into an emotional roller coaster, the film (opening Nov. 4) finds Barkin as a hot-tempered woman whose emotional intensity has always been right on the surface and often cranked up to ten. It's the eve of her estranged son's wedding, and Lynn is grappling with enough family dysfunction to make Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams blush: a long-simmering tension with her ex-husband (Thomas Haden Church) and his prickly wife (Demi Moore), the icy contempt of her mother (Ellen Burstyn) and distant father, the mocking of her judgmental sisters, and the antics of her three deeply troubled children.

Adapted for the big screen by award-winning playwright and screenwriter Christopher Hampton ("Dangerous Liaisons," Sunset Boulevard) from his 2002 play The Talking Cure, "A Dangerous Method" (opening Nov. 23) centers on the turbulent relationships between fledgling psychiatrist Carl Jung (Michael Fassbender), his mentor Sigmund Freud (Viggo Mortenson) and Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightley), the beautiful but troubled female patient who comes between them after Jung engages in an S&M-stoked sexual affair with her. The film, inspired by true-life events, is directed by that master of bodily horror and harrowing psychological suspense, David Cronenberg ("A History of Violence," "The Fly," "Scanners"). Set in Zurich and Vienna at the precipice of World War I, this tale of sexual and intellectual discovery explores the friendship between the two pioneers of psychoanalysis and the rift that erupts between them — forever changing the face of modern thought.

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