It is one of cinema's great mismatches: Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, middle-aged aristocrat and blonde bombshell, Shakespearean actor and Hollywood star, a traditional style of acting that was all about "pretence" and the Method, where the character's emotions had to be accessed from within.

When Monroe flew to Britain in 1956 to make The Prince And The Showgirl with Olivier, what might have seemed like a mutually beneficial pairing proved a nightmare.

Based on the memoir by Colin Clark, My Week With Marilyn charts the making of the ill-fated comedy, during which the drug-dependent Monroe – often late on set and with her Method mentor constantly by her side – drove Olivier to distraction, while his open disdain drove her to despair.

As dramatic as this sounds, this is a breezy, often very amusing and predominantly rose-tinted affair. And the reason for that lies in Clark’s own experience. As a 24-year-old “third assistant director” (a sort of all-round gofer) on his first film, Clark would have expected to do no more than fetch the odd cup of tea for the most famous woman in the world; instead, he became her confidante. Despite the fact that she had just married Arthur Miller, there was even the possibility of romance.

Unlike the leaden Showgirl itself, My Week With Marilyn moves at a brisk clip. Director Simon Curtis sets the tone immediately, with Clark’s enthusiastic attempt to get into the film business, using family connections to inveigle his way into Olivier’s production company and onto the film. Through Clark (played with wide-eyed wonder by Eddie Redmayne) we’re given a nice sense of the nuts and bolts of the film’s production, from the need to find a secret house for Monroe, free from paparazzi, to the unionised crew establishing its boundaries, from the endless waiting on set (something of a norm, but exacerbated when your star is fast asleep on the sofa) to the eager watching of the rushes at the end of the day.

All hell breaks loose whenever Monroe (Michelle Williams) and Olivier (Kenneth Branagh) lock horns. These scenes are a hoot, largely because of Branagh’s wonderful portrayal of a man to whom he was once likened (both actors being renowned for their screen Shakespeares), teetering deliciously on the edge of ham as the unskilled young actress brings the worst out of the experienced thespian. “It’s like teaching Urdu to a badger,” Olivier riles, insisting that instead of the Method, what Monroe really needs is a stint in rep. “They would not put up with this kind of crap in the Hippodrome in Eastbourne.”

Beneath the hysteria, serious emotions bubble: Olivier’s fear of losing his youth and vitality, his wife Vivian Leigh’s dread of losing her husband to his co-star, Monroe’s inner maelstrom. Williams may not have her subject’s unique sex appeal and effervescent rapport with the camera, but she is a brilliant actress, and manages to combine fragility, vulnerability, neediness and manipulation all in the same glance.

The film presents Monroe’s predicament as one of contradiction, a firm desire for the spotlight allied to a loathing of the image that controlled her. “As soon as they realise that I’m not her, they run,” she tells Colin, of her failed marriages; but later, when confronted by screaming fans, she gaily asks, “Shall I be her?” She would be dead within six years.

Terence Davies’s adaptation of Terence Rattigan’s stage play The Deep Blue Sea is a gorgeously realised piece of work and, for those who can buy into its extreme version of amour fou, an emotional one. Set in the 1950s, its focus is Hester Collyer (Rachel Weisz), who has left her comfortable, if dreary, life with a judge (Simon Russell Beale) to move in with dashing ex-RAF pilot Freddie Page (Tom Hiddleston). Rather than happiness, she finds despair, as she realises that she loves, absolutely, an emotionally-challenged buffoon who simply can’t love her back.

It opens with a marvellous sequence that glides between a suicide attempt and the moments of passion and carelessness that led her to it, and with which Davies elegantly summarises months of back story. Hereon, we watch wondering if she will do it again. There is an issue here, for today’s perhaps more cynical audiences, in believing that such a beautiful and intelligent woman would sacrifice all else for a one-sided romance. But Weisz gives her all in persuading that love really can be that selfless, foolish and all-encompassing. And with his customarily fine eye and ear for period, Davies brings her world rivetingly to life.

Moneyball is a really odd baseball movie. On the one hand, I’ve never felt so hindered by my ignorance of the sport; on the other, there are fewer clichés on show than almost any sports film I’ve seen. Sports film fans should definitely check it out, alongside those who appreciate Aaron Sorkin’s silky penmanship, or enjoy the sight of a Hollywood star who is really coming into his own in his forties.

Brad Pitt makes a terrifically mature, muscular, appealing fist of his real-life hero, the manager of a low-level baseball team who, tired of competing with the multi-million dollar salaries offered by bigger teams, decides to go back to the drawing board. With a young economist (Jonah Hill) and some revolutionary performance stats, he buys a team of the old, odd and injury-prone – and finds success.