MARY Shelley receives a beautified biography in the new film by Haifaa al-Mansour out this week. Produced in 2016 - 200 years after Shelley wrote Frankenstein or The Modern Prometheus - the film’s release marks two centuries since its publication.

Elle Fanning stars as Shelley, daughter of renowned writers William Godwin (Stephen Dillane) and Mary Wollstonecraft. The film opens years after Wollstonecraft’s death but prior to her daughter’s marriage to Percy Bysshe Shelley (Douglas Booth). It is a story of love, life and literature, told in an undemanding fashion and through a cliched biopic formula.

Checking off the key events of Shelley’s life like a Wikipedia page, the film lacks the spark of life that galvanised Shelley’s monstrously misunderstood creation in the book. Fanning feels unusually bland in the central role, with Tom Sturridge alone energising Emma Jensen’s dialogue as a foppish Lord Byron.

Billed as ‘The Full Monty in Speedos’, Swimming with Men is also set to make a splash in cinemas this week. From Dad’s Army director Oliver Parker, the film sees Rob Brydon play an accountant who joins a male synchronised swimming group when his crumbling marriage leaves him at sea.

A who’s who of British talent sees Jane Horrocks star as Brydon’s wife in the film, with Rupert Graves, Jim Carter and Daniel Mays among his synchro ensemble. It’s good, life-affirming fun with good company and a fair heart. Fans of middle aged men in swimming pools are spoilt - not something that can often be said of modern cinema.

Like the acclaimed Jo Brand novel that inspired it, The More You Ignore Me offers a similarly heart warming experience for fans of British comedy - albeit one that addresses the distressing realities of mental health conditions. Brand is a comedian whose acerbic wit comes with social awareness from her days as a psychiatric nurse.

The film tells the story of a woman (Sheridan Smith) whose efforts to be a loving mother and wife and undermined by her declining mental health. Having grown up isolated, Gina’s daughter Alice (Ella Hunt) is forced to take drastic measures to reconnect. Chaos ensues.

Set in the 1980s, performances from Mark Addy, Sally Phillips and Brand herself are accompanied by a soundtrack devoted to The Smiths. The film title takes its name from a Morrisey song.

-Toby Symonds