In the weekly column Extra Credit, Charles Bramesco recommends supplemental viewing for moviegoers whose interests have been piqued by a given week’s big new release.

For over five decades, Dame Helen Mirren has been an embodiment of grace, beauty, and strength on the silver screen. She’s spent her career breathing life into complicated, difficult women who challenge the world — that is to say, the men — around them. All of which has led to Winchester, a minimally-advertised haunted-house flick in which the esteemed thespian portrays the widow of a gun magnate as she hysterically builds a mansion-tomb around her and has a few encounters with unfriendly ghosts. Life’s funny that way.

Everybody takes paycheck gigs, no judgement, but it’s still as fine a time as any to survey Mirren’s estimable body of work. While many of her finest films cannot be found streaming online (sorry, Cal; no hard feelings, The Long Good Friday) and another one of her best has already appeared in this column, that still leaves plenty of virtuosic turns from the commanding actress. Read on for a small sampling from a rich and varied career.

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