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Jane Eyre

Early in Cary Fukunaga’s adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, the 10-year-old Jane (Amanda Clarkson) is asked by a cant-oozing, Uriah Heep-like clergyman how she will manage to escape the punishment of Hell. He has been summoned by the girl’s abusive aunt, Mrs. Reed (Sally Hawkins), to take the unwanted child off her hands. The precociously independent-thinking and perceptive girl responds, “I must keep in good health and not die.” This exchange is very much as Brontë presented it, and signals the strong will and moral convictions that will guide the youngster’s way in life. Young Clarkson is appropriately and vividly determined.

Win Win

There would have to be something seriously wrong with a movie starring Paul Giamatti and written and directed by Tom McCarthy for it not to be worth your time. Giamatti is our reigning everyman actor: Even a supporting performance from him is usually enough to nudge a movie into “worth seeing” status.

Kill The Irishman

Every so often, some filmmakers or critics will decide that a movie genre needs refurbishing and that a new movie may do just that. The two filmed versions of True Grit, the 1968 original and this year’s Coen brothers’ production, have both been referred to as Westerns with restorative, category-bending potential. But if one reviewer’s recent comment, that Jonathan Hensleigh’s Kill the Irishman is the best gangster movie since Martin Scorcese’s Goodfellas, is on target then things must be even worse than many of us assumed.



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