Jane Eyre

Director - Cary Fukunaga

Main Characters
Jane Eyre - Mia Waikowska
Edward Fairfax Rochester - Michael Fassbender
Mrs. Fairfax - Judi Dench
St. John Rivers - Jamie Bell

Jane Eyre has been one of my favourite books since I was a teenager, and I've read it more than a few times. I've also seen several of the dozens of productions of this title.

For me, the only thing that could have really ruined this movie, was failure to embody the atmosphere of the novel. When I saw BBC in the opening credits, my mind was put at ease.

Mia Waikowska gave, in my opinion a perfect performance of the Jane Eyre that I've rooted for every time I've read Charlotte Brontë's classic novel. She was sufficiently unassuming, but still had that subtle strength of character that Jane is supposed to possess. Sure, she may have been inexperienced with men, but that didn't mean she was going to cower before them, or let them push her around.

Edward Rochester was played by Michael Fassbender, a name previously unknown to me, as most of the well known movies he's appeared in have not had enough interest for me to see, or have simply been entirely out of my taste range. I definitely will not hold this against him. I thought his performance as Edward Rochester was flawless, adding a little more youth than Timothy Dalton's portrayal, and a little less abruptness than William Hurt's. I enjoyed getting to see a little more of a sense of humour apparent in this version of Mr. Rochester. Obviously a tortured soul, it was easier to see that in spite of his bitterness with his lot in life, that he was still yearning for love and real compantionship. Fassbender has four more movies scheduled to be released this year and two next, including X-Men: First Class where he will be taking on the role of Erik Lehnsherr aka Magneto.

Even before this remake of Jane Eyre I always kind of pictured Judi Dench as Mrs. Fairfax. Apparently someone agreed with me. Her portrayal of the house keeper was the words of the novel personified. Kindly, talkative when she felt she was with her equal, but with the appropriate amount of gravity, obviously knowing somewhere in the back of her mind that something in Mr. Rochester's household was not quite what it should be.

This version of Jane Eyre is now tied for my favourite with the 1996 version starring William Hurt as Mr. Rochester and Charlotte Gainsbourg as Jane. This version left out a couple of scenes that to me were key to the story. One being during her stay at Lowood, the other while Rochester was entertaining the party at Thornfield Hall. But to be honest by the end of the movie, I didn't care at all.

One omission that is bothering me, even still is the glaring absence of a character named Miss Temple. In the book, Miss Temple was a teacher at Lowood for Jane's entire stay. This character was the only kind adult figure at the school, for the girls in general, but was even more special to young Jane. Miss Temple was Jane's first experience of kindness from an adult in her young life, and I've always thought that she was very important in Jane's developing into the young woman that left Lowood years later.

That being said, to me, one measure of a great movie and great performances is if you feel along with the characters, especially if you know exactly what's going to happen and how the story is going to end even before the opening credits role, and that I undoubtedly did. I smiled, I got misty eyed, my heart ached and soared, in spite of the fact that I knew what was coming all the way through. I'm so glad this movie was re-made......again. It is after all hard to go wrong with the classics. I look forward very much to adding this movie to my DVD collection.

The Help - Coming August 12, 2011 (US)

Director - Tate Taylor

Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan - Emma Stone
Aibileen Clark - Viola Davis
Minny Jackson - Minny Jackson

The Help is based on a best selling novel by Katheryn Stockett of the same name, and if you watch carefully when you go to see it, you can see her in the audience of what I'm guessing is Church.

Its no secret that there were many many injustices suffered by people of colour in the United States even 100 years after the end of the Civil War in 1865. The Help, set in the 1960s explores some of the injustices that were still rampant. To quote Eugenia 'Skeeter' Phelan, played by Emma Stone, who is quickly becoming one of my favourite young actresses in Hollywood: "These women raise white children. We love them and they love us but they can't even use the toilets in our houses." That was a harsh reality in many places in the south, like Jackson Mississippi where The Help is set.

Eugenia is a young woman who lands a job writing for The Jackson Journal and decides she wants to write an article from the viewpoint of 'The Help'. Of course, the people that fall under the category of 'The Help' are reluctant to open up at first. The opinions these women had about the people they worked for was, for obvious reason, kept between themselves. The term 'smile and nod' was very apt. But eventually, Aibileene Clark (Viloa Davis) and Minny Jackson (Octavia Spencer) start the ball rolling, and soon 'Skeeter' has enough material to write a book. A book which causes quite the stir in her home of Jackson.

This looks like it will be a thoroughly enjoyable movie, one that will make people think and hopefully remember.

A Quote from Katie Couric's notebook on April 12;
"In a new poll, 48 percent of American's said the Civil War was mainly about states' rights, and just 38 percent said it was about slavery. Time clearly works like a Mederma for the mind...fading an ugly scar of truth."

I don't think that these scars should fade, for 'those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.'

I think movies like The Help are as important to the human condition as movies like Fast Five are to the bottom line, and I hope very much that people like Katheryn Stockett will continue to write books like this, directors like Tate Taylor will continue to work on projects like this, and actors like Emma Stone will continue to see how important it is to tell these stories, even 150 years after the start of the US Civil War, and 50 years after the time when stories, like that told in The Help were everyday life for many.

Of course, you can expect that this story will have a happy ending, and I would assume, that although The Help is a work of fiction, there were probably many stories of courageous people who were willing to stand up and share the truth. We have come a long way as far as civil rights here in the western world since the 1960s, and how could that have happened without people willing to speak up and dispel the ignorance that many seemed so content to live in?

This movie is very high on my 'to see' list.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - Coming May 20

Director - Rob Marshall

Main Characters
Jack Sparrow - Johnny Depp
Angelica - Penélope Cruz
Barbossa - Geoffry Rush
Blackbeard - Ian McShane

I'm really looking forward to this fourth installment of the Pirates franchise. In Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, we catch up with Jack (Johnny Depp) in search of the fabled Fountain Of Youth. Oh Jack, does your ambition have no limits?

There has been some speculation as to how successful this movie will be, since Keira Knightly and Orlando Bloom will not appear this time. Here's how I see it. Bono IS U2, Phil Colins WAS Genesis and Sting WAS  The Police. Jack Sparrow IS Pirates of the Caribbean. As far as I'm concerned, as long as Jack Sparrow can find some new mayhem, you've got yourself a movie.

Rejoining the cast of this installment of Pirates of the Caribbean are Geoffry Rush as Captain Barbossa and Keith Richards as Captain Teague, also incidentally Jack's father.

Joining the cast are Ian McShane and Penélope Cruz, playing Blackbeard and his daughter Angelica, Jack's competition in the race to find the fountain of youth. Oh, and did we mention that Angelica is also an old flame of Jack's? That should make for some witty banter, don't you think?

My most recent exposure to Ian McShane was in the made-for-TV mini-series The Pillars of the Earth where he played the ambitious and devious Bishop Waleran. Besides having the perfect dark looks to play a character like Blackbeard, seeing his performance as the Bishop leaves me with little doubt that his performance will more than live up to the legendary tales of the fearsome Blackbeard.

Penélope Cruz as daughter to Blackbeard and maybe, maybe not love interest to Jack seems like a pretty safe choice. I think its going to be pretty hard to go wrong there.

Rob Marshall is the director of On Stranger Tides. As director of such titles as Memoirs of a Geisha, Chicago and Nine, for me its seems like a bit of a departure from his previous work, however that in no way causes me any concern as to whether this movie will be a huge blockbuster. That's because there is another name attached to this movie, as he has been to the previous three Pirates movies. Someone who I consider to be the King Midas of show business. I've yet to see a movie or TV show that had Jerry Bruckheimer's golden touch that I didn't thoroughly enjoy and wasn't more than comfortably successful. Even if I'm not sold on the story line, if I learn that Bruckheimer is involved, my mind is pretty much changed.

Abduction - Coming September 23, 2011

Director - John Singleton

Main Characters
Nathan - Taylor Lautner
Karen - Lily Collins
Mara - Mario Bello
Dr. Bennett - Sigourney Weaver
Frank Burton - Alfred Molina

In the upcoming movie Abduction we see another star risen out of The Twilight Saga, Taylor Lautner taking steps past his first major role.

When I first read the short synopsis for this movie on imdb.com it reminded me very much of a book that I loved reading when I was around 13 or 14 called The Face on the Milk Carton. It tells the story of a high-school girl, who after stealing a carton of milk from a friend in the cafeteria, sees her own baby picture on the missing person's side of the carton. From there begins her journey to finding out that the people who she had been calling mom and dad were in fact her grandparents who were raising their daughter's little girl. Then she finds out that her 'parents' were not even her grandparents, as they believed, but that their troubled daughter had kidnapped a child from a shopping mall over a decade ago, and told her parents the baby girl was her own.

But on further exploration, and viewing the trailer, I've discovered that the Lautner movie, although starting with a similar story line, branches off very quickly into something more sinister and action packed. After a classmate finds Nathan's picture on a missing person's website, (how far we've come from milk carton pictures) the story quickly accelerates. His so called parents are obviously working for some secret agency, Maria Bello playing Mara, Nathan's mother, shows some considerable butt kicking abilities in the trailer when the police show up at the 'family' home to ask about her son.

From there, its apparent that nothing is as it seems, as Nathan goes on the run from Frank Burton, played by Alfred Molina, while trying to piece together the real picture of his now shattered life. Dr. Bennett shows up somewhere along the way played by Sigourney Weaver, claiming she was a friend of Nathan's father, his real father.

Burton, the man that seems solely responsible for tracking down Nathan even calls him 'an asset' at one point. My guess is some kind of genetic engineering as a baby? It would explain how a person that seemed to be nothing more than a normal teenager, if feeling some what awkward and out of place in his life, so yeah, a normal teenager, suddenly sheds all the confusion of finding out nothing in his life is real and turns in to the kicking, fighting, fast driving action hero of his own life.

I guess we'll see how it goes. The story line seems solid, with enough mystery to draw one in, and with several other well respected, if more mature names in the cast, I'm not especially concerned that the acting will be lacking. I'm going to have to go into this movie at a completely neutral position and decide how I feel after I see it.