'Black Death' and 'Jane Eyre' Reviews

Over at NPR Ian Buckwalter reviews 'Black Death':

In Black Death, director Christopher Smith uses desperation-fueled religious fervor to examine the relationship between fear and faith. Of course he also uses it to inspire some truly gory battles and cringeworthy punishments; here, "going medieval" on your enemies isn't just a figure of speech.

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Smith avoids being exploitatively graphic, though, with some deft camera movement and editing; he's content to allow the sound design and liberal sprays of blood to suggest the violence that's often occurring just out of view. The most gruesome set piece, involving a drawing and quartering, is more sickeningly memorable for its sounds than its sights.

As seen through the grimy, oppressive darkness of Smith's lens, this was truly a monstrous time to have the misfortune of being alive.

Looks like it.

Ella Taylor reviews 'Jane Eyre':

Cary Fukunaga's feverishly soulful remake of the multiply remade Jane Eyre rises to most challenges — not the least of which is making Mia Wasikowska, a golden child of current cinema, look homely.

In Alice in Wonderland, the somewhat vaporous young Australian seemed content to coast on her ethereal beauty while falling down holes on demand. She picked up a bit of steam as the college-bound daughter in The Kids Are All Right. But as the orphaned and abused waif who falls in love across the cavernous British class divide and has made Charlotte Bronte's novel a two-century best-seller, Wasikowska comes of age, morphing from plain Jane to steely Jane to radiant lover, rushing across Yorkshire to reclaim her broken boss.

At NYT A.O. Scott says of 'Jane Eyre':

Reader, I liked it. This “Jane Eyre,” energetically directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga (“Sin Nombre”) from a smart, trim script by Moira Buffini (“Tamara Drewe”), is a splendid example of how to tackle the daunting duty of turning a beloved work of classic literature into a movie. Neither a radical updating nor a stiff exercise in middlebrow cultural respectability, Mr. Fukunaga’s film tells its venerable tale with lively vigor and an astute sense of emotional detail.

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Ms. Wasikowska, a lovely 21-year-old actress who fulfills the imperative of plainness with a tight-lipped frown, a creased brow and severely parted hair, is a perfect Jane for this film and its moment. She has already tackled another notable 19th-century literary heroine — Alice in Tim Burton’s weird renovation of “Alice in Wonderland” — and, perhaps more to the point, exemplified the everyday heroism of a young woman of independent temperament in “The Kids Are All Right.” Her Jane withstands strong crosswinds of feeling and the buffeting of unfair circumstances without self-pity, but also without saintly selflessness.