This was the eighth adaptation of Jane Eyre I’ve seen (not counting the George C. Scott version, which I bailed on like a day player in a skydiving movie). There have been at least twenty adaptations made. There have been abysmal versions and serviceable ones, hysterically off-the-mark ones, ones that are overpraised, and ones that are close to my heart even though they’re deeply flawed and sometimes really terrible (lookin’ at you, Samantha Morton and Ciaran Hinds).

But the thing is that even though it’s been filmed so often, there’s never been a version so good it can be claimed as the definitive version. (Pre-emptive: the 2006 version is often described this way, and it certainly looks good and hits some of the right notes, but there are so many characterization problems and Handsome Rochester issues that from a textual standpoint it’s not the case). Thus, Jane Eyre becomes a one-woman course in the difficulty of adaptation; it seems like a straightforward-enough book, but when you try to bring it to the screen it’s easy to let something crucial slip through the cracks.

This Jane Eyre is also not the definitive adaptation, though Cary Fukunaga managed a movie that does more than just stage scenes from the book, which is where many adaptations stop; this Jane Eyre focuses on Jane herself, in a way not many of the others have. As a character study, it’s a new enough take to have something to say, and though there are some missteps, what it does well it really does well.

Below the cut, more specifics, for those who don’t want to be spoiled about what’s in the attic (it’s a puppy mill).

“The shadows are as important as the light.”

We begin with Jane on the flat and wild moors, wracked and walking aimlessly, and as she wanders (and recuperates at the Rivers place), the movie unfolds in long flashbacks to her childhood and time at Thornfield. It’s a strong starting point, in that the first several minutes of the movie focus entirely on her, and the idea that this is a movie about Jane herself carries nicely through the film.

The aesthetics of the film are unimpeachable, from the costumes to the haunting score (maybe my favorite part if the film). It’s the sort of film where, after Jane talks of feeling stifled in her life at Thornfield (to Mrs. Farifax, not to her herself, this movie has no narration), we see her repeatedly crisscrossing her own snowy steps in the garden and walking alongside the garden wall.

Everything is done in a very understated way, though; in fact, I’d say that, for better or worse, the theme of this movie is Jane, Understated.

The actors are, by and large, excellent. The biggest surprise for me, and most pleasant, was that Adele (Romy Settbon Moore) was fantastic. Normally one just has to cringe and bear it through all the scenes with the child actor they’ve wrangled for the part, but this Adele has a gravity and stillness that really works, both to keep her from being too Shirley Temple, and to enhance the quiet repressiveness of Thornfield.

This is not to discount Mia Wasikowska, who manages to be compelling in a very understated (ding!) way. There were a few moments where I felt as though they were understating too much (we’ll get there), but she definitely inhabited the role in her own way, and was as plain and grave and as could be wished by any Eyre fan.

Judi Dench is the driest, sassiest Mrs. Fairfax ever, of course, and somehow manages to deliver a couple of laugh-out-loud moments in the midst of the very effective Gothic gloom.

That is the face of a Mrs. Fairfax who has seriously considered smothering Mr. Rochester to death in his sleep eight hundred times, because he’s a weenie.

Everyone else makes the most of their parts…such as they are. In fact, the biggest drawback here is that a movie simply can’t cover the scope of a novel like Jane Eyre and cover everything thoroughly and effectively. It’s just the way things go; since the movie’s a little over 90 minutes, Blanche Ingram gets four lines, Grace Poole is not even MENTIONED until the scene in the attic, Diana and Mary Rivers get two lines each, Helen Burns pops up for five lines they pack to the gills with chastely homoerotic undertones, and Mrs. Reed gets half a dozen sneers, which means that a lot of Awesome British Actor Camp alumni showed up for costume fittings, spent a week on set, and partied right off home.

Someone who does gets his due is St. John Rivers, played by Jamie Bell at his manliest*.

(That kid grew up looking like a Roman statue. Way to avoid babyface, Bell!)

Since the Rivers sisters get shafted (I honestly don’t think Holliday Granger got ten words in), it’s up to Jamie Bell to carry the idea of Jane’s interlude with them as being illuminating and fraught. Verdict: not bad! His St. John Rivers has the right amount of passion choked with austerity to make you invested in a section of the story often glossed over; also, he and Mia have quite a bit of chemistry. “Hides a fever in his vitals,” indeed. (Heyooo!) In fact, they should do something else together. Preferably set in an era where that facial hair is frowned upon!

Speaking of facial hair, I’m going to just say it: the movie’s other biggest drawback is Michael Fassbender.

Don’t you look at me that way, you handsome jerk.

Here’s the thing about Michael Fassbender; he’s an excellent actor. (It’s why I yelled about him so much when he was just getting started!) He’s also a total movie star, in the best sense of the word. He’s also miscast here.

I mean, he absolutely does his best, and he does a very good job of being a lonely man, sometimes cruel, who is willing to take huge risks for love, and there’s no guessing why Jane falls for him like a ton of bricks. But he is so good-looking that when he asks, “Do you find me handsome, Miss Eyre,” and she says, “No,” you can only think, “Are you sure? Did the light near his face go out? Maybe you were looking over his shoulder at something else.”

He also turned on his trademark slightly-psychotic rakish charm as much as he possibly could, which just enhances his natural tendency to hit on everything in the frame – his horse, Pilot the dog, Mrs. Fairfax, Jane, the walls, the cameraman – so at times it feels like she’s just succumbing to the inevitable Fassbender Sextimes instead of falling deeply in love with a difficult, moody person.

(No one can blame her. In Blanche’s two scenes, we’re supposed to think she’s a gold digging skankpants, but all we ever see her do is sing – appallingly, IMOGEN POOTS – and stare into Rochester’s extremely handsome face, which makes sense because of the extreme handsomeness.)

He and Mia have good chemistry, at least. A lot of their early scenes are delightful! In terms of the Big Scenes, two of them fell a little flat with me for different reasons, both victims of Understated Syndrome. One is the proposal, in which I think Jane doesn’t display nearly the anger and passion indicated by the text. The other is the departure, in which it’s Rochester who doesn’t evidence any anger. (Though to be fair, in the movie’s darkest moment, in the middle of his pleading, he wraps his hands around her throat and murmurs the “could bend her with my finger and my thumb” thing, which brought the scene from understated to WHOA NELLY in a hurry.)

Mia and Michael, pictured here moments before WHOA NELLY occurs.

Miss Fairfax, entering the scene unexpectedly and passing Jane a note that says RUN GIRL RUN.

I’m always a stickler about that scene, because it’s so important to her character that he try begging, and shouting, then despair, and throwing himself onto the couch and sobbing (drama queen), and she holds up against all three and then extricates herself. In this version he mostly looks sad about it, then suggests strangling her, then sort of falls asleep in her lap and she gets up and wanders away quietly, which I completely understand from a standpoint of someone whose boyfriend just suggested strangling her, but is not quite that amazing declaration from Jane that she has more self-respect than all this nonsense wrapped up with a nice, staunch, textual “I am going.” (/English major)

There were a few lesser and hilarious things that were sacrificed for atmosphere’s sake, like the scene in which Jane is tasked to clean Mr. Mason’s wound, and she moves with horror to the tapestry and slowly pushes the secret door open, which is definitely atmospheric, but by then Rochester and the doctor are already back and that wound is still just spitting out blood like a fountain at the Plaza Hotel. SUPER HELPFUL, JANE.

Favorite scene: the attic with Bertha. First of all, Bertha’s Valentina Cervi, and I like when Bertha is hot, because when you sell a lady into marriage based on looks she should be pretty good-looking. Second of all, since it’s Michael Fassbender, he hits on her while he’s up there, because he’s conscious and she’s in his eyeline and so he might as well, so when she comes close to him he cradles her and caresses her hair and they have a Moment, and then Bertha spits a dead fly onto Jane’s dress. ACES. LOVED IT.

(Second-favorite scene: when Jane comes back, Mrs. Fairfax chastises her for going without telling her, because she would have helped. Judi Dench is worth her weight in per diems, seriously.)

Anyway, despite some small missteps, this is a perfectly serviceable, sometimes insightful, always pretty adaptation of the book that is a very nice movie on its own, and an able adaptation of the text. It didn’t capture my passion in the way some movies do, but I can totally see its merits and feel it was time well spent. (I AM THE SWITZERLAND OF THIS MOVIE, LOOK AT THIS.)

* I have not seen The Eagle. He might be manlier in that; someone else can go see it and tell me.

I’m just going to cut to the chase. Here are nine things I am looking forward to this year, in no particular order.

1. This adorable tango couple serves double-duty. First, it’s part of a project I’m working on that I’m really enjoying; second, it’s a reminder that I actually used to dance this thing, and while I’m not looking for a large-scale return, I should attempt to go out and make a night of it at least once this year. Otherwise I have a serious collection of shoes gathering dust in a corner.

2. Southland. I have been a sucker for cop shows since my parents and I watched the pilot of Homicide back in the day. And ten thousand cop shows later, Southland still manages to compel me. When it was canceled after one season on NBC, I was bummed. TNT picked it up for a second season (yay!), and though ratings were modest, they greenlit a third, premiering Jan. 4. I really appreciate a network that gives great shows a chance, and I have set a Season Pass for this guy.

3. Another double-duty! This is a still from this year’s Jane Eyre, with Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassenbender (I LIKE MICHAEL FASSBENDER), which I will be writing up this week, complete with personal essays and movie-trailer picspam. It is also standing in for every downtrodden, bairnsketball-ridden Catherine Cookson heroine whose stories have yet to be documented in The Catherine Cookson Experience, which I intend to finish soon. I won’t cover them all (some of them are just not worth the time it takes to cap them), but I’ll try, and the best is yet to come.

4. The Borgias! Fancy costumes, Ham-Off scenery chewing, and bizarre sibling relationships. It’s like they made it just for me. Enthusiasm subject to change if this turns out to be as underwhelming as The Tudors, which also had every ingredient to make me love it, and somehow cooked up into a lump of No Thanks Casserole.

5. Books! Specifically, all the books I will be reading / that will be coming out this year written by friends of mine (you all know who you are). My wallet does not thank you, but gosh, it makes me smile.

6. Red Riding Hood. Either it will be glorious or it will be shitmazing. Either way, I’m there at midnight. (Let’s also pretend this thematically stands for Winter’s Bone, for whom I will be rooting loudly come Oscar time.)

7. Mechanique. My first novel comes out this year! You will be hearing more about it later. (Boy, will you EVER.)

8. Priest. SURPRISE PAUL BETTANY. When I reviewed Legion, I realized with horror that Paul Bettany had signed up for another movie with the same director that might be EVEN WORSE. This year, I find out if that was true. YOUR MOVE, TERRIBLE DIRECTOR. (Though Paul staring soulfully at Nikita’s Maggie Q would still probably have gotten my butt in the seat, and the director probably knew that.)

Obviously, this also represents all the other movies I will see this year knowing full well they are absolutely terrible. (I tried to make a mosaic of just those, but it blanketed the earth, so.)

9. Technically this is relevant to this year’s writing interests, but I think we all know that I’ve made one promise again and again and never delivered, and it’s time to get serious about my goals: 2011 is the year I go back in time and hang out with foxes in a turn-of-the-century photo studio.

Obviously these are not the only things I am looking forward to this year, but they are some of the most fun, and should put a pretty nice dent in my sleep cycle throughout 2011!

Today at Fantasy Magazine, I run down the Top Ten Magical Realism Films, which doesn’t sound quite right, but Magical Realist sounds like a wizard who’s like, “Listen, I can summon the beasts of the ocean, but my day job is in Indiana, so you tell me.”

One of my favorites on this list is Lawn Dogs. It’s a modern fairy tale in the good sense and the bad, in that uneven way where the concepts sometimes outstrip the dialogue, and some of the visuals are awesome and some are heavy-handed. (The suburban parents are perkily banal! He’s a free spirit because he dives off bridges naked!)

On the other hand, in the opening scene where Mischa Barton’s character is making sugar-cookie-girl-with-raisin-bellybutton cookie drones for her Brownies equivalent, and her parents are talking about super-suburban nothing in the background, a fly lands on one of the cookies and she looks at it a moment and then grinds it into the cookie alongside all the raisins. A moment like that…sets the right tone, let’s say.

I remain surprised this movie isn’t more popular (though it was hard to come by for a few years, so it’s not like anyone had a chance to stumble upon it). It was one of the first times I saw Sam Rockwell; I looked this up after seeing Galaxy Quest and realizing Rockwell was the guy from The Green Mile and thinking he was probably pretty awesome in his other stuff, too. (Hint: he is.)

So, a few people have asked if I’ll be covering the red carpet for this year’s Oscars. Answer: As long as people are looking good and/or sartorially embarrassing themselves, I will be there. However, I’m probably not going to watch the telecast. Partly, this is because the Oscars are boring. But mostly this is because the Oscars are so out of control that watching the show is just painful.

Frankly, the Oscars lost me the year Cate Blanchett lost the Leading Actress Oscar to Gwyneth Paltrow. (Just look at that sentence! Say it out loud! Then realize WHAT ARE YOU EVEN SAYING RIGHT NOW.) Obviously the Oscars are overtly political, but I hadn’t realized that anyone in the Academy was actually willing to give Gwyneth Paltow an acting award under any circumstances, much less choose her on purpose while Cate Blanchett was in the same category. That’s just embarrassing.

This year, I’ve been spared the pain of watching the most deserving person lose an Oscar, because the most deserving person didn’t even get nominated. (New and different, at least!)

Sorry, Sam Rockwell.

When Moon came out, I loved it. I reviewed the movie positively, but there’s a reason I tagged it “Sam Rockwell Needs an Oscar.” He delivered the best acting of the year, and it’s a shame to see that he fell victim to the “only one newcomer every year in Best Leading” rule. They broke it for Best Actress, but apparently weren’t willing to do for Best Actor, too. I mean, I saw Up in the Air, and I think that George Clooney, as usual, delivered a great performance…that does not deserve an Oscar this year. Plus, George Clooney will get another shot at it (probably next year!); Sam Rockwell is generally a character actor, and might never again have a leading role this visible.

I’ve loved Sam Rockwell since he was in Lawn Dogs. I’ve only grown to love him more since then: In 1999 alone, he was in Midsummer Night’s Dream as a mechanical, The Green Mile as the worst person on the planet, and Galaxy Quest as Guy Fleegman. Anyone who aces all three of those knows what he’s doing, you know?

Obviously, people are ignored for exceptional work on a regular basis; that makes the world go ’round! But I was so thrilled after I saw Moon, because it was the kind of performance that wins Oscars, delivered so beautifully that it never occurred to me that he wouldn’t be on the ballot. Oh, well. Rockwell, you’re on the ballot of my heart.

ETA: From the “Not a Moment Too Soon” Files: Gwyneth Paltrow to play Marlene Dietrich. Hollywood, we JUST talked about this. Come on.

Oh, MICHAEL FASSBENDER.

You were in Fish Tank, then you were in Hunger, and then someone said, “Have you seen that guy who made Doomsday is making a movie where those poor, put-upon Romans are violently attacked by those nasty, ungrateful Picts whose land they’re invading?”

And Michael Fassbender said, “I didn’t! Pass me the script!”

Dear Michael: I’m not mad, just disappointed. It has nothing to do with my expectations; you should expect more from yourself. And you should breath five times into someone’s airway if they’re unconscious before you start compressions. (I dunno, I sort of run out of motherly advice in a hurry.)