Nevil Gibson's spring cinema sampler

The world is here to play and that means lean time for cinemas. They have responded with an emphasis on films that largely appeal to non-rugby fans, particularly women.

The blockbuster season is over and that Hollywood perennial, romantic comedies, are coming in a never-ending stream.

However, all is not lost for hardcore filmgoers with a new look at a classic, a wonderful version of a bestselling novel, two euro-thrillers (one in the Bourne mould and the other a gritty Italian production), a local gore-fest that will make Sir Peter Jackson proud and another Kiwi oddity – a Christian-themed comedy-drama.

JANE EYRE brings a fresh look and faces to the durable Charlotte Bronte classic, which at last count has been filmed 18 times and had nine TV versions. Instead of using English leads, American director Carl Fukunaga (of Japanese and Swedish parentage) casts Australia’s Mia Waikowska (Alice in Wonderland) in the title role and Michael Fassbender, of Irish-German extraction, as Rochester. Both are brilliant, up to a point, and are restricted by the film’s relatively short duration for such a complicated story (a BBC TV version runs five and a half hours). While viewers will compare them with others in the parts, the fastiduous look and physical settings are unmatched. The decision to start the film with Jane fleeing Thornfield Hall after her aborted marriage to Rochester places much of their relationship in a flashback. This work well in moving the story along but leaves much of the emotion between them undeveloped. Fukunaga and screenwriter Moira (Tamara Drewe) Buffini’s effort will be remembered as a crisp and unfussy adaptation that is closest to Jane’s complex character without overstating modernist feminist sensibilities. Bronte fans can now look forward to a new version of Wuthering Heights, in which director Andrea Arnold has taken far more liberties.

THE HELP is a faithful adaptation of first-time author Kathryn Stockett’s bestselling novel of black maids working in white middle class households in Jackson, Mississippi, during the civil rights era of the 1960s. Though handsome and attractive, it lacks the slickness of a big Hollywood production and its sentimentality is justified by its authenticity. This is due to the book being rejected by 60 literary agents, spurring Stockett to entrust the film rights ahead of publication to a close friend, Tate Taylor, who had never made a feature. He thought a low-budget production might generate interest in the book. Instead it was instantly popular on eventual publication in 2009 and Taylor finally got studio backing for expensive location filming. His lack of experience tells in the handling of some scenes and plot lines. But the mainly female cast is excellent, with Emma Stone (Crazy, Stupid, Love) holding everything together as an aspiring writer transcribing the experiences of the “help” in a strictly segregated society.

HANNA, like Jane Eyre, uses a deceptively vulnerable looking actress for its leads. Ireland-raised Saoirse Ronan, who was Sir Peter Jackson’s victim-heroine in The Lovely Bones, is a teenaged martial arts expert in a chase-based supercharged thriller. The improbabilities in the story rise as fast as the body count, as the action moves from the snowy wilderness of Finland to the deserts of Morocco and finally to the urban jungle of Berlin. There’s also an interlude in Spain, where Ronan joins a family of English hippies and makes a friend (Jessica Barden from Tamara Drewe). It’s worth ignoring the plot and just enjoying the journey, which is a non-stop adrenalin rush crafted by highbrow director Joe Wright (Pride and Prejudice and Atonement). The twist is that secret agent Eric Bana has trained his daughter in deadly self-defence, knowing she has been bred as part of Cold War experiment. The climax in a deserted east Berlin theme park provides a frisson of political intrigue as CIA boss Cate Blanchett and her German gunman Tom Hollander meet their inevitable fate.

THE DOUBLE HOUR (La Doppia Ora) is a worthy curtain-raiser to the forthcoming Italian film festival. Unlike Hanna, this euro-thriller seldom moves in a straight line as an ex-policeman and a hotel maid meet at a speed-dating venue in Turin, Italy. She (Ksenrya Rappoport) is an immigrant from Slovenia trying to make a new life, while he (Filippo Timi) is a security guard still recovering from the death of his wife. Their relationship begins to blossom until a robbery occurs where he is employed. The maid has connections with those responsible. From here on the plot becomes murky and sinister. The double hour in the title is a reference to the best time to make a wish (eg, 11.11). But even the best wish doesn’t explain some events where it is hard to separate imagination from reality.

THE DEVIL’S ROCK is a horror show with all the unpleasantness this implies. Its mix of witchcraft and Nazism in a World War II setting would not normally be worth watching but for the New Zealand angle. A local cast, backing from the NZ Film Commission, special effects by Weta and location filming around Wellington (passing for the Channel Islands) shows the industry’s versatility. Craig Hall (Boy, Love Birds) is one of just three main characters as a Kiwi commando sent to sabotage a coastal bunker on the eve of D-Day. But in the tunnels beneath another supernatural drama is playing out as a lone Nazi colonel (Matthew Sunderland) fights off a demon (Gina Varela), who can transform herself into various forms to tempt her victims. The high degree of gore is not for the squeamish, as Weta has excelled in its realism, making this strictly for fans of the genre.

THE HOLY ROLLER unselfconsciously endorses positive religious messages in a Christchurch-set production that combines self-deprecatory comedy with more than a touch of pathos and evokes the kind of humour found in Flight of the Concords. More emotion comes from pre-earthquake appearance of the inner city. Lead actor and co-screenwriter Angus Benfield draws on his experiences as a youth pastor in one of Sydney’s evangelical churches. He plays the uncharismatic preacher Luke, who has healing powers that turn his inner city mission into a success amid drifters and others seeking a purpose in life. His own shortcomings focus on his relationship with a young singer (the talented Victoria Abbott) while the wider plot raises issues with a criminal element attracted by the flow of donations. Director Patrick Gillies has chosen a strong soundtrack that will be familiar to Parachute music festival fans while the shortcomings of the low budget are offset by its heavy Kiwi flavour.

THE HUMAN RESOURCES MANAGER takes a quirky trip through a business crisis when an immigrant worker dies in a suicide bombing. She had just been let go by an Israeli bakery, which to protect its reputation from an investigative journalist decides to return the body to her family in the backblocks of Romania. Thus begins a shaggy dog story as the hapless manager takes off on his disaster-prone journey. Political correctness, post-communist red tape and terrible roads fail to deter him from the mission, which takes unpredictable turns as he learns the woman is no one’s dearly beloved. The humour, which is much like The Band’s Visit, arises from how strangers encounter each other through limited mutual languages, apart from a smattering of English, and religions. Based on the novel A Woman in Jerusalem by Abraham B Jehoshua.