Confession time: I don’t particularly care for Charles Dickens.

As a former English major, I know that is close to sacrilege for some, but I find the man just too darned wordy. I could barely make it through A Tale of Two Cities – my mother had to read the last 100 pages aloud to me when I was in seventh grade.

Which of course means that my only touch points for Great Expectations are the Gwyneth Paltrow/Ethan Hawke movie from 1998 and the South Park episode about Pip.

Maybe he’ll have unnatural feelings for a horse in the this film too

Of course Helena Bonham Carter is playing Mrs. Havisham. It’s the part her hair was born to play.

However, this version with the boy who was in love with a horse in War Horse, Lucretia Borgia, Bellatrix Lestrange, and the Dark Lord himself looks pretty good if not a bit over the top in a delightful way.

With this and the new film adaptation of Anna Karenina coming out later this year, perhaps the Oscars will have a decidedly literary bent…?