Oliver Twist

The biggest surprise in Roman Polanski's Oliver Twist is that there are no surprises. Read full review

None of the actors completely satisfies. Read full review

It's unlikely audiences will be echoing a starving Oliver's most famous line: "Please, sir, I want some more." Read full review

Two dramatic problems beset Roman Polanski's darkly handsome new film of the Dickens novel. The boy is as passive as ever, and bleak in the bargain -- instead of glowing like the Oliver of the musical, he takes light in -- while Ben Kingsley's Fagin and Jamie Foreman's Bill Sikes manage to make villainy a bit of a bore.

Kingsley seems determined to rescue this old chestnut of a character from Jewish stereotypes, but to what end? Oliver's boyhood has become worse than Dickensian - it's bland. Read full review

Kingsley is one of very few lively things about Polanski's plodding, by-the-numbers Oliver Twist. And in this dreary setting, he comes across more as a desperate clown than a saving grace, which makes it all the more awkward that no one else is clowning along with him. Read full review

A disappointingly flat, disjointed affair. Read full review

Handsomely produced but emotionally inert offering. Read full review

Lacking energy and pace and enslaved by a ghastly score, this tepid movie left me longing alternately for David Lean's thrillingly grim 1948 masterpiece, and Carol Reed's chipper 1968 sing-along, with pretty tunes by Lionel Bart. Read full review