Oliver! Movie Review

1968's Best Picture winner is an epic musical familiar to all of us -- even if you haven't actually seen it. "Food, Glorious Food!"... "Consider Yourself"... these are songs that have entered into the collective consciousness of filmgoers everywhere. And there's "Please sir, I want some more," one of cinema's most famous lines of dialogue. Young Oliver (Mark Lester) is an orphan who trades his slave-like conditions in the orphanage for questionably worse, as he becomes a member of a gang of child pickpockets under the leadership of kindly old Fagin (Ron Moody, unforgettable here) and the evil Bill Sykes (Oliver Reed). He's rescued by wealthy foster parents, then captured again by the pickpockets... singing all the way. Memorable, and responsible for inspiring a cottage industry of ragamuffin musicals a la Newsies.

Be warned: The DVD is a nuisance flipper disc, and poorly labeled at that.