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Andre Holland recommended Oliver! (1968) in Movies (curated)

 
Oliver! (1968)
Oliver! (1968)
1968 | Classics, Comedy, Drama
8.0 (9 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"Number five — this is a tough one. I think the one I would like to say, though, is one — when I was a kid, this is the one that I watched all the time. I had it on VHS tape and probably wore the tape out – I know just about every line from the movie. I don’t know why I loved it so much, but the movie Oliver. The musical version. The Lionel Bart one. Ron Moody was the guy that played Fagin. Growing up, we never went to the movies. I grew up in a pretty rural town in Alabama, and we just never went, and so our big excitement for the weekend would be to go to the video store and… We also didn’t have a VCR, but you could, back in the day, rent a VCR. So, we would rent a VCR, and for some reason, we owned the movie. We owned two movies; we owned Oliver and we owned The Wiz. Whenever we would rent the VCR, we would watch the movies that we rented, but then, because we had the VCR, we’d always end up playing Oliver and The Wiz again. I think that’s probably why I fell in love with it. And then, ironically, it wound up being the first play that I ever did in community theatre. Although I’m [also] obsessed with The Wiz. It terrified me, as a kid. That was gonna be the other one I was gonna say. It was either Oliver or The Wiz, but The Wiz is just amazing."

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Emma @ The Movies (1786 KP) rated Missing Link (2019) in Movies

Jun 22, 2019 (Updated Sep 25, 2019)  
Missing Link (2019)
Missing Link (2019)
2019 | Adventure, Animation, Comedy
This really isn't a bad little film, it has its fun and implausible action, and you come away with a message of friendship for everyone to ponder on. It's obviously great Easter holiday fodder and it won't bore the parents, which is always half the battle with kids films.

Susan is the last of his kind and desperately wants to find the fabled yeti who he believes to be his distant cousins. He enlists Sir Lionel Frost to help him on his quest after reading about his escapades in finding long lost creatures.

It's a pretty star-studded cast with Zach Galifianakis and Hugh Jackman leading it up. There will be a lot of other voices you recognise, but for the most part they stay in the background.

Both of our leading men are really well cast and give their characters a much needed boost. They get some humour in various places, but I didn't feel like the script was fantastic overall.

Where Lionel and Susan were well cast, Adeline Fortnight really missed the spot for me. From the design of the character to that accent, whose origin was kind of non-descript, I couldn't help wondering why the role went to Zoe Saldana and not Salma Hayek.

Stephen Fry makes a wonderful bad guy. I've always loved his voicework this thankfully did not break that trend and he added some oomph to the proceedings.

The last cast member I want to mention is Emma Thompson as The Elder. I think she suffered the most with the script, "The people we don't want here are leaving! Force them to stay!" I'm sure that line was meant to be amusing, and it definitely could have been, but the way it wasn't backed up with anything to come across that way. She was woefully underused and her scenes were wholly inadequate for such a great talent.

I had to stop and weep for humanity a little, there are some comments on the internet where it appears that people don't get that this is stop-motion animation, with a few saying it all looked too simple. I cannot fault the work that was put into this, it's wonderfully done, even if I'm not a fan of the strangely pointed features. There's a brief glimpse in the trailer of a barroom brawl, look out for the whole scene in the film because it is probably the most impressive piece of work.

Despite my quibbles, this is genuinely a pleasant film to watch and I don't think many people will get to the end and grumble that they've wasted their time. I just worry that it's not quite good enough to be well remembered, it's in danger of being one of those films that makes me go "oh yeah, I remember that one, it's really good."

What you should do

If you're in need of an Easter activity then it's worth the trip to the cinema, and it's certainly worth catching when it's released for home viewing.

Movie thing you wish you could take home

There's nothing in the film I'd particularly like to take home, but I wouldn't mind some of the patience and dedication that those animators must have to produce such wonderfully smooth motion.