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Film · Columbia · 1968

Pass it on

Oliver!

65Worth an evening.

The songs are cheerful about hunger, and the boy still needs his name.

The review

Dickens's boy, sung. The workhouse, the funeral-parlor apprenticeship, Fagin's gang of child pickpockets, Nancy who tries to get him out. The tunes are why it won people over, and they are cheerful about hunger, which is a strange sweetness to put on an empty stomach and a theft. You will hum them. That is the trap and the gift at once.

Under the cheer the stake is plain. He has a grandfather and a name if the gang will let him go. A child is useful to people who are not in a hurry to free him. I would watch it with kids old enough to notice that a good song can make a bad house feel cozy. Then say the cozy part is how they keep him, and the name is what Nancy is trying to walk him toward. Do not let the number be the last word.

Journal

Keep Oliver! in the record.

No house has filed a sentence for this yet.

Live Historic number 65. Yours can differ.

The glance

Temperance is the thin one.

Is appetite shown and then put down, or are you being trained to want the next one?

This phone is set for a grown person, just me. Change the ages.

Consider this

The Sound of Music

78 instead of 65

The Sound of Music is still a musical film, and it scores 78 instead of 65. What you gain is temperance: The music is joy, and it is not the master.

The eight

7
Industry
Workhouse, apprenticeship, and a gang that lives by children's theft.
8
Household
He has a grandfather and a name if the gang will let the child go.
6
Piety
Nancy tries to get him out, which is the mercy the gang does not share.
7
Courage
Nancy tries to get a child out of a gang that is better off keeping him.
6
Republic
A workhouse boy is owed a name, and the parish has already failed that.
4
Temperance
The songs are cheerful about hunger and can make the gang feel like fun.
7
Truth
His name and his grandfather are the true life; the gang is the cheat.
7
Stewardship
What can be left is a boy with a name, if anyone will let him leave.

Where to watch

Finding the page.

Live Historic · Oliver! · 65IMDb

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Film · Prime Video · 1995

Pass it on

A Little Princess

65Worth an evening.

Keep it. Imagination here is a way of telling the truth about a person's worth, not an escape from the attic.

The review

Sara's kindness in the attic is the film's argument, and it is not cheap because the film lets her be hungry. Miss Minchin worships money and calls it standards. The other girls learn which authority is real. There is a softness to the ending that a strict reading of the book might resist, and the softness is a mercy for a child audience. The picture to keep is the one where she gives the bun away.

A young house can watch this whenever someone has started ranking the children. Rank is the villain.

Journal

Keep A Little Princess in the record.