Michael Heath Movies

Director Roman Polanski gives one of Charles Dickens' best-loved stories a new and dynamic interpretation in this period drama. Oliver Twist (Barney Clark) is a young orphan in Victorian England who has been sent to a dank workhouse run by the miserly Mr. Bumble (Jeremy Swift) when it is learned there is no one to care for him. When Oliver dares to ask for more gruel, he is sent away to live with an undertaker, who treats him poorly. Preferring life on the streets to the treatment he's been receiving, Oliver runs away to London, where he falls in with the Artful Dodger (Harry Eden), a youthful pickpocket. The Artful Dodger is one of a gang of young thieves overseen by Fagin (Ben Kingsley), a paternal but sinister criminal mastermind. While Oliver finds a home of sorts with Fagin and his young cohorts, he also falls into a dangerous life made all the more threatening by the presence of Fagin's menacing overlord, Bill Sykes (Jamie Foreman). Oliver Twist was Polanski's first feature film after enjoying a major career resurgence following the international success of his Oscar-winning World War II drama The Pianist. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi

This funky and intelligent sci-fi-horror sleeper from New Zealand features Gary Day as the maniacal Dr. Howell, director of the Trans-Cranial Applications Hospital, who conducts bizarre brain experiments in a subterranean laboratory on a remote island -- most of which backfire and turn his patients into murderous zombie slaves. Onto this island of weirdness ventures a group of youths -- including the troubled son (Michael Hurst) of the doctor's former scientific rival, whom the mad doc had hypnotized into murdering his father several years ago. The resulting confrontations between the dirtbike-riding kids and armies of rampaging mutants are action-packed and splattery as all get-out. ~ Cavett Binion, Rovi

Elderly residents of an Australian retirement home fight for their lives after a crazed slasher comes to call in this horror movie. ~ Sandra Brennan, Rovi