Great Expectations (1998)
Alfonso Cuaron updates Dickens' classic story as a sultry American Gothic morality tale set in New York and Florida.
Ethan Hawke's Finn (replacing the character of Pip), becomes a successful artist, in thrall to Gwyneth Paltrow's calculating Estella.
Chris Cooper as Joe and Anne Bancroft as Miss Dinsmoor (a more archly eccentric and venal Miss Havisham than in earlier adaptations) lend terrific support. Robert De Niro, as escaped convict Lustig, conveys suitable (post-Cape Fear) menace.
Emmanuel Lubezki's lush, colour-saturated cinematography adds immeasurably to the tone of Cuaron's vividly realised modern entry in the canon of Dickens adaptations.
