Top Ten Tuesday - Adaptations

Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme created by The Broke and the Bookish. This week's topic is

- Top Ten Book to Movie Adaptations - 

-(for those movies that actually didn't butcher the book!) -

       Not all of these follow the book by the letter...and some may actually change parts of the story completely, but still they are, in my book, really good adaptations.  

 Adaptation (2002) - Despite not having read the book the film is based upon (Susan Orlan's The Orchid Theif), this film is too good to not include and fittingly start out my list.  Adaptation revolves around real-life screen writer Charlie Kaufman [Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind; Being John Malkovich], played by Nicolas Cage as he tries to adapt to screen Orland's unadaptable book. 


Richard III (1995) - Before he was Gandolf the Gray/White, Ian  McKellen adapted William Shakespeare's play concerning the evil humpback 15th-Century king and moved the setting to an alternate 1930's Fascist England.   This is a beautiful film and actually contains one of my favorite film moments in McKellen/Richard III's delivery of the famed "A Horse!  A Horse!  My Kingdom for a Horse!" line.

Hamlet (1996) - Kenneth Branagh's 1996 cinematic masterpiece this was the first (and, I'm pretty sure only) filmed version of the Shakespeare's longest play to try to incorporate the play in it's entirety.  The whole damn 29,500-give-or-take-a-few-words play.  Which means that this film is also around four hours long, but also is breathtakingly beautiful.  Plus, the acting credit's list is pretty much all stars.


V for Vendetta (2006) - I was underwhelmed by the well-received 1980's graphic novel by Alan Moore and David Lloyd about an enigmatic masked anarchist who goes only by the name "V" as he crosses a fascist English government; however, the film version, where V is somewhat more so a freedom-fighter than anarchist is a great film version, despite heavily changing some character backstories and plot elements.  It's an unfaithful, yet wonderful adaptation. 


A Very Long Engagement (2004) - Despite loving the Sébastien Japrisot novel by the same name (Un long dimanche de fiançailles), this filmed version is a wonderful love story set in interwar France about one young woman's attempt to discover what happened to her fiancee when he was sent over the trenches of the Somme to be killed for a crime committed at the front.   


From Russia With Love (1962), Goldfinger (1963), and Casino Royale (2008) - Each of these were great books, with great film adaptations.  That can't be said for each and every of the Bond films, even as someone who loves and grew up with James Bond.


Lust/Caution (2007) - Ang Lee's adaptation of Eileen Chang's short story of the same name about an attempted assassination of an official in Japanese-occupied Shanghai was sadly not given a huge audience in the US since it was given the infamous NC-17 rating due to sex scenes.  It's a beautiful, yet sometimes uncomfortable film.