I think that Ivory/Merchant’s A room with a view, Maurice, and Howards end were all very faithful to the books. In fact, I found Maurice to be slightly better than the book.
Also An interview with a vampire was good, though not quite as faithful to the book.
Do you think that a good film adaptation should be very close to the book in general (story, characters, etc.), or is it enough if the film’s caught the sentiment/message of the book?
A Clockwork Orange was fairly faithful- except for the very end, which varied from both editions of the book. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with Branaugh & DeNiro was pretty darn close- tho a Swiss-Italian production called Viktor Frankenstein was almost direct from the book. For a limited-time TV production Stephen King’s The Stand was very accurate- it’s major deviation being flattening of the characters of Harold Lauder & Nadine Cross, making them more villianous than tragic.
I know it’s just out, but I really enjoyed seeing Cold Mountain on the screen. It’s one of my favorite books and I thought the movie was not only faithful to the story but also captured the feeling of the book. Jude Law portrayed Inman exactly as he was in my mind.
I agree, though I would have liked to seen the bullying nursing home worker get cut down to size.
Another vote for the 1941 Maltese Falcon. I don’t know if there’s a line of dialogue in the movie that isn’t straight out of the book, yet it works perfectly as a movie.
The Man Who Would Be King
The Three Musketeers & The Four Musketeers (1970’s version)
I was big on James Ellroy when L.A. Confidential was released. Despite my trepidations about the project, I thought they did a great job with the material.
This may be cheating a bit, but I found HBO’s production of Band of Brothers an outstanding adaptation of the Steven Abrose book.
I disagree with Ebert then, because the book Ends with a description of what the baby looks like. I watched the whole movie just to see the baby because the book’s description was so interesting. “pearly little claws…” :mad:
I honestly can’t think of any movies I thought were really good adaptations of books (the whole The Shining vs the superior adaptation of “the Shining” miniseries aside) but I do know of a couple of movies that took so so stories and made better movies out of them. Those would be Practical Magic and Night Of The Twisters.