In film some of the hardest movies to make are novels, mainly for the simple fact of trying to fit everything that's was so great about the novel into a 2 hour movie is really tough and plus some studios and filmmakers want to make the readers of the book happy with the film and that it did the book justice. I'm going to say this once and don't hate on me but .... THE BOOK DOESN'T MATTER, yes you must use the story to make the film but you can't put every detail from the book into the film its just not possible so Hollywood has to change things up to make the film not seem boring. Ok enough with the rant I'm going to bring you my top 10 favorite films adapted from a novel. These movies are ranked 11-20 so when you see number 5 it is actually number 15. You can see my other list here. So without further ado...
10. (20) Capote
This is a really dark film and Phillip Seymour Hoffman gives one of the greatest performances of all-time. On assignment to write an article for 'The New Yorker,' Truman Capote (played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) traveled to a small Kansas town, where he began to investigate and report on the gruesome murder of a local family. At first leery of the writer, the townsfolk come to trust Capote and allow him into their lives, giving him his story. Capote was nominated for 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay while winning the award for Best Actor and it has a rating of 90% on rottentomatoes.com.
9. (19) No Country for Old Men
This film is fantastic and the character of Anton Chigurh freaks me out still to this day. Llewelyn Moss (played by Josh Brolin) finds a pickup truck surrounded by a sentry of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back trunk. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law — namely aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell (played by Tommy Lee Jones) — can contain. Moss tries to evade his pursuers, in particular a mysterious mastermind named Anton Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem) who flips coins for human lives, as the crime drama broadens. No Country for Old Men was nominated for 8 Academy awards including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Film Edting, Best Director, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay while winning 4 (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay) and it has a rating of 94% on rottentomatoes.com.
8. (18) The Shining
This movie has some frightening scenes and it haunts me to this day"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" -- or, rather, a homicidal boy in Stanley Kubrick's eerie 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel. With wife Wendy (played by Shelley Duvall) and psychic son Danny (played by Danny Lloyd) in tow, frustrated writer Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson) takes a job as the winter caretaker at the opulently ominous, mountain-locked Overlook Hotel so that he can write in peace. Before the Overlook is vacated for the Torrances, the manager (played by Barry Nelson) informs Jack that a previous caretaker went crazy and slaughtered his family; Jack thinks it's no problem, but Danny's "shining" hints otherwise. Settling into their routine, Danny cruises through the empty corridors on his Big Wheel and plays in the topiary maze with Wendy, while Jack sets up shop in a cavernous lounge with strict orders not to be disturbed. Danny's alter ego, "Tony," however, starts warning of "redrum" as Danny is plagued by more blood-soaked visions of the past, and a blocked Jack starts visiting the hotel bar for a few visions of his own. Frightened by her husband's behavior and Danny's visit to the forbidding Room 237, Wendy soon discovers what Jack has really been doing in his study all day, and what the hotel has done to Jack. The Shining has a rating of 91% on rottentomatoes.com.
7. (17) Psycho
While it wasn't the first great horror film, it was the film that moved the genre into the mainstream society. In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was already famous as the screen's master of suspense (and perhaps the best-known film director in the world) when he released Psycho and forever changed the shape and tone of the screen thriller. From its first scene, in which an unmarried couple balances pleasure and guilt in a lunchtime liaison in a cheap hotel (hardly a common moment in a major studio film in 1960), Psycho announced that it was taking the audience to places it had never been before, and on that score what followed would hardly disappoint. Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is unhappy in her job at a Phoenix, Arizona real estate office and frustrated in her romance with hardware store manager Sam Loomis (John Gavin). One afternoon, Marion is given $40,000 in cash to be deposited in the bank. Minutes later, impulse has taken over and Marion takes off with the cash, hoping to leave Phoenix for good and start a new life with her purloined nest egg. 36 hours later, paranoia and exhaustion have started to set in, and Marion decides to stop for the night at the Bates Motel, where nervous but personable innkeeper Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) cheerfully mentions that she's the first guest in weeks, before he regales her with curious stories about his mother. Psycho was nominated for 4 Academy Awards including Best Director, Best Actress, Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction and it has a rating of 96% on rottentomatoes.com.
6. (16) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
While this is my least favorite of the trilogy, it is still an amazing and action-packed film. Frodo (played by Elijah Wood) and Samwise (played by Sean Astin) press on toward Mordor. Gollum insists on being the guide. Can anyone so corrupted by the ring be trusted? Can Frodo, increasingly under the sway of the ring, even trust himself? Meanwhile, Aragorn (played by Viggo Moretenson), drawing closer to his kingly destiny, rallies forces of good for the battles that must come. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was nominated for 6 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Art Direction, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects and Sound Mixing while winning 2 (Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects) and it has a rating of 96% on rottentomatoes.com.
5. (15)Raging Bull
This film is easily one of the greatest films of all-time. The story of Jake LaMotta (played by Robert DeNiro), a former middleweight boxing champion, whose reputation for tenacity and success in the ring was offset by his troubled domestic life: full of rage, jealousy, and suspicion--particularly towards his wife (played by Cathy Moriarty) and manager/brother (played by Joe Pesci)--which, in the end, left him destitute, alone, and seeking redemption. Raging Bull was nominated for 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Sound, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing, while wining two (Best Actor and Best Film Editing) and it has a rating of 98% on rottentomatoes.com.
4. (14) The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Assisted by a Fellowship of heroes, Frodo Baggins (played by Elijah Wood) plunges into a perilous trek to take the mystical One Ring to Mount Doom so that it and its magical powers can be destroyed and never possessed by evil Lord Sauron. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was nominated for 13 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Song, Best Original Score, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup, Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects, Best Cinematography while winning 4 (Best Visual Effects, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography and Best Makeup) and it has a rating of 91% on rottentomatoes.com.
3. (13) Gone Girl
I absolutely love this movie and made me question all relationships from here on out. On the occasion of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne (played by Ben Affleck) reports that his beautiful wife, Amy (played by Rosamund Pike), has gone missing. Under pressure from the police and a growing media frenzy, Nick's portrait of a blissful union begins to crumble. Soon his lies, deceits and strange behavior have everyone asking the same dark question: Did Nick Dunne kill his wife? Gone Girl was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and it has a rating of 88% on rottentomatoes.com.
2. (12) The Shawshank Redemption
This film is amazing is considered one of the greatest films of all-time. In 1946, a banker named Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) is convicted of a double murder, even though he stubbornly proclaims his innocence. He's sentenced to a life term at the Shawshank State Prison in Maine, where another lifer, Ellis "Red" Redding (played by Morgan Freeman), picks him as the new recruit most likely to crack under the pressure. The ugly realities of prison life are quickly introduced to Andy: a corrupt warden (played by Bob Gunton), sadistic guards led by Capt. Byron Hadley (played by Clancy Brown), and inmates who are little better than animals, willing to use rape or beatings to insure their dominance. But Andy does not crack: he has the hope of the truly innocent, which (together with his smarts) allow him to prevail behind bars. He uses his banking skills to win favor with the warden and the guards, doing the books for Norton's illegal business schemes and keeping an eye on the investments of most of the prison staff. In exchange, he is able to improve the prison library and bring some dignity and respect back to many of the inmates, including Red. The Shawshank Redemption was nominated for 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score and Best Sound Mixing and it has a rating of 90% on rottentomatoes.com.
1. (11) Dr. Stranglove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
This is a great film and it has to be the funniest film with a very serious tone and with the material it is working with during the Cold War. Loaded with thermonuclear weapons, a U.S. bomber piloted by Maj. T.J. "King" Kong (played by Slim Pickens) is on a routine flight pattern near the Soviet Union when they receive orders to commence Wing Attack Plan R, best summarized by Maj. Kong as "Nuclear combat! Toe to toe with the Russkies!" On the ground at Burpleson Air Force Base, Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake (played by Peter Sellers) notices nothing on the news about America being at war. Gen. Jack D. Ripper (played by Sterling Hayden) calmly informs him that he gave the command to attack the Soviet Union because it was high time someone did something about fluoridation, which is sapping Americans' bodily fluids (and apparently has something to do with Ripper's sexual dysfunction). Meanwhile, President Merkin Muffley (played by Peter Sellers as well) meets with his top Pentagon advisors, including super-hawk Gen. Buck Turgidson (played by George C. Scott), who sees this as an opportunity to do something about Communism in general and Russians in particular. However, the ante is upped considerably when Soviet ambassador de Sadesky (played by Peter Bull) informs Muffley and his staff of the latest innovation in Soviet weapons technology: a "Doomsday Machine" that will destroy the entire world if the Russians are attacked.
10. (20) Capote
This is a really dark film and Phillip Seymour Hoffman gives one of the greatest performances of all-time. On assignment to write an article for 'The New Yorker,' Truman Capote (played by Phillip Seymour Hoffman) traveled to a small Kansas town, where he began to investigate and report on the gruesome murder of a local family. At first leery of the writer, the townsfolk come to trust Capote and allow him into their lives, giving him his story. Capote was nominated for 5 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actress and Best Adapted Screenplay while winning the award for Best Actor and it has a rating of 90% on rottentomatoes.com.
9. (19) No Country for Old Men
This film is fantastic and the character of Anton Chigurh freaks me out still to this day. Llewelyn Moss (played by Josh Brolin) finds a pickup truck surrounded by a sentry of dead men. A load of heroin and two million dollars in cash are still in the back trunk. When Moss takes the money, he sets off a chain reaction of catastrophic violence that not even the law — namely aging, disillusioned Sheriff Bell (played by Tommy Lee Jones) — can contain. Moss tries to evade his pursuers, in particular a mysterious mastermind named Anton Chigurh (played by Javier Bardem) who flips coins for human lives, as the crime drama broadens. No Country for Old Men was nominated for 8 Academy awards including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor, Best Cinematography, Best Film Edting, Best Director, Best Sound Mixing, Best Sound Editing and Best Adapted Screenplay while winning 4 (Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay) and it has a rating of 94% on rottentomatoes.com.
8. (18) The Shining
This movie has some frightening scenes and it haunts me to this day"All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" -- or, rather, a homicidal boy in Stanley Kubrick's eerie 1980 adaptation of Stephen King's horror novel. With wife Wendy (played by Shelley Duvall) and psychic son Danny (played by Danny Lloyd) in tow, frustrated writer Jack Torrance (played by Jack Nicholson) takes a job as the winter caretaker at the opulently ominous, mountain-locked Overlook Hotel so that he can write in peace. Before the Overlook is vacated for the Torrances, the manager (played by Barry Nelson) informs Jack that a previous caretaker went crazy and slaughtered his family; Jack thinks it's no problem, but Danny's "shining" hints otherwise. Settling into their routine, Danny cruises through the empty corridors on his Big Wheel and plays in the topiary maze with Wendy, while Jack sets up shop in a cavernous lounge with strict orders not to be disturbed. Danny's alter ego, "Tony," however, starts warning of "redrum" as Danny is plagued by more blood-soaked visions of the past, and a blocked Jack starts visiting the hotel bar for a few visions of his own. Frightened by her husband's behavior and Danny's visit to the forbidding Room 237, Wendy soon discovers what Jack has really been doing in his study all day, and what the hotel has done to Jack. The Shining has a rating of 91% on rottentomatoes.com.
7. (17) Psycho
While it wasn't the first great horror film, it was the film that moved the genre into the mainstream society. In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock was already famous as the screen's master of suspense (and perhaps the best-known film director in the world) when he released Psycho and forever changed the shape and tone of the screen thriller. From its first scene, in which an unmarried couple balances pleasure and guilt in a lunchtime liaison in a cheap hotel (hardly a common moment in a major studio film in 1960), Psycho announced that it was taking the audience to places it had never been before, and on that score what followed would hardly disappoint. Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is unhappy in her job at a Phoenix, Arizona real estate office and frustrated in her romance with hardware store manager Sam Loomis (John Gavin). One afternoon, Marion is given $40,000 in cash to be deposited in the bank. Minutes later, impulse has taken over and Marion takes off with the cash, hoping to leave Phoenix for good and start a new life with her purloined nest egg. 36 hours later, paranoia and exhaustion have started to set in, and Marion decides to stop for the night at the Bates Motel, where nervous but personable innkeeper Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) cheerfully mentions that she's the first guest in weeks, before he regales her with curious stories about his mother. Psycho was nominated for 4 Academy Awards including Best Director, Best Actress, Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction and it has a rating of 96% on rottentomatoes.com.
6. (16) The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
While this is my least favorite of the trilogy, it is still an amazing and action-packed film. Frodo (played by Elijah Wood) and Samwise (played by Sean Astin) press on toward Mordor. Gollum insists on being the guide. Can anyone so corrupted by the ring be trusted? Can Frodo, increasingly under the sway of the ring, even trust himself? Meanwhile, Aragorn (played by Viggo Moretenson), drawing closer to his kingly destiny, rallies forces of good for the battles that must come. The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers was nominated for 6 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Art Direction, Best Film Editing, Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects and Sound Mixing while winning 2 (Best Sound Editing and Best Visual Effects) and it has a rating of 96% on rottentomatoes.com.
5. (15)Raging Bull
This film is easily one of the greatest films of all-time. The story of Jake LaMotta (played by Robert DeNiro), a former middleweight boxing champion, whose reputation for tenacity and success in the ring was offset by his troubled domestic life: full of rage, jealousy, and suspicion--particularly towards his wife (played by Cathy Moriarty) and manager/brother (played by Joe Pesci)--which, in the end, left him destitute, alone, and seeking redemption. Raging Bull was nominated for 8 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Sound, Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing, while wining two (Best Actor and Best Film Editing) and it has a rating of 98% on rottentomatoes.com.
4. (14) The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
Assisted by a Fellowship of heroes, Frodo Baggins (played by Elijah Wood) plunges into a perilous trek to take the mystical One Ring to Mount Doom so that it and its magical powers can be destroyed and never possessed by evil Lord Sauron. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring was nominated for 13 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Original Song, Best Original Score, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Makeup, Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects, Best Cinematography while winning 4 (Best Visual Effects, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography and Best Makeup) and it has a rating of 91% on rottentomatoes.com.
3. (13) Gone Girl
I absolutely love this movie and made me question all relationships from here on out. On the occasion of his fifth wedding anniversary, Nick Dunne (played by Ben Affleck) reports that his beautiful wife, Amy (played by Rosamund Pike), has gone missing. Under pressure from the police and a growing media frenzy, Nick's portrait of a blissful union begins to crumble. Soon his lies, deceits and strange behavior have everyone asking the same dark question: Did Nick Dunne kill his wife? Gone Girl was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and it has a rating of 88% on rottentomatoes.com.
2. (12) The Shawshank Redemption
This film is amazing is considered one of the greatest films of all-time. In 1946, a banker named Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) is convicted of a double murder, even though he stubbornly proclaims his innocence. He's sentenced to a life term at the Shawshank State Prison in Maine, where another lifer, Ellis "Red" Redding (played by Morgan Freeman), picks him as the new recruit most likely to crack under the pressure. The ugly realities of prison life are quickly introduced to Andy: a corrupt warden (played by Bob Gunton), sadistic guards led by Capt. Byron Hadley (played by Clancy Brown), and inmates who are little better than animals, willing to use rape or beatings to insure their dominance. But Andy does not crack: he has the hope of the truly innocent, which (together with his smarts) allow him to prevail behind bars. He uses his banking skills to win favor with the warden and the guards, doing the books for Norton's illegal business schemes and keeping an eye on the investments of most of the prison staff. In exchange, he is able to improve the prison library and bring some dignity and respect back to many of the inmates, including Red. The Shawshank Redemption was nominated for 7 Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Original Score and Best Sound Mixing and it has a rating of 90% on rottentomatoes.com.
1. (11) Dr. Stranglove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
This is a great film and it has to be the funniest film with a very serious tone and with the material it is working with during the Cold War. Loaded with thermonuclear weapons, a U.S. bomber piloted by Maj. T.J. "King" Kong (played by Slim Pickens) is on a routine flight pattern near the Soviet Union when they receive orders to commence Wing Attack Plan R, best summarized by Maj. Kong as "Nuclear combat! Toe to toe with the Russkies!" On the ground at Burpleson Air Force Base, Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake (played by Peter Sellers) notices nothing on the news about America being at war. Gen. Jack D. Ripper (played by Sterling Hayden) calmly informs him that he gave the command to attack the Soviet Union because it was high time someone did something about fluoridation, which is sapping Americans' bodily fluids (and apparently has something to do with Ripper's sexual dysfunction). Meanwhile, President Merkin Muffley (played by Peter Sellers as well) meets with his top Pentagon advisors, including super-hawk Gen. Buck Turgidson (played by George C. Scott), who sees this as an opportunity to do something about Communism in general and Russians in particular. However, the ante is upped considerably when Soviet ambassador de Sadesky (played by Peter Bull) informs Muffley and his staff of the latest innovation in Soviet weapons technology: a "Doomsday Machine" that will destroy the entire world if the Russians are attacked.
So ladies and gentlemen what do you think of my list, do you agree or disagree and what are your favorite films adapted from a novel? Let me now in the comments and let your voice be heard.
Jonah Sparks
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