Based on the book...
Literary adaptations often get a bad press, with fans of the book lamenting the necessary excision of events or the loss of tone and character. Yet the best film adaptations capture the mood of the original while completely reimagining the story in their transition to the big screen.
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The Man Who Fell to Earth
David Bowie cemented his unearthly persona in Nicolas Roeg’s startling cult film; playing in alien stranded on earth while on a mission to find water for his own world, he initiates a plan to amass a fortune to help save his home planet.
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The Fallen Idol
Carol Reed followed the success of Odd Man Out (1947) with this adaptation of Graham Greene’s short story, The Basement Room. Young Felipe (a revelatory Bobby Henrey) is a son of a diplomat who is never around, who instead forms a friendship with his butler Baines (Ralph Richardson). Baines imp...
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The Three Musketeers
D'Artagnan (Michael York), a young swordsman, arrives in Paris with one dream: becoming a Musketeer. He meets and quarrels with Athos (Oliver Reed), Porthos (Frank Finlay), and Aramis (Richard Chamberlain), three Musketeers, who invite him to join them in fighting the evil Cardinal Richelieu (Cha...
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Evil under the Sun
Peter Ustinov stars as Agatha Christie's immortal detective, Hercule Poirot, in this star-studded murder-mystery. Poirot is tying up some loose ends on a shimmeringly beautiful Adriatic island when he's dragged into the case of an actress' strangling. In typical Christie style, everyone on the be...
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The Servant
Despite Harold Pinter's fear that Joseph Losey would turn his play into 'a completely homosexual picture', The Servant stands as one of the great critiques of British social and sexual mores. Power relationships between the classes fuel a sexual subtext about dominance and submission which goes b...