What is the best adaptation of a book to a movie?

[kacmar]

I think the best recent adaptation for me would be Great Gatsby. It was well acted as well as the storyline!

[Circling Turtle]

I love The Princess Bride, both novel and film. Both are equally brilliant. Another good page to screen adaptation is The Godfather.

[Laurencbosch]

The Hobbit by J.R.R Tolkien was adapted very well. A lot of people I have talked to didn't think the movies followed the book well enough, but I thought it was great. The book is vague in some of its descriptions and the director of the movies had to decide to incorporate more fantasy in some parts and more explanation in others and I think it was a job well done.

[Lee The Flea]

I think The Green Mile was as close to a perfect adaptation from book to movie as you can get..

[Ventis]

The Chronicle of a Death Foretold, 1987, with Ornella Mutti.

I never heard of Marquez before, and I stumbled upon this movie by a chance - one night I couldn't sleep and this was the only thing in TV that wasn't a B-class horror or porn. >.> I loved the movie, but I had no idea it was a book as well until a few years later, when a librarian recommended Marquez to me as something I might like. I flipped through one of the books... and found out I knew and loved it already.

Marquez became one of my favourite authors, but I can't get the movie anywhere.

[Eyre-thee-well]

Many of the ones I agree with have been mentioned: Gone with the Wind (I've read the book more than halfway and the movie is almost word for word; scene for scene), the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, Masterpiece Classic's Sense and Sensibility (Dan Stephens, Charity Wakefield, Hattie Monahan) though I'm still partial to the Emma Thompson adaptation. So far, I think the Hunger Games adaptations have been very well done. I liked the adaptation of Wuthering Heights with Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes. And I have yet to see an adaptation of Jane Eyre that I love. I've liked bits of many of the versions but none of them as a whole. The Help was a good adaptation too.

[Zoe303]

The Help is a fantastic movie, I have to say I loved it more than the book itself, lol! XD

[dickens 100]

Michael Cunningham's the hours is a much better film, with Nicole Kidman giving arguably her best performance,as Virginia Wolf
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis was made into a far superior film, with a truly terrifying and disturbing performance from Christian Bale

[Eyre-thee-well]

The Help is a fantastic movie, I have to say I loved it more than the book itself, lol! XD

I watched the movie first, and then read the book. And I agree that I really liked the movie more too! Is that allowed?

[zeldas_lullaby]

Great movie renditions:

Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the original, not the horrid, unnecessary, freaky remake with Johnny Depp!)
Pollyanna with Hayley Mills
The Sound of Music (loosely based on The VonTrapp Family Singers)
The Neverending Story (I read the book in middle school--pretty awesome!)
The Princess Bride (Near perfect except for Fred Savage's horrible, unconvincing acting as a sick boy--I mean, he didn't even look sick. I also read it in middle school)

But the best? The very best?

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone. I don't care for any of the following movies in the series--I only like the first one. It's great.

[RJohnReves]

I think The Green Mile was as close to a perfect adaptation from book to movie as you can get..

They also did a phenomenal job on another King prison story, Shawshank. It was a short story/ novella.

[Dave]

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford by Ron Hansen was a great book. I waited for years for it to be made into a movie & I was not disappointed when it was. A great adaptation.
My brother always told me that James Jones' Thin Red Line was much better than the movie with Sean Penn. I finally read the book & enjoyed it very much. The movie was somewhat different, but I liked it as well.

[Ryan]

'The Godfather', based on the novel by Mario Puzo. Few people are more aware of the novel than the film and that's because the film is awesome.

[zeldas_lullaby]

The Horse Whisperer was amazing. Great visuals, great music (I like to play it on the piano), but only average-level acting. Also, the script went on for too long. Too much time on the farm. However, if you ever need a good cry, just watch the first half-hour. Anyone not crying buckets at that point isn't human.

[dickens 100]

Wiliam Goldings classic novel 'Lord Of The Flies' was brilliantly adapted to the screen by Peter Brook.
It's a shocking novel about a group of children stranded on an island and the 1963 film captures the madness and murder of the storyline really well