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There's a skill to adapting a novel that not all filmmakers have. This is especially evident if a book is not inherently cinematic and requires more "massaging" to shape it into a form capable of fitting comfortably into a two-hour time...

Children of Men, Alfonso Cuarón's adaptation of the P.D. James novel, takes a look at England in an apocalyptic near-future, when standards of law and order have broken down and the country is ruled by a fascist dictator. The movie is set in 2027...

Sometimes, the conversion of a novel into a movie can result in a loss or diminution of the author's tone or the book's characters. With Choke, director Clark Gregg has maintained writer Chuck Palahniuk's voice but the men and women populating the...

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is fantasy-lite. With its PG rating and aversion to anything shocking or overly grotesque, it's the bastard stepchild of The Lord of the Rings or Harry Potter. A dull, meandering storyline an...

Cimarron, the recipient of the 1931 Best Picture Oscar, is an excellent study of how tastes have changed over the years. Critically lauded at the time of its release, Cimarron was beloved by most who saw it. Eight decades later, it is frequently ...

Circle of Friends is the motion picture equivalent of a dime store romance novel. It has all the requisite elements -- it's a period piece (the bulk of the story takes place in the late 1950s); boasts women with heaving bosoms and a young, virile ...

Thematically, James Ponsoldt’s The Circle (based on the novel by Dave Eggers) takes its cues from George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Grand aspirations, to be sure, and ones that are never truly met. From its beginn...

City of Ember has almost anything one could want from a science fiction-based family adventure film: likeable characters, an imaginative setting, and a fast pace. The third item on that list is notable. Recognizing that children often have limite...

The irony of calling this movie City of God will not be lost on the viewer, since the location in question – the slums (or favelas) of Rio de Janeiro – is, at the best of times, purgatory, and, at the worst of times, hell. God is nowhere to be...

Throughout his 50-year career, and especially in his great films, director Stanley Kubrick had a penchant for taking the novels of others and re-shaping them to fit his own vision. Of the 16 movies Kubrick directed (including his final feature, Ey...