The Best Movies based on Books Movies to Watch on Kanopy
The real life situation behind this harrowing drama is quite extraordinary, so adapting Daniel Rye’s captivity straightforwardly would already intrigue viewers into watching it. However, Held for Ransom does more than depict his torture. Alternating between his captivity and the fundraising efforts back home, the film examines the way they have all responded to the […]
At first, Little Forest seemed to just be a gentle film extolling the beauty of the countryside. Many a story has been based on that idea, and sure enough, the film does have aesthetic, gorgeous shots of the orchard, the lake, and the garden Hye-won ran back to, albeit with much more delicious food making […]
The bond between parent and child is fundamental to the child’s life, but not necessarily the other way around. Even when the parents chose to have them into their lives, the child will always live within the parent’s context, not the other way around. Based on a book by Christine Angot, An Impossible Love is […]
The Romanian New Wave’s predilection for bleakness gets a tongue-in-cheek dig in this buddy comedy from the same country: “Romanians are bad at making movies,” Pompiliu (Alexandru Papadopol) complains. “They only show doom and gloom.” Indeed, the premise here could easily make for a miserable movie: three hapless working-class pals win a multimillion lottery jackpot […]
With many iterations of Faust, Jan Švankmajer’s own take on the deal with the devil isn’t absolutely terrifying, and can feel bizarre, sometimes even goofy, to those unfamiliar with the animation director. However, Lekce Faust is quite creepy, as he brings the legend to modern day Prague with a mysterious map and visually disturbing puppets […]
While Shakespeare has written most of the romantic plays that dominate theater today, there was one play from across the English Channel that also keeps its hold in the public consciousness, namely Cyrano de Bergerac by Edmond Rostand. Cyrano, My Love depicts the process of creating the iconic play a la Shakespeare in Love, that […]
When it comes to work, most apply to a job, take a 9-5 role for some decades, and then retire once enough funds have been acquired, the body gives out, or they reach the statutory age in their respective countries. This path isn’t as straightforward for the artist. La Belle Noiseuse is a portrait of […]
A classic text of English literature classes is handsomely brought to life in this screen translation of the still-radical play An Inspector Calls. The Birlings, a wealthy industrialist family thriving in 1912 England, have a cozy family celebration shattered by the arrival of a police inspector investigating the suicide of a young working-class woman. But […]
Le Doulos starts with an explanation of the title. While the word refers to the specific type of hat the gentlemen of this film wear, it has become a slang word meaning police informant. As such, an expectation is set– one of the thieves will end up as an informant. Admittedly, the path to get […]
Not many places are worse to find a dead body than in the border of North and South Korea. The tensions are high, the trust is low, and the conflict between them hasn’t been resolved in more than half a century. Joint Security Area is centered on a whodunit surrounding two North Korean soldiers at […]
There’s plenty of things happening in folk horror film November. With devils snatching livestock, magical automatons called kratts, and trying to trick the Plague while in the form of a pig, love surely can’t bloom strong in these circumstances. And this would be correct, but the way this tragic romance unfolds is through eerie, yet […]
Are connections truly fated, completely chosen, or purely circumstantial? The slow tragedy of Henry James’ The Beast in the Jungle hangs entirely on the question, which captivated readers and filmmakers with the concept, including Bertrand Bonello, which forms the foundations of 2023’s The Beast. Bonello lets loose The Beast in the Jungle into an AI […]
What would you do if your parents were Nazis? Based on the second novella of Rachel Seiffert’s The Dark Room, Lore tells the story of a Nazi officer’s children travelling together after the Allied victory. It’s a harrowing journey, of course, given the end of the war. But writer-director Cate Shortland takes that journey even […]
Before Games of Thrones delivered court intrigues, shocking murders, and adulterous affairs, Queen Margot delivered all these nearly two decades earlier, depicting the dramatized, real life events of the French Wars of Religion. While it doesn’t have dragons, it has style, with some of the most stunning scenes intercut with some of the most gruesome, […]
When Émilie finds a new roommate in Camille, she also gains a friend and a lover. Still, the parameters of their relationship are never quite sure, causing a complicated chasm that both divides and arouses them. Eventually, they meet Nora, who brings her own desires and insecurities into the mix. Experimentation ensues as the film […]
A powerful but quiet movie directed by Paul Dano and based on a novel of the same name by Richard Ford. It stars Carey Mulligan and Jake Gyllenhaal as a couple who move to a new town with their only child during the 1960s. Their relationship transforms after Gyllenhaal’s character loses his job as a […]
It’s not easy to watch films about child abuse, so it makes sense that This Boy’s Life wouldn’t be a hit blockbuster, but it’s still surprising how this 90’s film still remains an underrated gem. For starters, big names like Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio (in his breakthrough role), star as leads, and their […]
Florence Pugh broke through with her powerhouse performance here as Katherine, a young woman who is “sold” into a coldly transactional marriage with a cruel and impotent merchant in 1800s Northern England. Lady Macbeth seems to begin as one thing — a gloomy period tale of oppression and feminist rebellion — but, on the strength […]
It’s not fair to say if you’ve read the book, you’ve seen the movie, but it’s also not wholly untrue. Greg Sinise’s version of the classic tale by John Steinback adds little new details to the story, so the actors have some heavy lifting to do in bringing it to life. Thankfully, they do a […]
Human Capital is a rich and absorbing tale of two families tied together by love, money and a hit-and-run accident. One family is wealthy, the other struggling to get by in the days after the 2008 economic meltdown. Human Capital dexterously contrasts the social calculations the characters make about who can afford to step outside […]
Vague statement alert: Burning is not a movie that you “get”; it’s a movie you experience. Based on a short story by Murakami, it’s dark and bleak in a way that comes out more in the atmosphere of the movie rather than what happens in the story. Working in the capital Seoul, a young guy […]
Many people would rather see happy, positive depictions of people like them, but sometimes, it’s important to see the sides that we don’t really like to see, but should have some awareness of, in order to address them. It’s because of this director Lee Tamahori initially thought that adapting the Maori novel Once Were Warriors […]
There are plenty of great Hollywood movie musicals from the 1950s that are still held in high regard today. Guys and Dolls is one such musical, though perhaps it hasn’t gotten the iconic status that other MGM musicals garnered due to its uneven casting. Nevertheless, the film version of the popular stage musical adapts it […]
Before The Silence of the Lambs and Anthony Hopkins’ Hannibal, there was Manhunter and Brian Cox’s deeply unnerving Dr. Lecktor. Michael Mann’s neon-lit serial-killer thriller follows Will Graham (William Petersen), a retired FBI agent lured back to work by a psychotic mass murderer whom no one at the Bureau can catch. But Will has something […]
When German forces occupy Paris in 1942, a close-knit Jewish family tearfully sends their two youngest sons, Jo and Maurice, to escape the city on foot, with promises that they will all eventually be reunited in the Free Zone in the South. Told from the perspective of Jo – and based on the 1973 memoir […]
The Wave is a movie about manipulation, National Socialism and the authoritarian development at a German school. The well-liked teacher Rainer Wenger presents a social experiment to his students which quickly expands to a much larger scale. His experiment, named “Die Welle” (the wave), is part of a project week at the school about different […]
From Edward Zwick (Blood Diamond), Defiance is the unheard and untold true story of Polish Jewish brothers who defied all odds during World War II and built a community in the woods of Belarus to escape Hitler’s persecution and save around a thousand civilians from certain death. Interestingly, the film tries to avoid the dramatization of characters and […]
Tom Hardy, Guy Pearce, Gary Oldman, Jessica Chastain, and Shia Laboeuf (the good Shia Laboeuf) all star in this true-story-based gangster tale. As a result, Lawless is cliché-free, fast, and violent – yet it doesn’t take itself too seriously. Bootlegging Bondurant brothers live according to different rules, yet run a successful business during the prohibition era. When […]
