The Best Movies based on Books Movies to Watch on The Roku Channel
Between Air, Pinball, Blackberry, and Tetris (is nothing sacred anymore?), 2023 has seen its fair share of business biopics. Unfortunately for The Beanie Bubble, it’s coming at the tail end of a trend that has overstayed its welcome in theaters. The Beanie Bubble isn’t very different from its predecessors in that it depicts its product […]
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 […]
Three half-Puerto-Rican, half-white boys grow up in suburban New York in this personal movie shot on stunning 16mm film. This movie follows the boys, often literally with the camera behind their backs, as their parents’ relationship goes through turmoil. The kids are often left unattended and have to fend for themselves. The beauty of We […]
2005 was a banner year for British period dramas, apparently: first, there was Joe Wright’s Pride & Prejudice (still arguably the genre’s crowning achievement), and then came Under the Greenwood Tree, a delightful made-for-Christmas-TV romance loosely based on the eponymous Thomas Hardy novel. Anyone familiar with the author’s typically tragedy-tinged stories — think Tess of […]
When a film adaptation takes the story of a beloved Japanese children’s novel, and depicts the characters travelling to heaven as cats, it kinda seems like a random addition. Yet, this decision makes sense for Night on the Galactic Railroad, because while the magic and the dreaminess of the trip to the stars still remains […]
A splendid animated movie by the legendary animator and director Satoshi Kon. A team of scientists and psychologists have created a device allowing them to enter someone else’s dreams. Even if the usage of this device is not allowed outside of her facility, Doctor Atsuko Chiba is using it to cure patients from depression. Things […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is compassionate and diminutive, but her social awkwardness hinders her as she attempts to navigate young adulthood. After recently being hospitalized for self-harm, Lee is determined to prove she is capable of autonomously taking care of herself. She begins working as a secretary for E. Edward Grey (James Spader), a meticulous […]
Shakespeare is a classic, not just because of the tales it adapts, but because of the innovation he made in the English language. Because of this, not every film adaptation gets this aspect right, but the one that gets the closest was Kenneth Branaugh’s Henry V in 1989. With his beginnings in theater, Branaugh steadies […]
A movie about a 16 year old girl who gets involved with an older more sophisticated man and how the relationship changes her life. Carey Mulligan’s performance is nothing short of perfect, inevitably making herself the center of the movie. The coming-of-age story is also quite exceptional, and conveys impressive load and variety of emotions. An Education is […]
Known for showcasing the grittier side of New York in his films, Martin Scorsese shifts to its upper echelons in The Age of Innocence. Based on the 1920 novel, the film follows society attorney Newland Archer (Daniel Day-Lewis) as he courts and marries the respectable May Welland (Winona Ryder), despite his desire for childhood friend […]
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 […]
The film that catapulted Kevin Costner to fame, No Way Out, is based on a novel by Kenneth Fearing, “The Big Clock”, and is also preceded by a film adaptation of it, around 40 years prior. Director Roger Donaldson found himself in charge of a film, haunted by the Cold War and spy thriller tropes, but […]
Liam Neeson has become one of those names that are used to perfectly describe any film he is starring in. In The Grey, things are different. Of course there is a more than enough amount of adrenaline-charged action, edge-of-your-seat thrills and catchphrases only worthy of a film where Neeson fights wolves for survival after a plane crash (a scenario that […]
The Reader is a German-American drama from 2008, based on the best-selling novel by author Bernhard Schlink. The storyline begins with adult Michael (Ralph Fiennes) reminiscing about his adolescence in post-World War II Berlin and his fateful relationship with an older woman named Hannah (Kate Winslet). 15-year old Michael is beset by Scarlet Fever and […]
