What film based on the book was exactly how you pictured it?

[MydogWillow]

Of Mice and Men was exactly how I'd imagined it, right down to the position of buildings and how characters looked.

I guess it's a testament to excellent writing and film making.

@UnitedRoad I have made two attempts at After You but just can't finish it. I will eventually!

Revolutionary Road

@MrsBede

High Fidelity. Even though they transposed it to America, which I obviously hadn't pictured, it was perfect and captured the tone of the book brilliantly.

I came to say High Fidelity too, despite being Chicago instead of London.

The Crow Road
Normal People
Brokeback Mountain
On Chesil Beach
Atonement
1995 Pride and Prejudice (mostly)

@waltzingparrot
Totally agree - The Painted Veil was superb.

I also think Sense and Sensibility (the Emma Thompson version) was very good.

[quote UnitedRoad]@JaneJeffer I was going to say Me Before You too. I put off watching it for years because I thought they’d ruin it, but Louisa was exactly as I pictured her.

I haven’t read the sequels though. I’ve bought them but can’t bring myself to read them yet.[/quote]
I didn't know they done a third one but I honestly don't recommend After You.

I agree the movie was great, Emilia Clarke was perfect casting.

Atonement
Stand By Me

I'm hoping I can add the new Dune to this list

The worst adaptation for me has to be Bladerunner.

About A Boy! Actually the film was better than the book. I love the film. Captures that perfect English London in the 90s

@Bryonyshcmyony

Atonement Stand By Me

I'm hoping I can add the new Dune to this list

The worst adaptation for me has to be Bladerunner.

I'm on tenterhooks waiting for the new Dune, too! The trailer looks visually epic (as it needs to) and think that Timothee Chalamet is a far more convincing Paul Artreides than Kyle MacLachlan (who looked about 30 in that film).

The Fellowship of the Ring

I agree that Mark Rylance was completely wrong as Thomas Cromwell in Wolf Hall. Ironically Mark Ruffalo, which the PP accidentally typed instead, would probably have been great.

TV series rather than films: Tinker, Tailor, and Jewel in the Crown.

The Boy in the striped Pyjamas

Another vote for The Help.

John Steinbeck is a very cinematic writer, Of Mice and Men starts with him describing the scene/stage on to which the characters arrive. Plus it is a very short book, just the length for a movie. It is so skilfully written it would be hard for a film-maker to mess it up. Ditto A Christmas Carol, it's just the right length.

The film wasn't much like the book as a whole but I cried at the start of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader as the ship looked so perfect.

Disagree with a pp about Gone With the Wind, there are 2 DCs missing not one, plus Ashley and Melanie are terribly miscast.

100% agree. I could not watch a film based on a book for a long time after. Such a disappointment.

The High Fidelity film is also crap compared to the book.

I've just remembered another one. The Winona Ryder Little Women from the 90s. The more recent one is a better film but this one is just exactly how I pictured it.

I didn't even know there was a film of On Chesil Beach, a book in which nothing at all happens. I only read it because my Mum loves Ian McEwan and insisted that I read one of her books by him. I chose On Chesil Beach because it was the thinnest. The entire way through the book I was wondering why they didn't just have a conversation, that would have sorted everything out in minutes.

After I'd finished it my Mum said "I really like McEwan's writing, he really understands how women think". If that's how my Mum thinks then that explains a LOT about some of out disagreements (that I didn't even know we were having a disagreement until later).

Gone Girl

Not a film but tv series - A suitable boy - much shorter but captured the essence well, I thought.

@FlosCampi Oh yes. It's beautiful

The Green Mile

@NeverTalkToStrangers, Absolutely!

Cromwell is a dominating physical presence as well as an intimidating mind. “You
Look like a murderer” etc. Rylands is a marvellous actor but isn’t exactly a brute.

Mark Rylance is a fantastic actor but even he can't act himself 6 inches taller and 12 inches broader. The dichotomy between Cromwell's brutish appearance and he's brilliant brain are integral to his character.

Same with teeny tiny Tom Cruise playing 6ft 5" Jack Reacher FGS!

Have to differ, I loved Mark Rylance as Cromwell. Within minutes, although he didn't look like the book description, for me he was Cromwell.

The first Harry Potter. I was so impressed, even the moving staircases were as I had imagined!