Books Into Movies- Movies made From Books - July 2021

Have you read books that became movies? Tell us what you thought of them.

Movie
The Deep End - (2001)
4/5
When a woman's eldest son's lover washes up on the beachfront in front of their house, she does the only thing an unflinchingly devoted mother could: she hides the body to protect her son. Now unexpectedly, in the aftermath of this desperate act, emerges Alek Spera, who knows about the death and the secret life of her son. But what begins as a riveting cat-and-mouse game soon turns into a haunting love story with self-sacrifice at its center.

The description doesn't exactly tell the plot right. I loved the character played by Alek Spera. It was almost agonizing seeing the mother digging herself deeper and deeper. Never the less it was a story that kept you watching. The "strong sex scene" it warns about is extremely short and can be easily skipped. The film was very loosely adapted from the novel The Blank Wall by Elizabeth Sanxay Holding

Currently watching (for the second time) Little Dorrit on Amazon Prime. Was my introduction to Clare Foy (quite sympathetic portrayal of Amy Dorrit, but too tall). Particularly like Russell Tovey as the turnkey's son John Chivery. Matthew Macfadyen is Arthur Clennam -- I recall him from the TV series MI-6 but probably better known for his part in the HBO series Succession. Judy Parfitt is Arthur's mother. Tom Courtenay is Amy Dorrit's father (the Father of the Marshalsea).

Anyway, to the books. I'm re-reading Little Dorrit on a Kindle app on one of my tablets, but flipping back and forth with The Selected Letters of Charles Dickens edited by Jenny Hartley (for the 1st time in this case), also via the app -- I have the Oxford World's Classics edition of LD, but I've found the print too small, so I'm reading the Oxford e-book and jacked up the font. The letters were selected from the Pilgrim Edition issued by Oxford Univ. Press, each volume a couple of hundred dollars U.S. (14 volumes), definitely out of my price range, but Hartley severely bridges the notes in the Selected version. I've flipped through volumes of the Pilgrim at the university library where I used to catalog, and the notes are outstanding. Dickens's energy, enthusiasm, ego are hard to imagine, though you get some idea from the letters where he's writing a serialized novel, editing a magazine, writing a novella every Christmas following the success of A Christmas Carol, travelling all over Europe (some of his observations turn up in LD}, working with a philanthropist to create an institution for prostitutes, fathering 10 children, and having an affair with an actress on the side, and writing all those letters! He burned many of them but something like 14,000 survived. With a quill pen, no less & no word processor.

Elizabeth Is Missing - Emma Healey (2014)

A sophisticated psychological mystery that is also a heartbreakingly honest meditation on memory, identity, and aging - an elderly woman descending into dementia embarks on a desperate quest to find the best friend she believes has disappeared, and her search for the truth will go back decades and have shattering consequences. Maud, an aging grandmother, is slowly losing her memory - and her grip on everyday life. Yet she refuses to forget her best friend, Elizabeth, whom she is convinced is missing and in terrible danger. But no one will listen to Maud - not her frustrated daughter, Helen, not her caretakers, not the police, and especially not Elizabeth’s mercurial son, Peter. Armed with handwritten notes she leaves for herself and an overwhelming feeling that Elizabeth needs her help, Maud resolves to discover the truth and save her beloved friend. This singular obsession forms a cornerstone of Maud’s rapidly dissolving present. But the clues she discovers seem only to lead her deeper into her past, to another unsolved disappearance: her sister, Sukey, who vanished shortly after World War II. As vivid memories of a tragedy that occurred more 50 years ago come flooding back, Maud discovers new momentum in her search for her friend. Could the mystery of Sukey’s disappearance hold the key to finding Elizabeth?

The movie is as moving as the book...perhaps more so as you can see poor Maud's dilemma is detail as she tries to convince people to help her find her friend. The book came out in 2014 and the movie in 2020.

Let Him Go (2020
A retired sheriff, (Kevin Costner), and his wife, grieving over the death of their son, set out to find their only grandson.
5/5

It was based on the book by the same title by Larry Watson published in 2003. Set in Montana and North Dakota there is some of the most beautiful scenery you could ever ask for. I liked the idea and the plot of the story and hoped that this wonderful couple were going to get their grandson out of the awful family that their daughter-in-law married into and became stuck. It didn't have a very good ending but it was certainly worth of the hour and 50 minutes to watch it.

>5 Carol420: I just got that from the library!

High Crimes (2002)
5/5

A happily married, successful lawyer (Ashley Judd) is shocked to learn that her husband (Jim Caviezel) has a hidden past as a classified military operative, and is accused of committing a heinous war crime. As she prepares to defend her husband in a top-secret military court, where none of the rules she knows so well apply, she gets help from a wild card (Morgan Freeman) -- a former military attorney who doesn't play by anyone's rules. Based on Joseph Finder's book by the same name.

This is the third or fourth time I've watched this one. It has an unexpected ending but not one that I particularly wanted.

>6 JulieLill: Mine came from the library also. I really liked it but then I like almost anything that Kevin Costner is in.

> Carol420
I have also ordered it from my local library.

>9 aussieh: Hope you enjoy it.

Come Away
"When their eldest brother dies, Peter and Alice seek to save their parents from despair until they are forced to choose between home and imagination, setting the stage for their iconic journeys into Wonderland and Neverland."
From IMDB https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1894760729?playlistId=tt5714470&ref_=vp_rv_ap_0
I really enjoyed this film, it was beautifully filmed and I liked the twists they put in it.

Defending Jacob (2020)
Based on the book by the same name by William Landay

Andy Barber has been an assistant district attorney in his suburban Massachusetts county for more than twenty years. He is respected in his community, tenacious in the courtroom, and happy at home with his wife, Laurie, and son, Jacob. But when a shocking crime shatters their New England town, Andy is blindsided by what happens next: His fourteen-year-old son is charged with the murder of a fellow student. Every parental instinct Andy has rallies to protect his boy. Jacob insists that he is innocent, and Andy believes him. Andy must. He's his father. But as damning facts and shocking revelations surface, as a marriage threatens to crumble and the trial intensifies, as the crisis reveals how little a father knows about his son, Andy will face a trial of his own - between loyalty and justice, between truth and allegation, between a past he's tried to bury and a future he cannot conceive.

A television miniseries based on the 2012 novel of the same name by William Landay. I loved the book even though it was one of the disturbing things I have ever read...especially the ending. The book as a TV series is a bit of a stretch since the first season...which I watched...leaves a lot of the middle and the ending of the book out to set the scene for a 2nd season which I understands has very little to do with the book. The first season is pretty good if you haven't yet read the book or if you can try and ignore what isn't shown but you know is eventually coming. It's a mixture of courtroom drama, murder mystery, and psychological thriller.