adaptation Archives - Steven Benedict

Tag Archives: adaptation

The Godfather Trilogy

Adapting Mario Puzo’s best-selling novel, Francis Ford Coppola drew up several themes lying dormant within its pages and augmented them in a uniquely cinematic fashion to create a masterful saga.

396. L’Avventura

With this modernist masterpiece, Michelangelo Antonioni told a story that abandoned its initial plot. Booed at Cannes, it paved the way for a new cinematic form.

384. Gomorrah

Matteo Garrone’s adaptation of Roberto Saviano’s book on the Neapolitan camorra smacks down the innumerable movies that have marketed the Mafia mythology.

379. Midnight Cowboy

This 60s’ American classic mixes avant-garde with mythology to examine male identity, intimacy, sexuality and trauma.

371. The Right Stuff

Tom Wolfe’s superb account about the early days of NASA’s space program needed filmmakers who shared a daring similar to the maverick pilots.

367. Kind Hearts and Coronets

How do you make a film about a sociopath who murders his entire extended family and still get the audience to root for him?

352. Roma

Alfonso Cuarón has long flirted with the neorealist style. His latest masterpiece, Roma illustrates cinema is not about what you show, but how you show it.

349. The Matrix

Science-Fiction operates in many ways; fantasy, allegory, romance, satire and speculative. Another is prophecy. Twenty years on The Matrix seems eerily prescient.

347. Full Metal Jacket

Many great auteurs use similar styles to explore similar themes as lesser filmmakers. The only real difference is that great auteurs are more consistent and precise.

346. Au revoir les enfants

Most films about childhood are often nostalgic. Louis Malle’s masterful auto-biopic is about loss of an unfathomable kind.

345. Lost in Translation

Sofia Coppola’s off-beat romance deftly explores isolation, miscommunication and the superficiality of modern media.

327. The Godfather

Regarded as the greatest gangster picture of them all, the passing years continue to reveal new layers and meanings in Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece.

319. 2001: A Space Odyssey

For all its groundbreaking effects and narrative innovation, this owes a debt to a romantic fantasy and a Soviet propaganda film.

314. Investigation of a Citizen above Suspicion

Elio Petri’s bitterly satirical Oscar winner from 1970 cuts a stark picture of today’s political leaders.

313. McCabe & Mrs. Miller

Critics have long called Robert Altman’s 1971 picture a revisionist western. Truth is, the western has always been revising itself.

306. Bicycle Thieves

Many films enjoy exaggerated reputations, but it is almost impossible to underestimate the beauty, truth and importance of Vittorio De Sica’s Bicycle Thieves.

300. The Wages of Fear

Described as the most evil film ever made, Henri George Clouzot’s masterpiece resembles Hemingway, Hitchcock, neo-realism and Casablanca.

299. The Fly (1986)

David Cronenberg’s adaptation of George Langelaan’s short story is appropriately, a fusion of Icarus, Prometheus, Frankenstein and Beauty and the Beast.

284. Belle de Jour

Long thought to be a satire on bourgeoise marriage, Luis Buñuel’s masterpiece is really a study of the traumas suffered by a sexual assault victim.

277. Blade Runner

Are classics always instantly recognized? If ever there were proof that critics cannot assess a film’s merits on a single viewing, it is Ridley Scott’s masterpiece.