I really love the Coen Brothers' adaptation of No Country For Old Men. To be fair, I did read the book after I'd seen the movie a few times. I was surprised at how close the two works were. The book is extremely straightforward and has a rather fast paced style, so I suppose it's cheating since it seems to me like it would be very easy to translate into a movie. I found that the film slowed the pace down so that people wouldn't mistake it for an action film, since it's a drama/thriller at heart and has philosophical ideas that are not instantly obvious and would be lost in an action flick. I think that the reason why I believe the film's execution was better than the books is because I thought that the books had an awful writing style which doesn't come through in the film, and I love the style of the Coen Brothers. The book is full of running sentences. "He did the think and picked up the item and went to the car and got in and put on his seat belt and drove away." Eh.
Though my best example of a film exceeding it's book counterpart would have to be The Shawshank Redemption. Considering that it was written as just a short story by Stephen King that could easily have been drowned out by his larger works, it was incredible that a director took that story and spun it out into the film we have today. I recommend that film to absolutely everyone because I don't know a single person who hasn't enjoyed it. I mean, it's at the top of IMDbs Top 250 Films list for a very good reason.
Usually it's films that drive me to read books. I'll watch a great movie and then learn it was a book adaptation, and then I feel compelled to read the book. I have a nice little book collection growing with my DVD collection. Next on my to get list would be the book One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest, and for DVDs I'm waiting for my local store to order in a Steven Spielberg box set that I've asked for. It has Jaws, which I don't have on DVD yet.
Gotta love those movies.
