In this case, adaptation=taking the title and maybe one famous line and then making up everything else. Peter Lorre has been turned into a raven by an evil magician (Karloff), so he goes to the home of another magician, Price, to get help. Unfortunately, Price isn't a very good magician. They wind up having a magic showdown at Karloff's castle. As an example of departure from the text, Lorre as the raven says at one point, "What the hell did you expect me to say?" or something like that. Anyway, Jack Nicholson is very young in this movie, but you can see the beginnings of his funny eyebrows. (Carly)

This is a very funny movie. It's based on a play by Oscar Wilde, whose play The Importance of Being Earnest is watched by some of this movie's characters in the film. Rupert Everett is a decadent English lord, and Jeremy Northam is his upstanding friend making a name for himself in Parliament. Julianne Moore is a woman from Northam's and Everett's past who has come to blackmail Northam. Blanchett is Northam's equally upstanding wife, and Driver is absolutely hysterical as Northam's sister. She's madly in love with Everett, who doesn't seem to realize it. (Carly)

If you want to watch a dramatization of a Jane Austen novel, watch the BBC production of Pride and Prejudice with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. Not to say that this is a bad movie. It does after all have all the elements that Carly and I feel constitutes a good movie: period costumes, silly people, the mustache man from The Buccaneers (Greg Wise) and above all, the lovely and talented Emma Thompson. At the same time, its drama is a little more, well, forced than P&P, probably because it was marketed for a larger audience. All in all, this is a thoroughly enjoyable film and is, after all, better than the recent version of Persuasion. (Despite what Carly says, Anne Elliot was never supposed to be that ugly.) (Ellen)

Ok, so it's no Pride and Prejudice, but the supporting cast is better, and there are some really funny parts, especially between Marianne and the Colonel, and also when Margaret fences with Edward. (Carly)

Grrrrrr..Daniel Day-Lewis. And furthermore, Grrrrr..Daniel Day-Lewis. Can you guess what the highlight of this film is? It's exciting and dramatic and beautiful and a far cry from Cecil Vyse of A Room With a View. This is the closest Carly and I will ever come to watching an action film that doesn't involve swordfighting. If you're a big fan of the novel, I think this has been tweaked for a more nineties audience, and of course the love interest has been added. All in all, an enjoyable film. (Ellen)

Oh, this is so good. It's based on the E.M. Forster novel of the same name, and it's incredibly funny. It's all about an English girl who goes to Italy and falls in love with a darling but, as far as her family is concerned, unthinkable man, George. She goes back to England and gets engaged to the horribly prissy Cecil,and then George moves to her neighborhood, and things happen. The acting is great, the music is beautiful, and Julian Sands is irresistible. (Carly)

What can I say. If you don't like this film, you're a bad person in my book. Well, not completely. I know that it moves a little slowly for people who don't care for movies set pre-1975, but you've got to be a pretty boring person not to love something about the film. After all, it teaches important life lessons, like always go for the guy who plays with his food when it comes down to him and the guy who worries about the grammar in trashy novels. And Julian Sands is SO BEAUTIFUL! He makes my heart melt. And furthermore HE HAS A BEAUTIFUL VOICE. If you already love and admire this film like Carly and I do, here area couple silly things that make us laugh that you should watch for:
When Miss Bartlett is running to find Lucy at the picnic, she passes the Italian driver. Watch him. He totally checks her out. It's hilarious.
Also, when Lucy confronts Cecil about the tenants he found for Sir Harry she says "and make me look ridiculous" but it sounds really bizarre the way she says it. (Ellen)

Another one: Watch George giving Lucy scandalous looks when Cecil is reading to them from Eleanor Lavish's book.He looks like he's in love with her feet, or looking up her skirt. (Carly)

God save us all.  I kept thinking of the Batman TV series when I saw this, of the "POW!"  "BAM!"  scenes.  The cinemetography is terrible--words keep popping up on the screen at odd moments. It's not an awful movie on the whole, it's just a bit silly for a Shakespeare tragedy.  I didn't feel too bad for either of them at the end.  Where the play makes their end seem sincerely tragic, the movie makes it seem like teen angst taken to the extreme. (Carly, from here on down)

Another beautiful Merchant-Ivory film based on an E.M. Forster book.  While this is a great movie, A Room with a View is a better film and this is a better book.  If you've read the book, you will probably notice that the movie loses a lot of the depth that makes the book worthwhile. But it's still an above-average movie.  The scenery and sets are gorgeous, and the acting's good.

ARGHH!!! Kelly McGillis(who you may remember from Top Gun) deserves to burn for all eternity.  She directed and starred in this film, based on Kate Chopin's wonderful novel The Awakening.  She is an awful actress, and Julian's losing his hair, so this movie has no redeeming qualities. And, Julian plays Alcee Arobin, who's not really the good guy.  Yet another disappointment.

This is good brainless entertainment. You get to see swordfighting, people in silly clothes, and that weird guy who plays Cardinal Richilieu get killed.  You know what's going to happen--it's got a happy ending.  But don't let the lack of suspense ruin a perfectly good movie.

This is an absolutely unwatchable movie.  Gwyneth Paltrow's just not right for the part, or something.  I couldn't even finish watching it.

This one is far better.  While it lacks the depth of some of the other Jane Austen adaptations, it does capture the spirit of the novel. Kate Beckinsale is appropriately immature, pouty, and sweet.  The guy who plays Mr. Knightley is almost obscenely older than she is, and he's balding, but that's nothing new in movies, and it's true to the book. A generally fun movie to watch.

If nothing else, this movie has a fabulous cast.  But there is a lot else.  The acting's terrific, especially the scenes between Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branagh.  They were a couple at the time, so that adds truth to the Beatrice-Benedick thing.  Keanu Reeves is the odd man out here; even Micheal Keaton holds his own.  Reeves doesn't have to say much, luckily.  He just has to stand around looking evil, and he manages that fairly well.  The fact that he and his co-consipirators wear black pants while the other soldiers wear blue is a good clue. The scenery is beautiful--you'll want to go to some Mediterranean country and sit in the sun and eat grapes.  Of course, the play itself is good as well.

Ellen says that Anne Elliot isn't supposed to be this plain.  But I disagree. This movie didn't get nearly the press that Sense and Sensibility did, but it's at least as good, if not better.  It's true to the book and the acting is good.  One funny part is the Sir Walter Elliot character--he looks like he's wearing upholstery fabric for clothes.

I think this is my least favorite of the Les Liaisons Dangereuses adaptations--it's not sufficiently different in style or interpretation from Dangerous Liaisons to really be a necessary remake, and Colin Firth is kind of scary and gross. The plot is very twisted and confusing, soI'm not really going to relate the whole thing, but it hinges on a bet between a rich single man and a rich single woman, neither of whom have any morals whatsoever. This bet results in lots of sex and lots of screwing over other people. (Carly)

I find the title of this movie very appealing--I just had to see it and find out about these dangerous liaisons. The plot's pretty much the same as in Valmont (above), but the acting's better, and Colin Firth's not showing us his white behind. (Carly)

Christina persuaded me to see this, and I wanted to work on my Les Liaisons Dangereuses film adaptation collection. All I've got left is the French version. This one is funnier than Valmont and Dangerous Liaisons, but it's grosser. I can't recount the plot--too many twists--but it's kind of sick in all the versions. This one is especially so because the characters are all high school age, yet engaged in very adult games. This also made the plot less plausible. While I can believe tales of sexual escapades among the French aristocracy in the 18th century or whatever, I have a harder time believing them when they involve kids at a prep school. The kids are a little too sophisticated to be real.

 I rented this because it's hard to go wrong with a Helena Bonham Carter movie. But this one was confusing, and it seemed to drag on. I think I would have enjoyed it more if I had been familiar with the play and the characters beforehand. The general plot was easy to follow, but I got lost with some of the characters and their relationships. On the plus side, it is pretty funny, and it's got Toby Stephens, who you may remember from the TV version of Tenant of Wildfell Hall. Or not.

  I wouldn't even bother to review this movie except that I saw it dubbed in French, which made it very amusing indeed. Since I couldn't understand most of what the characters were saying, I missed any of the inane dialogue which these kind of movies usually have. My favorite scenes are the one where the guy gets stomped by the Tyrannosaurus Rex while he's in the bathroom, the one where the kids are screaming when the T. Rex is coming, and the one where the Newman guy gets frightened by the little dinosaur with the Elizabethan collar. My parents saw this movie in the theater, and my mom got so scared that she had to go out into the lobby in the middle of it. So I guess it worked for some people. Maybe it was because I saw it on video, but I could only laugh--I mean, it's giant mechanical dinosaurs. Thump, thump, thump. Despite the high entertainment value here, I'm not going to give this a thumbs-up because it wasn't supposed to be this funny.