6/9
Call Me By Your Name (2017)
This 2017 coming-of-age romantic film is one of the best to ever release that year. Call Me By Your Name is adapted from the 2007 novel of the same name by Andre Aciman.
It follows Elio (Timothee Chalamet), a teenager living in rural Italy, who starts to harbor feelings for his father’s 24-year-old assistant, Oliver (Armie Hammer). Although their relationship lasts for a short time period of time, their romance is all-consuming and forever changes the pair.
Considered one of the best movies of 2017, Call Me By Your Name is aesthetically pleasing, heartbreaking at times, and is complemented by the best soundtrack, featuring songs from Sufjan Stevens.
On top of that, the raw love between Elio and Oliver helps the audience to generate a new take on love, relationships, and heartache.
7/9
In a Lonely Place (1950)
This 1950 film noir repeatedly makes “Best of” lists across film categories, and that’s because it’s a masterful adaptation of a classic noir novel of the same name, written by Dorothy B. Hughes in 1947.
The always inimitable Humphrey Bogart is Dixon Steele, an underemployed screenwriter with a nasty temper, playing opposite Gloria Grahame as his neighbor, Laurel Gray.
A new script for Dix coincides with the police suspecting him of murder; and it is against this backdrop that Dix and Laurel fall somewhat uneasily in love. The film was directed by Grahame’s then-husband Nicholas Ray, and the two were in the process of acrimoniously separating at the time, although no one else on set was aware.
The film sticks pretty closely to the source material, with the noted exception of the ending, but it captured the spirit of Hughes’ hard-boiled text so well that a reader would be hard-pressed to mind the change.
8/9
A Room with a View (1985)
When it comes to British costume dramas adapted from books, it’s impossible not to mention the films of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory.
Any one of their co-productions could have made this list (perhaps most notably The Remains of the Day, Howard’s End, Mr. and Mrs. Bridge, Maurice, and Heat and Dust), but there is something undeniably special about A Room with a View, the first of three E.M. Forster adaptations the pair brought to the screen.
A mix of up-and-coming young actors (Helena Bonham-Carter, Daniel Day-Lewis, Rupert Graves) and screen veterans (Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Denholm Elliott) along with breathtaking Florentine scenery create a sparkling atmosphere that matches the wit and charm of Forster’s 1908 tale of a young English girl transformed by a trip to Florence, right down to the use of chapter titles to make sure you know what’s coming next.
9/9
La Moustache (2005)
French writer Emmanuel Carrère directed this film adaptation of his own 1986 novel. It starts with the apparently simple story of Marc (Vincent Lindon), and his wife Agnès (Emmanuelle Devos).
One day, on a whim, Marc shaves off the mustache he realizes Agnès has never seen him without. When she sees him next, she doesn’t mention it, and later in the evening, neither do a pair of friends they visit for dinner.
Marc is increasingly annoyed at what he takes to be a joke at his expense, and angrily wants to know why no one mentioned he shaved off his mustache.
The movie shifts into something else entirely as a confused Agnès tells him he has never had a mustache.
The world Marc knew begins to slip away along with his grasp on reality, spiraling out of control, hinging on whether or not he indeed had a mustache.
Carrère’s novel was that rare thing, a horror novel with no blood or jump scares, just psychological terror, and he accomplished the same with the film version. READ PAGE 1 BELOW FOR MORE MOVIES
