Best Adapted Screenplay: 1985

Lear: Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow! (III, ii, 1)

My Top 10

1. Ran
2. Kiss of the Spider Woman
3. The Color Purple
4. Plenty
5. Prizzi’s Honor
6. Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind
7. The Shooting Party
8. Fletch
9. The Falcon and the Snowman
10. A Sunday in the Country

note:  You may notice that this isn’t the same Top 10 that appeared in my Nighthawk Awards.  That’s because I did some thinking about some of the films and the list was considerably altered.  Both Plenty and The Shooting Party were much stronger than I had given them credit for.

Consensus Nominees:

1. Out of Africa  (232 pts)
2. Prizzi’s Honor  (232 pts)
3. The Color Purple  (120 pts)
4. The Trip to Bountiful  (80 pts)
5. Kiss of the Spider Woman  (40 pts)
6. Agnes of God  (40 pts)
7. Ran  (40 pts)
8. The Shooting Party  (40 pts)

note:  This is the first tie in the category’s history.

Oscar Nominees  (Best Screenplay – Based on Material from Another Medium):

• Out of Africa
• The Color Purple
• Kiss of the Spider Woman
• Prizzi’s Honor
• The Trip to Bountiful

WGA:

• Prizzi’s Honor
• Agnes of God
• The Color Purple
• Out of Africa
• The Trip to Bountiful

Golden Globe:

• Out of Africa
• Prizzi’s Honor

Nominees that are Original:  The Purple Rose of Cairo, Back to the Future, Witness

BAFTA:

• Prizzi’s Honor
• Out of Africa  (1986)
• The Shooting Party
• The Color Purple  (1986)
• Ran  (1986)

My Top 10

乱
(Ran)

The Film:

I have already written a full review of this film for my Great Director post on Kurosawa.  In it, I talked about how brilliant it is, the innovative way it makes use of Shakespeare, how I never took to the play and how Kurosawa has never been properly acclaimed for his writing in the way that say Bergman or Fellini was.  So, in essence, that review already did everything I would have wanted to do here.

The Source:

The Tragedie of King Lear by William Shakspeare (1606)

I already wrote a little bit about this here when I reviewed the Kozintsev film version.  I didn’t write much because it seems unnecessary, seeing as how it is one of the most famous and revered plays by the most famous playwright who ever lived.  As I mentioned there and above, I was not a fan of the play when I first read it and it really took this film version to make me realize how good the play could be, which is ironic since it cuts what are to me the two most interesting characters (see below).

The Adaptation:

As mentioned, my two favorite characters in the play, the half-brothers, aren’t in the film at all.  There are other changes as well, such as the combination of Regan and Goneril into a character who seems to stem more from Lady Macbeth and her ambition (plus the gender reversal as in Lear he has daughters and here he has sons).  All of that comes from the fact that even though he had made Macbeth already, making a version of King Lear wasn’t actually Kurosawa’s original intention: “My original intention was not to make King Lear in Japanese. I told the story of Hidetora. And that was when, suddenly, the story of King Lear arose – and the two stories merged with each other, in a certain way that I can’t even explain to myself.” (interview with Kurosawa reprinted in the Criterion liner notes for the DVD).

The Credits:

Directed by Akira Kurosawa.  Scenario and dialogue by Akira Kurosawa, Hideo Oguni, Masato Ide.
note: There is no listed source.

Kiss of the Spider Woman

The Film:

I have already reviewed this film as one of the Best Picture nominees although even if I hadn’t, I would have reviewed it as one of the five best films of the year.  Kudos go to the Academy for nominating it in all four major categories and recognizing its greatness.  In my original review, I compared it somewhat to The English Patient, not because both are great films, but because, given the source material (see below), you shouldn’t have been able to even make a coherent film let alone a great film.  That’s ironic because I actually wrote my review of The English Patient for this project the day before re-watching this film for this project.  One interesting thing to ask yourself is what you think has happened at the end of the film.  Do you think Valentin is just asleep in a morphine haze or is he dead?  And if he is dead is that the better option?

The Source:

El beso de la mujer araña by Manuel Puig  (1976)

In my original review, I mentioned the coincidence of being at a bookstore and discussing Manuel Puig with the guy at the register (an Argentine writer had just died although obviously not Puig who died in 1990).  This is one of only two Puig books I have read and both have similar concepts at their core (the love of movies – the other book is Betrayed by Rita Hayworth).  Puig became famous as one of numerous Latin American artists who left their home country in the 70’s or 80’s because of their politics (and fearing for their lives).  This book is almost entirely written in dialogue or reports (from the authorities) and yet it manages to tell a fascinating narrative of two very different men (a gay window dresser and a left-wing revolutionary) sharing a cell and how the gay man’s love for movies gets them through their time together.  It did not actually make my Top 200 but it came really close.

The Adaptation:

Obviously the filmmakers had to decide what the actions on film were going to be because there is no descriptive narrative in the novel.  It’s true that the novel describes the movies that Molina is talking about in great detail but the first movie is The Cat People (which the filmmakers were unable to get the rights to so they created their own) and the second was a Nazi propaganda film (which the filmmakers decided to do their own movie with rather than use an existing one).  Some actions you can get from the dialogue (the love scene, the cleaning up of Valentin when he is sick) and some are described in the police reports (the end).  But the filmmakers do an excellent job of creating an actual screenplay complete with actions from a novel that really doesn’t give them a lot of help with that.  As for the dialogue, though, a lot of it does come straight from the book.

The Credits:

Directed by Hector Babenco.  Based on the novel by Manuel Puig.  Written by Leonard Schrader.

The Color Purple

The Film:

I have already reviewed this film as one of the Best Picture nominees for the year.  It is one of those films that kind of bounce back and forth between a high ***.5 and a low **** though it has pretty well settled in at this point at ****.  Unfortunately, at this point, it’s really no longer possible to watch this film in the same way that it was when it was first released.  That’s because a key part of the film is being able to embrace the performances from Whoopi Goldberg (the best of her career by a long way in my opinion) and Oprah Winfrey (a solid performance).  The film is also beautifully constructed, with magnificent cinematography, a fantastic score and a wonderful original song that is the heart and soul of the film.  Spielberg often has been criticized over the years for being an effects director but here he embraces the story and characters and how often do you have three black actresses all nominated for the same film?  (Answer: never except here).

The Source:

The Color Purple by Alice Walker (1982)

Given how far away from any experience I have ever had or ever will, I was surprised when I first read this in college (by choice – it was not assigned in a class) how much I took to this book.  Here’s the story of a poor black woman whose entire narrative consists of letters to God (with occasional letters to and from her sister later in the novel).  It’s a beautifully written novel, the winner of both the Pulitzer and the National Book Award.  Sometimes epistolary novels don’t work that well because you wouldn’t believe that what you are reading is coming from that person (like that person might not keep a diary and such) but Walker does such a magnificent job of giving an authentic voice to Celie, the young woman who is raped by her father, basically sold off to a neighbor (whose children greet her with rocks) and whose sister is sent off to Africa (the novel basically covers the time in their lives when they are separated).  It has a haunting opening (“You better not never tell nobody but God. It’d kill your mammy.” and a beautiful ending (” I don’t think us feel old at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt.”).

The Adaptation:

While Spielberg endured a lot of criticism for taking a novel full of a lot of dark events and making it light and happy but that’s not really true.  He covers most of the bleakest moments in the book fairly faithfully (especially the brutal opening).  Most of the last 70 pages or so (until the actual ending), dealing with Celie and Shug does get truncated in the film (mostly, I think, for running time and because it limits the narrative) but overall it’s actually a faithful adaptation of the novel.

The Credits:

Directed by Steven Spielberg.  Based upon the novel by Alice Walker.  Screenplay by Menno Meyjes.

Plenty

The Film:

I didn’t remember much about this film in the years after watching it.  It was the film that kept getting paired with other films in my mind.  It was paired with Out of Africa because Meryl Streep was quite good in both films (actually, she’s better here than she is in Out of Africa, something I hadn’t remembered).  It’s paired with The Shooting Party, partially in that I under-appreciated both films and have moved them both up and partially because John Gielgud won his NSFC award for his performances in both films.  And it gets paired with Wetherby because, like that one, it was written by David Hare, even if this was originally one of Hare’s plays and Wetherby is an original script.  The key thing is that the film kept getting paired up when really this film very much deserves to stand on its own and is actually one of the better films of the year leaping from my #17 spot to my #12.

Susan is many things over the years.  When we first meet her, during the war, she is fighting in France, helping a paratrooper out and also having a brief love affair with him.  In the years after the war, she wanders from thing to thing and from man to man.  She meets the man she will eventually marry when he comes to deal with her dead lover (not her husband as had been thought).  She lives with a caustic best friend (played by Tracey Ullmann in her best film performance).  She has a love affair with a very handsome man (Sting, and watching this right after watching The English Patient, I was struck how much Sting and Ralph Fiennes look alike or at least did) in the hopes of having a child though she doesn’t want him involved.  When her husband’s career doesn’t go like either had hoped, she confronts his superior in a very memorable scene (it’s basically Ian McKellen’s only scene in the film – the whole film is full of great actors with Charles Dance getting the largest male role as the husband and John Gielgud getting some very good scenes as a man who worked for the foreign service and is willing to actually speak his mind).

The problem is that Susan is probably quite sick.  This isn’t a typical film portrayal of mental illness where we follow someone on their descent like in The Snake Pit or I Never Promised You a Rose Garden.  Only as time continues to pass, as the years flow by, do we realize that Susan (played by Streep in a masterfully subtle performance that only slowly allows us to realize what is going on) is actually quite ill.  She hides it, probably because she doesn’t even realize it.  She acts on her whims, she moves as her heart and the problems in her mind dictate.  This is the story of one fascinating woman and the bulk of her adult life and we do see it as a complete portrait of her life and what she goes through.  In the war, she had a purpose and she had a lover and nothing again would ever equal what happened during the war.  She can never get that kind of life again, no matter how hard she tries and she does try very hard.

Fred Schepisi is an interesting director who reminds me somewhat of Ronald Neame in that he’s done a lot of very good, very interesting films, many of them adapted, and never seems to get much credit as a director.  This is the start of his films appearing in this project but he’ll have two more in the next three years and it’s a reminder that his films have always been interesting and perhaps he should be looked at more closely.

The Source:

Plenty: A Drama by David Hare  (1978)

This is a fascinating play for the same reason that it would become a fascinating film: because it is a full portrait of a woman who has clearly become sick, yet it doesn’t treat her illness in the same way that most plays or films do.  It gives us her whole life and we can understand what she has gone through in the war and why the rest of her life just feels like a drab nothing after that.  Interestingly enough, when it was first staged in London in 1978 it starred Kate Nelligan and five years later when it was staged in New York, with most of the cast different, it still starred Kate Nelligan.

The Adaptation:

When I first started to read the play and saw that it began in 1962 while the film was beginning in 1943, I actually thought that the play was perhaps going tell the story out of order, but it’s just that the play has that opening scene and then jumps back to 1943 and proceeds in chronological order from there.

It’s interesting how Hare both changes and leaves things alone.  The vast majority of the scenes have considerable changes in dialogue but some are left quite alone.  One key scene, when Susan confronts her husband’s superior, almost every line spoken by Streep and McKellen is straight from the play and almost no lines are cut.  Yet, in the play, after that scene, we jump forward a few months.  The scenes in the film following, with Streep at home acting like nothing happened, with McKellen confronting Dance and then with the big confrontation between Dance and Streep aren’t in the play at all.  They are a fascinating microcosm of the differences between the play and the film.

The Credits:

Directed by Fred Schepisi.  Screenplay by David Hare
note:  As it often the case with playwrights who adapt their own play for film, there is no source credit in the opening credits.

Prizzi’s Honor

The Film:

I have already reviewed this film because it was one of the Best Picture nominees.  I discussed there my difficulty in trying to sum up my feelings on the film, how I admire its performances and its craftsmanship but how there was something about the film that never quite clicked for me, something that kept it down at ***.5 when many others would have it as a **** film.  I suppose it could be a question of the tone or, like I said, the bizarreness of seeing Nicholson play someone so dumb (he’s good but it’s just weird).  But it is a well-made film and in a year that’s not overly strong for Adapted Screenplay (as opposed to Original Screenplay where it is quite strong) it’s still good enough to make it into my Top 5.  Because it is in the same year as Purple Rose of Cairo, Brazil, Back to the Future, After Hours and A Private Function (which are all original) it has the distinction of earning more Comedy points (355) without a Picture nom (because it wins Adapted, Actor, Actress and Supporting Actress) than any other film in Nighthawk Awards history.

The Source:

Prizzi’s Honor by Richard Condon  (1982)

I was not particularly kind to Condon when I wrote about his The Manchurian Candidate in the 1962 post for this project and 23 years didn’t necessarily add anything to his writing ability.  Watching the film, it’s clear it’s a Comedy but if I had simply read the book, I might have been like Nicholson when he first read the script and not realized it.  It’s just the story of a hitman for a mob family who falls for a woman that turns out to also be a hitman and while they romance, eventually he has to get rid of her for the sake of the family.  It’s not very good and the main character, Charley, is a very dim bulb.  I can’t believe this made as good a film as it did let alone that Condon was able to write several more Prizzi books.

The Adaptation:

Though there are some dialogue differences, the plot of the film follows the book almost exactly from start to finish (it does add the little pre-credits sequence where Charley is born and then sworn into the family) but from the wedding to the final hit and conversation with Maerose, the film is straight from the book.

The Credits:

Directed by John Huston.  From the Novel by Richard Condon.  Screenplay by Richard Condon and Janet Roach.

風の谷のナウシカ
(Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind)

The Film:

Should this film even appear in this year?  Nausicaä was released originally in Japan in 1984 and was a huge success.  The combination of Hayao Miyazaki writing and directing an adaptation of his own anime series (which he had decided to do after the lukewarm reception to his first feature film, The Castle of Cagliostro), produced by his friend Isao Takahata would lead to the formation of Studio Ghibli, the first studio to ever really rival Disney on a creative level as a producer of animated films.  New World Pictures would buy the rights to the film, cut 22 minutes and release it in the States in the summer of 1985 as Warriors of the Wind (though, possibly not in L.A. as the old oscars.org database didn’t list it) and Miyazaki would be so unhappy with the results that he wouldn’t allow any more cuts to his films (the studio sent a sword to Harvey Weinstein when he was considering cutting Princess Mononoke to symbolize the idea of no cuts).  While not technically a Ghibli film, the collaboration between Miyazaki and Takahata has meant that everyone treats it as such (including Ghibli itself which released it on a DVD box set which I own) and it’s beautiful animation of a fantasy world that has been scarred by conflict would set the stage for future Ghibli projects.

Nausicaä, as the title states, lives in the Valley of the Wind, a beautiful, peaceful place.  But just on the other side of the mountains is the Sea of Corruption, an ecological wasteland born of past wars.  A ship will come crashing into her valley, tearing up her life and bringing her into her own wasteland.  She will be the model for many of the heroines who would populate the Ghibli catalog, strong-willed, smart and almost completely fearless.  After watching her father’s murder, she will take up the fight against the invaders.

This film is often held up as one of the greatest animated films ever made.  I personally don’t go nearly that far (I actually have it at mid ***.5).  It has a good narrative and a great heroine but the story-telling is a bit too mundane (the concepts are amazing, held up higher by the magnificent visuals) and we are hit over the head just a bit too much by the social awareness (the film is often held up very high by environmentalists with good reason – it really makes a good plea to save the world).  To my mind, Miyazaki would have to wait until Castle in the Sky to make his first great film.  But this is a very good film, not the least of which because it really kind of establishes the Ghibli look – the vast imaginative landscapes fueled by absolutely first-rate animation.

The Source:

風の谷のナウシカ by Hayao Miyazaki  (1982)

A brilliant manga series that only began in 1982 and would actually continue all the way until 1994.  It would just be the first 16 installments (it was commissioned as a serialized story in Animage) that would constitute the film (originally Miyazaki only did the story with the express agreement that it wouldn’t be filmed) and it would eventually have 59 installments.  It brilliantly showcases both Miyazaki’s imaginative story-telling as well as his amazing illustrative abilities.

The Adaptation:

As I mentioned, the story was actually still ongoing when the film was made and the film only uses the first 16 installments.  While the bulk of the film comes straight from the original manga (indeed, you can pause moments of the film and hold the book up right next to the screen and they are identical except that the film is in color) but because the film needed an ending, the last couple of installments are changed almost entirely so that the film can have an ending.  If you go here you can find a more detailed description of the changes that were made to provide an ending for the film.

The Credits:

Written and Directed by Hayao Miyazaki.  Based on his manga series.
note:  My DVD doesn’t have translated credits, so I don’t what the actual credits say, nor would I have the ability to reproduce them here anyway.

The Shooting Party

The Film:

It’s a country house between the wars.  Oh, wait, my mistake.  It’s a country house before the first war and that’s part of the whole point.  In all of those films set between the two wars you can feel a fragile peace in the air because so many men have been lost and so many will be lost again.  But this is a different era, an era when a Central European count can be courting the daughter of a British aristocrat because war hasn’t torn them apart yet.  There will be lots of young men because their generation hasn’t yet been wiped out.  There are different classes but the tension lies not between the classes but between the generations in the same class.  And just at the edge of all of this is one man who shows another the way that the world is about to change.

There are many different men in this story but there are five key ones who allows us insights into what is going on and what is changing in the world.  The first is Sir Randolph Nettleby, the man who owns the estate where the film takes place.  Sir Randolph is played quite well by James Mason (in his last film role, and he died eight months before the film was released) as a gentleman who sees that the times are changing and that men don’t live by the same roles that he has.  He delivers a line towards the end of the film that really cuts to the heart of the matter and shows the difference between the generations.  Two competing men of the same generation are Lionel Stephens (Rupert Frazer) who is a good shooter but is distracted by his love for the married Olivia and allows himself to be drawn into a relentless competition with Lord Gilbert Hartlip.  Hartlip, played by Edward Fox, is our point man for the declining values in the younger generation, the generation that will have to learn different rules when it goes off to war.  The last two are of a different breed, with Gordon Jackson as Tom Harker, the older man who walks with a limp (was caught in a mantrap) and is known as a poacher (the illegal version of what the gentlemen can do legally) but is also the best beater around (beating the bushes to drive out the game for the men to shoot) and what happens to him provides the scene for tragedy at the end of the film although it’s up to you to decide what the tragedy is.  Also of a different breed is Cornelius Cardew, the pacifist Communist who is morally opposed to the shooting and tries to get it stopped.  He would almost seem like he stepped from a different world if not for the valuable counterpoint he provides to the main story, showing how the peasants around the estate are aligned with the master of the estate in their views on shooting and opposed to Cardew.  Cardew is played by John Gielgud in the best performance in the film which helped win him two critics awards (along with Plenty).

All of this is set against the coming war and what we get at the end might be the tragedy or it might be the way the younger generation acts or it might be the real tragedy of what happens to one of those five.  But this film, a bit slow, but thoughtful and well acted, lets us take time to think about what is happening and wonder if it really was so bad that things changed after all of this.

The Source:

The Shooting Party by Isabel Colegate (1981)

A quite good short (less than 200 pages) little novel about the changing times on a lord’s estate in the waning time before the onset of World War I.  I would say it’s well worth reading, but given all the good performances in the film it’s hard to make the recommendation to read the book when it’s so well encapsulated on film with those strong performances.

The Adaptation:

This is an extremely faithful rendition of the original novel.  So, rather than recommend the book, since the film is so faithful, I would much prefer to recommend the film instead.  It’s not a great film but it is well acted and definitely worth watching.

The Credits:

Directed by Alan Bridges.  based on the novel by Isabel Colegate.  Screenplay by Julian Bond.

Fletch

The Film:

Chevy Chase was never actually a big star in spite of what you might think.  The only film he ever made that landed in the top 10 for the year in box office gross was Spies Like Us, which had Dan Aykroyd also as a star and only ended up in 10th place.  Through the 80’s he was a medium sized star who couldn’t get along with anybody (read Live from New York) and would end up with an overly heightened idea of his popularity and importance (see Which Lie Did I Tell).  I never liked him all that much with two exceptions.  I thought he perfected his role in Caddyshack as the guy who just doesn’t care and thus can be funny and he found the perfect role for himself in Fletch by adding a slight ironic twist to the lines in the book that were somewhat humorous to begin with and became much more so when Chase uttered them.  Unfortunately, of course, he would make terrible, terrible sequels to both films and they helped sink his career.

But there is still Fletch. On one level I shouldn’t like Fletch because Fletch, as played by Chase, is obsessed with the Lakers (which leads to the great daydream: “He’s 6’5″, 6’9″ with afro” and him biting Bill Laimbeer) and I hate the Lakers.  It’s not very well directed and Chase goes through some very silly disguises and as a result some of the scenes are just painful to watch.  But it’s also quite fun in a lot of places as he tries to figure out why a man offers him money to kill him.  He investigates more fully than a lot of film reporters do and he eventually gets to the bottom of the story.

Fletch, in its best moments, is a genuinely funny film, with Chase barreling his way through with equal parts moxie and stupidity.  When he takes an obnoxious man who is rude to the wait-staff at the country club and decides to bill everything to them you smile because they quite frankly deserve it (which leads to the great line at the end “I charged the whole thing to Mr. Underhill’s American Express card. Want the number?” which lead to my RD in college having a band named The Underhills).  You don’t need to see his false teeth or him dressing in a robe and a bald wig; you just want to watch him be carefree and relaxed and figuring things out.

Fletch works, not because Chase is a great comic actor, but because, like Caddyshack, it finally finds a character in which the way Chase so lackadaisically plays works well.  It’s like Fletch is Chase and he just needed to find it out just like he was Ty Webb in Caddyshack.  It’s not a great film but it’s still funny.

The Source:

Fletch by Gregory Mcdonald (1974)

I.M. Fletcher is a reporter who has been working on a story about drugs on the beach in his town (which isn’t named) when a man offers him money to kill him.  This leads Fletch to a completely different story while also trying to finish up his drug story and all of it almost manages to get himself killed from both groups involved.  It’s a straight forward story but with some real humor (Fletcher is pretty irreverent).  It was an immediate success (winning the Edgar Allan Poe award for first novel) and spawned numerous sequels.  It’s a very quick read, mostly dialogue heavy with Fletch recapping everything he’s learned a couple of different times.

The Adaptation:

The main plot comes from the book but the film combines the drug story with the Stanwyk story while in the book those were separate things and though the chief of police (of some town but clearly not L.A. like in the film) does kill Stanywk, it’s because the chief’s trying to kill Fletch (and thinks he has) rather than because Stanwyk has betrayed him.  A lot of the basic plot elements are there but a lot of dialogue and specifics are changed (parents are from Pennsylvania, Alan isn’t a bigamist though he is trying to escape with Sally Ann, he has a kid from both women).

The Credits:

directed by michael ritchie.  based on the novel by gregory mcdonald.  screenplay by andrew bergman.

The Falcon and the Snowman

The Film:

If I were to tell you this is a film about two spies, you would not be expecting what you would end up seeing.  Or maybe I could tell you it’s about two lost souls who are looking for different things, who work together because of a childhood friendship and both end up down a very bad path.  Or maybe the best description these days would be to compare one of them to Edward Snowden, both in his ideals and in the very wrong choices he would make (I’m referring to Snowden’s decision of where to go) and to say that the other is just a drug dealer and abuser at the end of his rope who is looking for the next chance to score and doesn’t realize how very wrong this will go.

In the early 80’s, two of the most talented actors around were Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn.  Hutton had already won an Oscar and in the film Taps, he was the lead young soldier in a film that had both Penn and Tom Cruise in support while Penn was still years away from getting his true recognition as an actor although he also had not yet acquired his reputation as a complete dick.  They are both well suited for their roles.  Hutton plays Christopher Boyce, a smart young man who is a bit lost and ends up working for a CIA fronted company through his father’s intervention (he’s a former FBI man) and, while exposed to classified information, discovers some disturbing things that our government has been doing (this is the 70’s) and decides he has to do something about it.  He ends up confiding in Andrew Daulton Lee, who had been an altar boy with Boyce growing up and has gone on to a rather lucrative career as a drug dealer and who Boyce feels could help him make the connections to getting this disturbing information out to others.  The choice they make is to go to the Soviets.

Boyce and Lee don’t really think this through and as a result, end up manipulated by the Soviets, backed up against a wall and when Lee is accused of a murder of a policeman in Mexico City (where they have been meeting the Soviets) and is tortured, he spills everything and the young men end up exposed and facing the ruin of their lives.  Yet, John Schlesinger, an often under-appreciated director, finds a way to tell this story with fascinating detail and some very fine acting and helps us find the measure of these two men.  It’s not a great film (though if you want a different opinion that does classify it as a great film, read Roger Ebert’s review here) but it is a strong and fascinating one that shows us the measure of one conscience paired with a man who just wants to find the next score.

The Source:

The Falcon and the Snowman: A True Story of Friendship and Espionage by Robert Lindsey (1979)

This is an interesting book about two young men who end up ruining their lives over very different reasons.  The story is mentioned above (while I will mention below the fidelity to real events), about how Boyce ended up handing over classified CIA secrets to the Soviets because he found himself in a crisis of conscience over the actions of his own country and used his drug dealing childhood friend to help him accomplish that.  Lindsey managed to get both men and their families involved with writing the book so he is able to paint a complete picture of their young lives and how they got to the point that they did as well as the actions they took and their consequences.  Since the book is fairly true to life, if you don’t want to spend the time reading the book, you’ll get a pretty good idea of what happened just from watching the film.  If you are more interested in this, Boyce himself would later write a book about it though I haven’t read it.

The Adaptation:

The film stays fairly true to the story.  It does cut most of the first part of the book that details the background of both young men and how they ended up where they were.  The film gives some of that (namely to make you realize why Boyce is called Falcon – because of his love of the birds and training them) but mostly sticks to the events after Boyce starts working for the company that gives him access to the data.  After that, the film does a fairly good job of sticking to the facts while pairing down some of the secondary characters and the family members to focus on the two young men.

The Credits:

Directed by John Schlesinger.  Based on the book by Robert Lindsey.  Screenplay by Steven Zaillian.

Un dimanche à la campagne

The Film:

Monsier Ladmiral is in the twilight of his life.  He’s a painter, though he’s not sure he’s gone the right way about that.  He’s a father but his son only feels his father’s disappointment and his daughter is almost like a force of nature, so he does not feel like a success there either.  He has reached the stage where he wonders what he will be leaving behind.  Will it be children?  Will it be art?

The art is an interesting bit because this film, in some ways, is reminiscent of Renoir’s films, the way that characters will slowly unfold before us (the story itself is rather pastoral as the father and his servant have the company of his son and his family on a Sunday, as they do every Sunday, but which is disrupted by the arrival of the daughter and just in the title I was reminded of Renoir’s Picnic in the Grass) but that really isn’t encumbered by a story (there really isn’t much of one).  Yet, it is Renoir’s father that really hangs over this film, in the art and the style (and even in the poster).

I don’t really know how to write a review of a film in which nothing much really happens, yet is well written with characters who really come to life.  It is a film that you don’t so much watch as just sink into and allow yourself to experience the characters and the visuals for some 90 minutes and emerge on the other side feeling pleased without necessarily knowing how to say why.

The Source:

Monsieur Ladmiral va bientôt mourir by Pierre Bost (1945)

As far as I can tell, this novel has never been translated into English.  It literally translates into “Mr. Ladmiral is going to die”, so I can understand why they were would change that for the film (especially since he doesn’t and I don’t think the title necessarily means that he did in the book either).

The Adaptation:

Without being able to read the original, of course, I can’t comment on the adaptation.  I also didn’t find anything online that commented on the adaptation.

The Credits:

produit et réalisé par Bertrand Tavernier.  écrit par Colo Tavernier, Bertrand Tavernier.  d’après a Mr Ladmiral va bientôt mourir de Pierre Bost, éditions Gallimard.

Consensus Winner

Out of Africa

The Film:

I have already reviewed this film because it won Best Picture in 1985 over four significantly better films.  The reactions to my review ranged from those who said that I just didn’t get the beauty of the film to those that thought I actually let off the film too light.  It’s got great cinematography, great music and really strong performances from Meryl Streep (redundant) and Klaus Marie Brandeur (that should have won the Oscar) but Robert Redford (who had teamed with director Sydney Pollack several times before) just doesn’t work as the love interest and the film’s writing falls flat.  The weakest Best Picture winner of the decade and the win for Adapted Screenplay was even worse.

The Source:

Out of Africa by Isak Dineson (1937)

This is actually quite a beautiful book, a well-written memoir of Karen Blixen’s time in Africa running a plantation.  She has a magnificent grasp of language in her descriptions of what she saw: “The sky was rarely more than pale blue or violet, with a profusion of mighty, weightless, ever-changing clouds towering up and sailing on it, but it has a blue vigour in it, and at a short distance it painted the ranges of hills and the woods a fresh deep blue.”  It does have a colonial mindset but Blixen was far more open-minded about such things than the vast majority of Europeans of her time.  If personally would recommend the book over the film.

Silence Will Speak: A study of the life of Denys Finch Hatton and his relationship with Karen Blixen by Errol Trzebinski (1977)

This is a fairly uninteresting book that looks at Finch Hatton’s life.  It does deal some with his relationship with Blixen but is focused much more on his life and really isn’t all that good or interesting.  The very fact that the screenwriters would go to this book showed that they wanted too hard to push the romance theme in the film.

Isak Dineson: The Life of a Storyteller by Judith Thurman (1982)

This is a decent biography of Karen Blixen although Blixen’s own writings are far more interesting.  I find it hard to ever bother with a book that’s a biography of someone who had already written their own memoirs.  Don’t invite the comparison.

The Adaptation:

Out of Africa doesn’t really provide the basis for the film so much as the title. There is some description of her time with Denys Finch Hatton and it does mention his death (though it is not told to her by her husband nor does she read “To an Athlete Dying Young”, a poem that really doesn’t belong in a description of Finch Hatton and irritates both my mother and I in the film because we care so much about the poem) but very little of what we read in the book is actually on-screen.

Silence Will Speak can’t have been very helpful; it doesn’t really have all that much information that you couldn’t have just gotten from Out of Africa or from the Thurman book.

The Thurman book does provide much more into their romantic entanglement but it still doesn’t give much to the film in way of story and certainly nothing in the way of dialogue.

What’s really clear is that Luedtke really did have to come up with a narrative and dialogue to further the story along and that the sources really only provided blueprints from which he created his screenplay.

The Credits:

Produced and Directed by Sydney Pollack.  Based upon the following: “Out of Africa” and other writings by Isak Dinesen, “Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Story Teller” by Judith Thurman, “Silence will Speak” by Errol Trzebinski.  Screenplay by Kurt Luedtke.

Consensus Nominee

The Trip to Bountiful

The Film:

I can’t decide if this is the type of movie guaranteed to stir up my ire or if I’m overreacting and not allowing for the notion that the film isn’t trying to make me feel a specific way about the lead character but is rather giving a more full-bodied representation of all the characters and that none of them come off very well.

Mrs. Watts lives in Houston with her son and her daughter-in-law.  None of them are particularly happy about the situation.  Mrs. Watts dreams of taking off to go visit the little town of Bountiful where she grew up and where her father’s house still stands.  Her daughter-in-law wants better things in life and doesn’t want to have to worry that her elderly, forgetful mother-in-law will try to sneak off and ruin her afternoons.  Stuck in between them is poor Ludie, who loves his mother but knows her desire is just a fool’s errand and loves his wife but wishes she would make life a bit easier.  All he really wants is some warm milk and a small raise.

None of them are easy to live with, with Ludie the easiest but stuck in the middle of two women who don’t really want to give in to the other and neither of whom is particularly kind about it.  He just wants some quiet in his life, but he’s unwilling to indulge this desire of his mother’s (which could put to bed this notion of her return to her hometown) or to stand up to his wife’s badgering.

The actions of the plot are set in motion when Mrs. Watts does manage to run away and take a bus towards her little town (no bus actually runs to it because it’s essentially a ghost town now, with the last resident having died just the day before).

The role seems guaranteed to win a sympathy (or career) Oscar which is exactly what it did for Geraldine Page and it’s hard to get too upset about it because it’s not like there was a performance that she won over that really strongly deserved the Oscar and of the other four nominees, three already had Oscars and the last would win an Oscar five years later.  But the film just feels too folksy and the characters seem too aggravating.  It’s decently made and Page is good (though not good enough to even make the Nighthawk nominees, let alone to win), but mostly I feel for poor Ludie, standing there in the yard of his grandfather’s house trying to make enough peace so that he doesn’t have to keep resorting to those glasses of warm milk.

The Source:

The Trip to Bountiful: A Play in Three Acts by Horton Foote (1953)

I honestly thought this was a fairly recent play that had done well on Broadway (my brain thinks of it as being similar to Driving Miss Daisy) but this was actually one of Foote’s earlier works, originally written as a teleplay for Lilian Gish in 1953 (and then transferred to Broadway).  It’s a solid enough play with a good solid role for an older actress to sink into but it still presents me with the same problem with all the characters (I do like poor Thelma, the woman whose husband is off in the military who meets Mrs. Watts in the bus station and it was nice that the insanely sensual Rebecca de Mornay got to play at least one more normal acting role on film), that they are all just too aggravating and if they would just give a little, we wouldn’t have a problem to begin with.

The Adaptation:

Foote keeps closely to his original play.  Almost every scene is straight from the play and while it’s directed well enough that it doesn’t quite feel like a filmed play, it definitely keeps to the original lines and structure quite closely with almost nothing added.

The Credits;

Directed by Peter Masterson.  Screenplay by Horton Foote.  Based on his play “The Trip to Bountiful”.

WGA Nominee

Agnes of God

The Film:

Some films that deal with faith, it is brought up that as someone who has no religious faith, I can’t really understand the film or appreciate the film.  Of course, if you have to have religious faith, then the film didn’t do its job properly.  I don’t think it matters what your faith is when it comes to Agnes of God because they simply didn’t make a very good film.  They did get two fairly solid performances in the film though unfortunately they are from Anne Bancroft and Meg Tilly and since Jane Fonda is clearly the lead in the film and the Oscar nomination is the only reason I don’t lump Bancroft into supporting like Tilly where she belongs, it doesn’t do that much for the film.

Agnes is a nun who has just given birth.  And probably murdered the child.  There seems to be some confusion on that front but as things go through the film it becomes clear what happened on that front while the film tries to make it as unclear as possible how she could have gotten that way in the first place.  The film is about a psychiatrist with no faith who is forced to deal with a convent headed by a stern Mother Superior (Bancroft) who wonders if some sort of miracle has happened.  Or at least things out of the purview of the current judicial system.  So it sort of becomes what it felt to me when I read the play – a pale imitation of Equus with a gender reversal but without any sort of depth to it or understanding of what really brought the patient and even the doctor to this point.

This film is never really quite certain what it wants to be.  It seems to be about religion but then it keeps backing away and providing secular answers to what seem to be spiritual questions.  It seems to be about psychiatry but then it keeps wanting to dive into spiritual issues.  It wants to be about justice but does that ever really get addressed?  In the end, we get a drab film with two decent performances that didn’t actually deserve their Oscar nominations.

The Source:

Agnes of God by John Pielmeier (1982)

This is a play about a young nun with no real experience in the world who somehow has been pregnant and had a child and even (probably) killed it.  She must deal with a psychiatrist who must, herself, deal with the stern Mother Superior of the convent.  It is a three woman play with some good weighty roles for females but not a whole lot of depth to it.  In many ways, it feels like a warmed over gender reversed version of Equus.

The Adaptation:

Pielmeier, given the freedom to write the script, really decided to open things up.  He doesn’t just leave the office but massively expands the characters.  It seems to me a key thing in the original play is that the only roles are for females while a number of roles are added that are male, including Fonda’s bosses and various church dignitaries.  It seems odd to take an all-female play and add in male authority figures.  The ending of the original play is also much more vague while in the film, it’s clear we have some measure of a “happy” ending, at least for Agnes herself.

The Credits:

Directed by Norman Jewison.  Screenplay by John Pielmeier.  Based upon the Stage Play by John Pielmeier.

Other Screenplays on My List Outside My Top 10

(in descending order of how I rank the script)

• Late Chrysanthemums –  The 1954 Japanese film finally received a U.S. release in 1985.  Directed by Mikio Naruse, based on the short stories of Fumiko Hayashi.  Low ***.5.
• Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters –  High *** but very well-written and with one of the best scores of Philip Glass’ career and a strong performance from Ken Ogata as one of Japan’s greatest writers in the 20th Century.  Mishima’s Temple of the Golden Pavilion is mentioned here with its film review (Conflagration).  This film also makes use of that book as well as segments from his other works while also telling his story (in black-and-white).

Other Adaptations

(in descending order of how good the film is)

• Colonel Redl –  Low ***.5 Drama from Hungarian director István Szabó whose writing isn’t its strength (the sets, cinematography and lead performance from Klaus Maria Brandaeur are).  Loosely based on the John Osborne play A Patriot for Me.
• The Company of Wolves –  A rare 75 film from me (the highest of *** which means it doesn’t make my Best Picture list).  One of Neil Jordan’s earliest films, based on a story by Angela Carter (who co-wrote the script with Jordan).
• To Live and Die in L.A. –  William Friedkin mostly returns to his early form with this taught thriller based on a novel by a former secret service agent.
• A Chorus Line –  A solid Musical but the lack of songs that interest me keep it from reaching higher.
• Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird –  Perhaps the only way to make a real Sesame Street film, to have Big Bird taken from the street and the search to get him back.  A good film but it lacks the real adult appeal of the best Muppet films.  We’re into mid *** now.
• The Wild Duck –  An Australian film starring Jeremy Irons and Liv Ullmann that’s an adaptation of one of Ibsen’s plays.  The play would be filmed again in 2015 (and again in Australia).
• The Black Cauldron –  It’s fairly good (but without memorable music) but this is the film that almost killed Disney’s animation studio as it made back less than half its cost.  I ranked it at #37 of the studio’s first 50.
• The Home and the World –  Satyajit Ray adapts a novel from India’s most well-known poet (Tagore).
• Murphy’s Romance –  Nice Romantic Comedy that managed to score James Garner his only Oscar nomination.  Based on a short story by Max Schott.
• Young Sherlock Holmes –  It uses Conan Doyle’s characters though it completely contradicts what is written in the actual stories.  Moreover, in spite of good effects, it’s brought down by subpar acting from all of the leads.
• Oedipus Rex –  Pasolini’s 1967 version of the classical tragedy finally gets a U.S. release a decade after its director was murdered.
• Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure –  I never liked Pee Wee Herman as a character so I had zero interest in the film when it was first released and only went back and saw it long after because I was a big fan of Tim Burton and wanted to see what he brought to it.  His offbeat direction makes Herman’s schtick tolerable but just barely.
• Fool for Love –  Robert Altman directs a film version of Sam Shepard’s play with Shepard writing the script and starring.
• Asterix vs Caesar –  The first Asterix film in almost a decade combines parts of the fourth and tenth books in the series.
• When the Raven Flies –  The Icelandic submission for Best Foreign Film from 1984 is basically a remake of Yojimbo.
• MacArthur’s Children –  The Japanese submission from 1984 is adapted from a novel by Yü Aku.  As you could guess from the title it looks at the effects of post-war occupation by Americans in Japan.
• Memoirs of Prison –  The third submission in a row from 1984, this one is from Brazil and it’s based on the autobiographical novel by Graciliano Ramos about his imprisonment during the 40’s.
• Les Plouffe –  Well this is still an Oscar submission but this Canadian Drama was actually submitted back in 1981.
• Wuthering Heights –  Apparently no one ever gets tired of adapting Bronte’s brilliant novel.  This version is from French director Jacques Rivette.  We’re down to low ***.
• Henry IV –  If you think this is about Hal and Falstaff you’re in for a shock.  This is an Italian film and it’s an adaptation of the Pirandello play about a man who thinks he’s the Holy Roman Emperor.
• The Holy Innocents –  Spanish film based on the novel by Miguel Delibes.
• 1918 –  Horton Foote adapts (though doesn’t direct) his own play about the final year of World War I and what was going on in America.
• So Long, Stooge –  And we’re back to the Oscar submissions from 1984 with this Drama from France based on the novel by Alain Page.
• Smooth Talk –  A big hit at the 1st Indie Spirit Awards, with 5 nominations.  It’s based on Joyce Carol Oates’ fantastic short story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”
• Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome –  Max is back and this time he’s fighting Tina Turner.  If you’re like me, most of what you remember is from Turner’s video for “We Don’t Need Another Hero”.
• Vision Quest –  The hell with Turner, Madonna’s got a video for this one and her song (“Crazy for You”) is one of the greatest slow dance songs (and legitimate romantic songs) ever recorded.  Plus the soundtrack gave us a great Journey song as well (“Only the Young“).  But every time I watch those videos I have to remind myself that this is the same actress from Last Seduction because Linda Fiorentino seems a different person between those two films.  It’s based on a novel by Terry Davis but the soundtrack is better than the film.
• Nothing Left to Do But Cry –  My brain wants to hate this because it’s got Roberto Benigni but he co-directs, stars and writes with Massimo Troisi and that helps keep some of Benigni’s worst excesses in check.  Based on a novel by Giuseppe Bertolucci, Bernardo’s little brother.
• Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins –  Now we hit **.5.  It’s a bad sign to give your film a title that shows it’s designed to be a series when you don’t know if it will be a big enough hit to merit that (it wasn’t).  Mediocre Action film based on a pulp series called The Destroyer, it was designed to be a blue-collar American James Bond series, even using a Bond director (Guy Hamilton) and screenwriter but in a year with a terrible Bond outing this film made less than a third than that one did even if this was the better film.
• Barry MacKenzie Holds His Own –  Two years after he earned an Oscar nomination for Tender Mercies, Bruce Beresford’s second film, a sequel to his first film, finally hit the U.S. shores.  It’s got Dame Edna, which should say enough.
• Runaway Train –  Listed as adapted by oscars.org because it’s based on a unproduced screenplay by Akira Kurosawa.  The Globes were fans (Best Picture nom, Best Actor win) but I was not impressed.
• Here Come the Littles –  Animated film with five different countries involved, based on the book series (and television series).  Distributed by Atlantic Releasing which kind of made a living during the mid to late 80’s with mediocre animated films, often from pre-existing properties.
• Eleni –  A mediocre (mid **.5) Mystery from former Oscar nominee Peter Yates starring John Malkovich based on the memoir by Nicholas Gage.  I couldn’t find it when I did my Oscar Director project but I found it recently for this post online with Greek subtitles (which is actually relevant given the story – a journalist living in America returns to Greece to solve the mystery of his mother’s death).
• That Was Then… This is Now –  Based on the sequel to The Outsiders but the only person back from Coppola’s film version is Emilio Estevez (who wrote the film).
• The Quiet Earth –  A New Zealand post-apocalyptic Sci-Fi film based on the novel by Craig Harrison.
• Return to Oz –  This sequel to The Wizard of Oz is based on the second and third books in the series.  Fairuza Balk gives her all but the film just doesn’t support her, either with a sense of magic and wonder or with light-heartedness (with no songs, it is a much darker vision).
• Stephen King’s Cat Eye –  There are three parts to the film and the first two (“Quitters Inc.”, “The Ledge”) are two of the more interesting stories in Night Shift, King’s first collection of short stories.  But the film doesn’t work that well (as is often the case with anthology films).
• Compromising Positions –  Like Eleni, directed by a former Oscar nominee (in this case Frank Perry) and a film I couldn’t get back in 2012 for that project but I found it online.  An uneven film that Susan Isaacs adapted from her own novel with a mixture of suspense and comedy that doesn’t quite work.
• Enormous Changes at the Last Minute –  Since this was originally made for television, is directed by three directors that I don’t really know, based on an author I don’t know (Grace Paley), I really don’t know why I’ve seen this but I have.
• The Jewel of the Nile –  Don’t try to repeat a good thing.  Or if you do, try to get the original director back.  This sequel to Romancing the Stone is directed by Lewis Teague instead of Robert Zemeckis and it’s not very good.  This one also had a hit song (“When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going”) but like the film, the song isn’t that good and what’s worse, it embarrassingly uses the film’s stars as back-up singers in the video.
• The Aviator –  Nothing to do with Howard Hughes but instead a film with Christopher Reeve about a pilot who crashes in the wilderness with Rosanna Arquette.  Based on a novel by Ernest K. Gann who wrote other books about aviation that were also made into films (The High and the Mighty, Fate is the Hunter).
• Dead End –  Now we’re down to low **.5.  An Iranian film from 1977 finally getting a U.S. release (which is especially odd when you consider U.S.-Iran relations in 1977 and 1985).  Neither Wikipedia nor the IMDb list it as adapted but the old oscars.org (which is also what put it in this year) did, though I don’t know why.
• Joshua Then and Now –  Canadian adaptation of the novel by Mordecai Richler which is basically a warmed over retread of his own The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz.
• Ordeal by Innocence –  An Agatha Christie adaptation that’s not an all-star gala but also isn’t all that good so maybe an all-star gala is the way to go.
• Godzilla 1985 –  Because they didn’t learn the first time, once again American producers re-edit a Godzilla film (The Return of Godzilla, listed in 1984) and stick Raymond Burr in it, making this a direct sequel to the original film.
• Insignificance –  When I went to London in 1996 I saw a brilliant play called Hysteria about a meeting between Freud and Dali (in spite of massively reducing my Drama collection over the years, I still have that play).  The person I was rooming with mentioned an earlier play by the same playwright (Terry Johnson) about Einstein, Marilyn Monroe, Joseph McCarthy and Joe DiMaggio all meeting in a hotel room (though it doesn’t use their names) which I read and admired.  This film version, which I wouldn’t see until something like 20 years later just doesn’t capture the feeling of the play as it read on the page.
• A View to a Kill –  Talk about videos.  As I said in my full review, I didn’t remember anything about it that wasn’t in the Duran Duran video.  That is for the best, of course, since the video is much better than the film itself.  It uses part of the title of an actual Bond story (“From a View to a Kill”) but nothing else other than the established characters from previous films.  By the way, we’re at ** now.
• The Bride –  Hey, I know, let’s remake Bride of Frankenstein without having remade Frankenstein.  And let’s put Sting in the starring role as the scientist.  And not let him provide any music for it.  What could possibly go wrong?
• Brewster’s Millions –  Or, even worse, let’s remake a film that’s already been made six times but this time with Richard Pryor.  It was originally a novel by George Barr McCutcheon and I don’t know why it got made so often because none of the versions are all that good.
• The Secret of the Sword –  Also known as He-Man and She-Ra: The Secret of the Sword.  Released in May by (no points for guessing) Atlantic Releasing, it was the bridge between the two shows – being released in theaters just as He-Man and the Masters of the Universe ended its original run and before the fall debut of She-Ra: Princess of Power.  I didn’t see it until I started covering all animated films a few years ago because I was just slightly too old to be interested in Masters of the Universe (and all my money at the time when the original figures were released in 1982 went, in order, to: Star Wars figures, baseball cards, comic books).  Not good but over 40 points higher than the live-action film that we’ll get to in a couple of years.
• The Doctor and the Devils –  Even though none of them are actually very good, it seems like every generation gives us a Burke and Hare film.  This one (directed by longtime Hammer stalwart Freddie Francis) is adapted from an original screenplay by Dylan Thomas (you read that right) and has a good cast (Jonathan Pryce and Stephen Rea as Burke and Hare, or their stand-ins because it doesn’t use their names and Timothy Dalton as the doctor).
• The Coca-Cola Kid –  An Australian film based on several stories by Frank Moorhouse (who also wrote the script) has a lively, sexy performance from a young Greta Scacchi but a dead one from Eric Roberts that keeps this Comedy from being very good.
• Fandango –  Kevin Reynolds pulls a George Lucas and remake his student film as a feature film (thus making it adapted).  More importantly, it introduces him to star Kevin Costner (Costner’s first starring role) with Reynolds helping Costner with Dances with Wolves and then Costner starring in Robin Hood, Waterworld and Hatfields & McCoys.
• National Lampoon’s European Vacation –  The Vacation franchise as a whole really isn’t all that good and this might be the worst of them.
• Rocky IV –  Speaking of dead franchises.  Yet another film from this year that’s better seen by watching the video for the hit song (“Burning Heart”).  The song is not as good as “Eye of the Tiger” was but the movie’s not as good as the third one so it’s appropriate.  We’re into mid ** now.
• King David –  A current Bruce Beresford film but it’s not good.  Based, ostensibly on The Bible, this is the story of David (as if you couldn’t tell from the title) starring Richard Gere.
• Stick –  Burt Reynolds adapts an Elmore Leonard novel, starring and directing.  A decade later, John Travolta will learn the lesson of this and stick to the original much more closely.
• Perfect –  Speaking of Travolta, he stars in this adaptation of a bunch of Rolling Stone articles on singles picking up each other in health clubs (the poster even uses the Rolling Stone font).  Jamie Lee Curtis has a great body but good lord is it painful to look at it in those horrible leotards.
• Re-Animator –  A loose (and not very good – we’re down to low **) adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft’s classic story.
• Maxie –  Oh, this one is painful with Glenn Close as a woman possessed by a ghost.  Close was Globe nominated (which the film’s Wikipedia page oddly doesn’t mention, focusing instead on its Saturn Award nominations) but she’s not good and the film is terrible.  Based on a novel by Jack Finney (Invasion of the Body Snatchers).
• The Care Bears Movie –  Amazingly not distributed by Atlantic, this animated film has no value for adults, based on a toy line that was based on greeting cards.  It is, technically, I suppose, adapted because there were two television specials first.
• Year of the Dragon –  Rushed into production, this adaptation of Robert Daley’s novel was directed by Michael Cimino but co-written by Cimino and Oliver Stone (Stone was offered less money but with the promise that producer Dino De Laurentiis would fund Stone’s screenplay for Platoon which Dino reneged on) is just crap.  Cimino’s first film after he helped destroy United Artists with Heaven’s Gate.  Nominated for five Razzies.
• Enemy Mine –  Speaking of directors who suddenly decide to suck, here’s Wolfgang Petersen.  From here on out, Petersen will make only one really good film (In the Line of Fire) with most of his work being crap.  Based on the novella by Barry B. Longyear.  We’re into *.5 films now.
• Police Academy 2: Their First Assignment –  Well, at least the plethora of sequels in this franchise will provide something different among the plethora of crappy Horror sequels at the bottom of these lists.  This is mid *.5 and the franchise only goes down from here.
• Rambo: First Blood Part II –  This crappy mindless sequel to a good film is not only the worst film nominated at the Oscars this year, it’s the worst since 1981.  Nominated for Sound Effects Editing, it’s the worst nominated film in this category to date (and will be until 1996).
• King Solomon’s Mines –  We’ve hit * with this remake of a Best Picture nominee (the worst ever remake of a nominee? – quite possibly but I’m not going through all 500+ nominees to figure it out).  What’s worse, it’s directed by a former Oscar nominated director (J. Lee Thompson) though this film is better than the shitty collaborations with Charles Bronson he’s about to start at this time.  The 1950 film had a beautiful Deborah Kerr forgetting how to act.  This one has a much less beautiful Sharon Stone showing she hadn’t yet learned how to act.
• Silver Bullet –  With Corey Haim and Gary Busey was there a chance this would be a good Stephen King film?  Based on his Cycle of the Werewolf.
• Rainbow Brite and the Star Stealer –  The television show becomes a really bad film.
• The Warrior and the Sorceress –  Another Yojimbo remake, but this one is a Fantasy film with a hard R rating.  Like most bad films, listed on Wikipedia as “considered by some to be a cult classic.”
• Red Sonja –  Another terrible Fantasy film.  Just go back and read Howard’s original stories and ignore this terrible attempt to make a feature film of them (although it only uses the characters, not any actual Howard story).  Or go read the Marvel Comics that she is in, most notably this awesome team-up with Spider-Man.
• Lifeforce –  Terrible (.5 star) films like this are what make me believe the rumors that most of the directing on Poltergeist really was by Spielberg rather than Tobe Hooper.  Awful Sci-Fi Horror film based on the novel The Space Vampires.
• Friday the 13th: A New Beginning –  Because they couldn’t keep a shitty franchise down, here it comes back.
• Death Wish 3 –  More mindless vigilantism.
• Porky’s Revenge! –  Series creator Bob Clark was gone so instead we just get mindlessness without reason.  If you want T & A, you’re better off with a porn film with a plot.

Adaptations of Notable Works I Haven’t Seen

• none

Notes

I don’t consider Clue as adapted (and neither did oscars.org) because it was based on a game and not any actual characters.  Day of the Dead is not included as it doesn’t carry any characters forward from the previous Romero films.