Movies better than the book

One could argue that "Brokeback Mountain" was a better film than book, although it was a fine short story packaged as a book. Thoughts?

 

I thought that movie was horrible.
It was well-acted, but it sucked, and it's not about the gay thing either.
It was a "love story" where you don't see the people fall in love. Two guys are hanging out on a mountain, they have incredibly violently angry sex, and then they spend the rest of the movie whining about how they can't be together.
Seriously, what am I missing?

 

It was almost a perfectly written short story. If you wanted to teach a class on the subject, you couldn't go wrong using Brokeback as a model; or, "A Good Man is Hard to Find".

And with all due respect, Okie, what "you don't see" in a movie is what often makes it a great movie.

And if you watch the movie more than once, you'll pick up little signs that there's almost an immediate attraction--an unspoken one, of course.

 

I remember seeing a comedian about 15-20 years ago say this joke: "They always say the book is better than the movie. ... I don't know, I read 'Porky's' ..."

 

I would label the movie as poignant. It is a movie about life and the unexpected turns that it takes. Its a movie about love not in the homosexual sense but more love of family and friends. Its a movie that grabs you and makes you think.

 

(Translation: 'I left the Apocalypse Now dvd on the plane so I have to watch this crap at 21's place.')

 

You may be right, and I overstated to say I thought it was horrible.
I thought the movie was decent. I'd give it a 'C,' but it had so much hype that it really, really disappointed me.
That said, I don't plan to watch it again because I didn't enjoy it that much the first time, so I guess I'll never see the signs that I missed.
I know what you don't see can make a movie, but I expected a love story and I didn't see that at all.

 

Sirs, Madames,

I'll give you one that's a personal taste: Under the Volcano, now just out on Criterion. Huston directing in a late-bloom period. Breath-taking performance by Albert Finney--you could make a case that it's a less than great film but one of the great single turns in modern film. Like Wonder Boys, it was impossible to do a straight word-for-word, scene-by-scene adaptation of UtV, so only three of the four main characters survive the cut. Who ever imagined that Jaqueline Bisset could act? I've taken a number of runs at the novel and while I realize that it's one of the most highly ranked novels of the 20th century I suspect it's one example of the shortcomings of the Sagarin approach to literature. I say Lowry's novel is the best in a very small field: the category of life-consuming, life-destroying alcoholics-writing-about-other-alcoholics.

YD&OHS, etc

 

Beat me to it.

The Graduate was a nothing book but a fantastic movie.

 

"A Good Man is Hard to Find?" Isn't that the one about the old woman going on the road with her son and his family and they end up meeting an escaped murderer?

 

That would be the one. Flannery O'Connor.

 

Read that one fairly recently. Good, quick read, especially if you appreciate dark humor.