A book or novel being made into a movie is one of the greatest honors the readers and the author can receive. After all, it's a chance for the story to get its own face or standard interpretation. Often, the most successful movies are also based on novels and already established stories in the literary world.
It just so happens that there are a ton of them already that are good ones. There way too many novels that won awards and their movies, in turn, have also received the same accolade and recognition; it's hard to know which ones are the best. Luckily, Rotten Tomatoes has its own metric for determining the cream of the crop, here they are, the 10 of the highest-rated films based on novels.
GOLDFINGER - 98%
Can't go wrong with James Bond. It's the magnum opus of famed spycraft writer Ian Fleming. Among all the James Bond novels that got adapted into movies, Goldfinger is the highest-rated film adaptation.
It's where the suave Bond (Sean Connery back then) had to go tooth and nail against Auric Goldfinger, essentially a modern caricature of King Midas in Greek mythology. Still, it's a little debatable how well this film holds up today.
JAWS - 98%
Before Steven Spielberg's Jaws movie, the open ocean wasn't a meat grinder where every dorsal fin breaking the surface meant death. That's who significant Jaws's impact was on film-- it launched a whole new genre of horror involving sharks.
The whole film was also based on a 1974 novel of the same name by author Peter Benchley. Without these two visionaries in their respective disciplines of art, shark horror probably never would have become a thing and sharks wouldn't be painted in such a murderous light.
THE GODFATHER - 98%
Often considered as director Francis Ford Coppola's best film, The Godfather brought the Mafia into the spotlight like never before. It did help that the cast consisted of a bunch of heavyweights in the industry from the method-acting master Marlon Brando to the rising Al Pacino (back then).
Part of the credit, of course, goes to the novel of the same name written by Mario Puzo. It was among the top crime novels in literary history thanks to its accurate and detailed portrayal of how the Mafia works as well as their family dynamics.
MY LIFE AS A ZUCCHINI - 99%
As expected, there just had to be a French movie here. That would be My Life as a Zucchini or in French Ma Vie de Courgette released back in 2017. It's a foreign language film that tells the story and the struggles of orphans in France along with their abusive relationships with their former families.
The film heartily captures this phase of childhood in Icare's (the protagonist) life as told in the 2002 novel Autobiographie d'une Courgette by author Gilles Paris. Likewise, it aims to realistically evoke the situation of orphans in France.
L.A. CONFIDENTIAL - 99%
Back when Kevin Spacey was just a good actor in the eyes of the public, he gave everyone a performance of the decade in 1997's L.A. Confidential. The cop crime drama movie also proudly utilizes the triumvirate of Kevin Spacey, Russell Crowe, and Guy Pearce as the three of them get stuck in a web of betrayal and lies involving their very own police department.
The movie rightfully did justice to its source material, which was the award-winning neo-noir crime novel of the same name by James Ellroy. It's too bad the film went up against Titanic in the same year and lost the Best Picture award.
THE NIGHT OF THE HUNTER - 99%
The Night of the Hunter which was adapted from the novel of the same name by author Davis Grubb, was considered by some as the second-best movie of all time-- second only to the legendary Citizen Kane.
It follows the same story as the novel where a recently released ex-convict named Harry Powell attempts to seduce and marry the widow of his former cellmate in hopes of finding the $10,000 that he hid in the household. It plays well on the good old-fashioned good vs. evil trope of storytelling and combined with the unique hybrid cinematography style at the time, it became a monumental movie.
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON - 99%
The first How to Train Your Dragon was a huge hit among people of all ages back in 2014 and was so successful, it spawned a trilogy and even ended on a high note. Meanwhile, it had its own cartoons and even video games about dragons and Vikings.
All of those wouldn't have been possible without the book series which the movies were based upon. The How to Train Your Dragon books by Cressida Cowell was a series of 12 children's books telling a different story about Hiccup, something that the film builds upon.
PINOCCHIO - 100%
No person's childhood is complete without having watched or heard of the story of Pinnochio, the sentient Italian doll. He's pretty much become the standard lesson for honesty among children. No other cartoon successfully re-imagined the puppet than Disney's 1940 Pinnochio movie.
It was a masterpiece back then and remains so now as one of the most entertaining retellings of The Adventures of Pinocchio by Italian author Carlo Collodi. The films did take liberties with the storyline, of course, but its story remains timeless and valuable to children.
LEAVE NO TRACE - 100%
Leave No Trace is a film about a father and his daughter as they struggle to go off the grid and coexist with a problem the dad is facing. The twist is that they didn't even need to, but the father was suffering from PTSD induced by his military service.
The film is a heartwarming take on the same story as told by the novel My Abandonment from author Peter Rock. Moreover, the film serves as an important reminder of the PTSD awareness and how the family can help with such an affliction.
FRANKENSTEIN - 100%
Finally, we have Frankenstein, one of the oldest films based on a novel. Coincidentally, the source material of the same name is also one of the oldest novels dating back from 1818 by Mary Shelley.
To that end, 1931's Frankenstein movies is a tale of classic horror regarding the tragic beginning and ending of Frankenstein's monster. To this day, no other horror creature or novel has been more iconic or widely known, except maybe Dracula-- a topic for another time.