There are a ton I could do. There are a million good book-to-movie adaptations and a million bad ones. So I decided to stick with one director, who has made a couple really great book to movie adaptations, and one monumentally bad one. The director's name is Alfonso Cuaron, and he is one of the most acclaimed directors working today. In 1995 he was tapped to adapt Frances Hodges Burnett's classic, A Little Princess, the film was beautiful and magical. It absolutely caught me up in it's since of wonder and after I watched it for a film class, I immediately went out and bought it. I got strange looks, because I was a 19 year-old boy buying a children's movie, but it had to be done. It is still one of my favorite book to movie adaptations of all time

 

 

 

A few years ago, he was given the chance to direct a big-time movie, you may have heard of it, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I was excited. One of my favorite directors directing a film series I thought had potential. The book & movies use of time-travel, however, left me cold as I thought it was a weak storytelling device. But that came directly from the book, what really made it a disappoint for me, was the fact that the Hogwarts' kids seemed to look like they were suddenly in Cold War Russia rather than a slightly altered version of the present that the other movies had given us. It wasn't until after the last book came out that J.K. Rowling told us the kids may have been living in a time closer to Cold War Russia than the slightly altered version of the present had presented. Still, if you watch all the movies together, one stands apart from the rest, and it is this one, because of poor/strange directorial choices.

 

 

 

 

A couple years after his brief debacle stint as Harry Potter director, Cuaron would again bring his good name back to movie adaptations, with a loose but amazing adaptation of P.D. James's Children of Men.