Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Movies about Writers


I've often found that movies about writers are a crap shoot. Sometimes they are very good, but other times they are awful.

Today I watched Angel. In this adaptation of a novel by British author Elizabeth Taylor. A young woman named Angel has no other aspirations other than to be a successful and famous romance novelist. She succeeds and buys the mansion of her dreams and lives there happily for a short while. The Great War breaks out and things change. This is a true melodrama. It is also not very well acted, however, I thought the story itself was a really good one, I'm sure I would have enjoyed the book more. I give it a solid 3 out of 5 stars.

The lists below are movies I enjoyed or didn't enjoy about writers/poets. Some of them are biopics others are just fictitous stories about writers.

Movies about writers I enjoyed

Angel
Barton Fink
The Freedom Writers
Adaptation
Misery
The Squid and the Whale
The Hours
Sunset Boulevard
Sylvia
Quills
Wilde
Shadowlands
Shakespeare in Love
In a Lonely Place
Permanet Midnight (Liked the movie, hated the book)
Hannah and Her Sisters
Bright Star

Movies about writers I did NOT enjoy

My Brilliant Career
An Angel At My Table
Capote

As you can see, there are more that I liked than disliked, and many more I haven't had a chance to watch yet. Who would have thought there were so many. I'm sure I've left out a few.

2 comments:

Anne said...

Possession is a movie about a writer that I really liked. I didn't like the book, though.

Unknown said...

Ohh, thanks, don't know if I've seen that one. I'll check it out.