Hotel (1967) Review
September 22, 2026
Rod Taylor runs a grand old New Orleans hotel through one week of takeover threats, a jewel thief and a hidden hit-and-run in this glossy adaptation of Arthur Hailey's novel. It's an 8.5.
Tag: Adaptation
Every adaptation is a set of decisions about what to lose. This tag collects reviews and craft pieces on adaptation: what transfers between page and screen, and what has to be rebuilt.
1970sColossus: The Forbin Project (1970) Review
September 19, 2026
I have watched this more times than is defensible. A film about a computer, a requirements document and a mountain, and the machine is never once broken.
AdaptationRemakes, Ranked
September 11, 2026
Every remake and side-by-side contrast reviewed on this site, ranked. The ones that justified themselves, the ones that repeated the plot and lost the point, and the studio programme built on strip-mining a back catalogue.
1950sAround the World in 80 Days (1956) Review
September 11, 2026
Around the World in 80 Days (1956) rates 4 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Mike Todd shot the Verne novel in six countries with about forty recognizable faces in one-scene appearances, invented the modern cameo, and beat Giant…
2010sEvery Disney Live Action Remake (2010-Present) Review
September 11, 2026
The Disney live action remakes rate 3 out of 10 as a body of work. Fifteen years, a dozen and a half films, several billion dollars, and a program whose governing principle is that the animated version should be reproduced…
2020sSnow White (2025) Review
September 11, 2026
Snow White (2025) rates 2 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. The remake that ended the remake program. It cost somewhere around two hundred and seventy million dollars, spent two years being argued about before anybody saw it, and…
2020sUncharted (2022) Review
September 11, 2026
Uncharted (2022) rates 3 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A film adapted from a series of games that were already adapting films, which means it is a photocopy of a photocopy. The cargo plane sequence is lifted directly…
2010sThe Hobbit Trilogy (2012-2014) Review
September 10, 2026
The Hobbit Trilogy (2012-2014) rates 4 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A three hundred page children's book became nearly eight hours of film at a reported seven hundred and forty-five million dollars. Guillermo del Toro spent two years…
2000sPirates of the Caribbean (2003) Review
September 10, 2026
Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. A film adapted from a theme park queue that had no business being good. Depp built a character the studio…
AdaptationA Christmas Carol Day: December 19
September 9, 2026
A Christmas Carol was published on 19 December 1843, sold out in five days, and made its author almost nothing because he had paid for it himself and specified expensive materials. He then sued a publisher who pirated it, won…
AdaptationBram Stoker Day: The Novel Nobody Reads
September 9, 2026
Stoker managed a London theater for twenty-seven years and wrote Dracula in the evenings. It became the most adapted novel in the language, and almost nobody who invokes it has read it, which means almost nobody knows its central technique…
AdaptationJane Austen Day: The Technique She Perfected
September 9, 2026
Austen published four novels anonymously, earned a few hundred pounds from all of them, and died at forty-one. She also perfected the technique most modern fiction runs on, and almost nobody who reads her for the romance notices it happening.