Movies that were as good as the book. Books that were as

[Strong Atheist]

good as the movie? Seems to be rare...

The Princess Bride was one. The modern LOTR movies was another ...

[Texasgal]

1. I think The Godfather series

was pretty good. I preferred the movie!

[ghostsofgiants]

2. Fight Club...

Though, I have to say I hate when people compare the book versus the movie. They are two completely different mediums, usually done by two completely different artists. Film has certain limitations that books don't, and vice versa, and to expect two artists to produce exactly the same works in two different mediums is ridiculous. It's like apples and oranges to me.

[Strong Atheist]

4. Fine. I just meant, if one is good AS A MOVIE, and the other is

crap AS A BOOK, or vice versa...

[ghostsofgiants]

6. Ahh, I interpreted it a little differently, I guess.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

15. Hear, hear!

I hate it when people try to compare books and the movies based off of them. They are, as you said, two completely different mediums that affect people in radically different ways. Comparisons are, frankly, useless.

[taterguy]

3. Das Boot

[azmouse]

5. Shogun.

It was a mini-series but I was impressed with how they were able to convey the essence of a very long and very good book.

[AllegroRondo]

7. Harry Potter series is doing pretty well

[Strong Atheist]

9. Yeah, in fact, the movies seem to be better than the books, and

the books are good ...

[kay1864]

8. Well, let's see...

2001 (but they were written concurrently, so maybe it doesn't count)
2010 actually improved on the book
Firestarter was the first Stephen King book that translated well, and the only one up until The Shining.

Agree with the above post, Harry Potter (except for #3--Cuaron botched it)

[Parrcrow]

10. To Kill A Mockingbird

both the film and the book are classics.

[KitchenWitch]

11. Absolutely

Loved both.

[LostinVA]

12. "Howard's End," "Remains of the Day"

[LostinVA]

13. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

[cemaphonic]

14. some more

Along with the aforementioned Godfather, my favorite examples of this are:

Jaws
The Maltese Falcon
The Big Sleep
Night of the Hunter

Most of the Kubrick films that are based on novels are at least as good as the book. The only exception I can think of is Lolita, and it is still a very good movie. It just necessarily leaves out a lot of the purely literary devices that makes the book so interesting.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

16. I saw Asia Argento's adaptation of JT Leroy's

"The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things" recently and was really, really impressed as I thought any adaptation would suck big style.

http://www.heartisdeceitful.com/
http://www.asiargento.it/FILM/film.html

Cronenberg / Ballard's "Crash" also springs to mind. And perhaps "Naked Lunch", although my opinion of the film fluctuates wildly with each viewing.

[kmla]

17. Shawshank Redemption. n/t

[GalleryGod]

18. Stephen King's "The Body" and Rob Reiners's "Stand By Me"

Match up pretty good for me!
Nice going, Hollywood!