"Leave the gun. Take the cannoli."

I have this habit of reading acclaimed novels and then tracking down the film version afterward, to see how they even did it. Example: Michael Cunningham's The Hours, which is a nicely written book, though nothing earth-shattering, became a nicely crafted film, no more and no less. Similarly, Ian McEwan's Atonement, perhaps the best novel I've read from the last ten years, became quite a good film, though with some adequate-but-that's-all casting in the form of Keira Knightley. Both of these novels are very much about Literature and the Power of Writing, and so naturally they make more sense within a medium of words rather than images. That they worked well enough anyway is credit to the let's-leave-well-enough-alone strategy of adaptation: if it was good enough for McEwan, why change it?

We've all been taught from a young age, and just by inference, that The Book is Always Better. In many cases, yes. I just saw The Reader, subtitled The Movie Made Solely for Kate Winslet To Win An Oscar Even Though She's Merely Okay In It. I haven't read the Oprah-approved book, but it must be better. With all those fake German accents and all those baths, it felt at times like an unintentional comedy. Cue the violins for the unwarranted sudden-tragedy-but-wait-it's-really-about-hope ending, and you've got a mediocre movie made to capitalize on a bestseller.

Enough ranting. It's not frequent, but there are good books out there that are made into Better Movies. Yes, believe you me. I tried to come up with 10 examples and failed, so it's obviously a limited adaptation study, but here are classics and recent flicks that inhabited their celluloid reels vividly, that felt like they were always meant to be movies.

1. The Godfather Solid pulp fiction cast with a veritable actor's studio. From the clay and dust of America comes this living, breathing work of art so rich in its evocations of family, so thrilling in its intercutting of a baptism with gang warfare. Francis Ford Coppola, an up-and-down director, followed the book almost word for word (while expunging some ridiculous subplots).

2. Psycho (1960) The opposite: a classic thriller of suspense, unexpected violence, psychology, and claustrophobia adapted from a terrible book. It's not the knife that we remember; it's the leering boy-next-door trapped in that motel and that menacing cocoon of a house on the hill. Black-and-white, almost verite-esque, with those jagged high string lines and throbbing pizzicati.

3. Jaws Both the novel and the film adhere to their genre, but there's something about Robert Shaw's sobering speech between attacks, about humanity enduring against the caprices of nature. Peter Benchley's novel says "The shark did this, and the shark did that"; Steven Spielberg realized it's about the absence (and the impending threat) of the shark. John Williams's finest (least tacky) score.

4. Planet of the Apes (1968) Eww, you say, Charlton Heston chewing the scenery so ferociously? Those oh-so-sixties zoom shots? Yes, but the parable still works, amid barren landscapes and rabid percussion. The novel contains a pointless outer story in which two people reading about this planet turn out to be apes... oh, and the hero isn't actually on Earth the whole time, which takes away from the whole Darwinian survival throughline.

5. No Country for Old Men This is the kind of jaw-locked, white-knuckled experience only the cinema can do. It's a synthesis of rapacious editing, grainy long shots of the disappearing West, great character actors, and that ex-Beatles bowlcut. The Coens kept all of Cormac McCarthy's dialogue and story and rendered the bleakness in a visceral, no-man-gets-out-alive setting.

6. Little Children Tom Perrotta's novel was very good, following various characters in limited third-person perspectives. At the climax, suddenly, the narrator cheats and follows the nosy neighbor, as if she had a crucial role before that. The movie avoids this trap while focusing the suburban angst more acutely. The revised ending, Perrotta has even admitted, is better than his own. Beautiful camerawork considering the setting; great performances from Kate Winslet (she's just so present, so real) and Jackie Earl Haley.

7. American Psycho Possibly the most excessive and depraved book ever written. Purposefully, yes, but that doesn't make it art. Looking back on it, Bret Easton Ellis himself is shocked by it. Though it's not a great movie, it's impressive how Mary Harron streamlined it into a dark comedy.

8. Fight Club The movie apes Chuck Pahalniuk's book line by line, but when the Pahalniuk well runs dry (as it did years ago), and we question how good a writer he really is, the movie interjects with a hilarious performance from Edward Norton, a rockin' soundtrack, and some crazy visuals that put the fun back into Pahalniuk's narcisstic nihilism.

9. Casino Royale (2006) James Bond is what he is, on paper and on screen. But Ian Fleming was still finding his footing with his first Bond adventure, and he hadn't latched onto the glamour of a license to kill. Daniel Craig is, interestingly, the most like the Bond of the books, even though Sean Connery was iconic. Too many explosions, but yet, the novel just peters out, concerned less with intrigue and more with "character" and "motive" and things alien to Bond as we know him. (Great last line, though: "The bitch is dead now.")

Let the credits roll. Anyone have a 10th to add?