Nobel laureate-penned books and the box office

Blindness, based on José Saramago’s 1995 novel (read review here), is the latest film adapted from a book by a Nobel laureate. But over the last decade, EW critics haven’t always warmed to Nobel-minted movies.

Beloved
1998
Jonathan Demme’s ”literal-minded” version of Toni Morrison’s classic stars Oprah Winfrey and Danny Glover. C+

Pavilion of Women
2001
This ”utterly predictable” adaptation of Pearl S. Buck’s novel stars Willem Dafoe as a priest. D+

The Piano Teacher
2002
Michael Haneke, master of the unsettling, crafts a ”grimly disquieting” film based on Elfriede Jelinek’s novel. B

The Mystic Masseur
2002
Future Daily Show-er Aasif Mandvi stars in a ”just plain dull” film from a V.S. Naipaul novel. C-

Fateless
2005
Imre Kertész’s autobiographical WWII novel inspired Hungarian director Lajos Koltai’s ”disturbingly beautiful” debut. A-

Love in the Time of Cholera
2007
Javier Bardem can’t save Mike Newell’s ”turgid and lifeless” take on Gabriel García Márquez’s epic. D