Banned Books Week: Films Adapted from Banned Books

A wealthy New York City investment banking executive, Patrick Bateman, hides his alternate psychopathic ego from his co-workers and friends as he delves deeper into his violent, hedonistic fantasies.

In 1873 Ohio, Sethe is a mother of three haunted by her horrific slavery past and her desperate actions...
... in, a strange woman named Beloved enters their lives, causing turmoil.

A drama set in the 1920s, where free-spirited Janie Crawford's search for happiness leads her through several different marriages, challenging the mores of her small town.

In 1963, rodeo cowboy Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal) and ranch hand Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) are hired by rancher Joe Aguirre (Randy Quaid) as sheep herders in Wyoming. One night on Brokeback Mountain, Jack makes a drunken pass at Ennis that is eventually reciprocated. Though Ennis marries his longtime sweetheart, Alma (Michelle Williams), and Jack marries a fellow rodeo rider (Anne Hathaway), the two men keep up their tortured and sporadic affair over the course of 20 years.

The heart-wrenching story of a young black girl in the early 20th century who is forced into a brutal marriage and separated from her sister.

Based on the best-selling Stephen King novel, Carrie catches the mind, shakes it and refuses to let it go. Starring Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie, John Travolta and Amy Irving, this ultimate revenge fantasy is one of the all-time great horror classics! At the center of the terror is Carrie, a tortured high-school misfit with no confidence, no friends ... and no idea about the extent of her secret powers of telekinesis. But when her psychotic mother and sadistic classmates finally go too far, the once-shy teen becomes an unrestrained, vengeance-seeking powerhouse who, with the help of her "special gift," causes all hell to break loose in a famed cinematic frenzy of blood, fire and brimstone!

In future Britain, charismatic delinquent Alex DeLarge is jailed and volunteers for an experimental aversion therapy developed by the government in an effort to solve society's crime problem ... but not all goes to plan.

At an Army base in 1941 Hawaii, the lives of enlisted men and officers are troubled by spiteful commanders, sadistic military police, and forbidden love. Includes actual scenes of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Following a prison term he served for manslaughter, Tom Joad returns to find his family homestead overwhelmed by weather and the greed of the banking industry. With little work potential on the horizon of the Oklahoma dust bowls, the entire family packs up and heads for the promised land -- California. But the arduous trip and harsh living conditions they encounter offer little hope, and family unity proves as daunting a challenge as any other they face.

Set in a future where the Capitol selects a boy and girl from the twelve districts to fight to the death on live television. Katniss Everdeen volunteers to take her younger sister's place for the latest match.

In a divided country on the verge of war, two childhood friends, Amir and Hassan, are about to be torn apart forever. It's a glorious afternoon in Kabul and the skies are bursting with the exhilarating joy of a kite-fighting tournament. But in the aftermath of the day's victory, one boy's fearful act of betrayal will mark their lives forever and set in motion an epic quest for redemption. Now, after twenty years of living in America, Amir returns to a perilous Afghanistan under the Taliban's iron-fisted rule to face the secrets that still haunt him and take one last daring chance to set things right.

Stanley Kubrick's sixth film is a brilliant, sly adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's celebrated yet infamous 1955 novel. It chronicles a middle-aged literature professor's unusual and doomed sexual passion/obsession for a seductively precocious pubescent "nymphet" named Lolita. Thanks to the film industry's production code, the film is mostly suggestive, with numerous double entendres and metaphoric sexual situations, while the story has been transformed into a black comedy and murder mystery. The film lacks the element that enabled most readers to understand the novel--Humbert Humbert's exquisite inner voice. As a consequence the film is big, luxurious, and full of a barren, cold humor, yet a visual tour-de-force in elegant black-and-white

Adaptation of William Golding's novel about a group of English boys who are stranded on an uninhabited island when the plane that is evacuating them from a war-threatened England crashlands. Without adult control, the boys regress to savagery.

In Depression-era California, two migrant workers dream of better days on a spread of their own until an act of unintentional violence leads to tragic consequences.

In the mid-1970s, in a sleepy Michigan community, live the Lisbon sisters, five teenagers whose beauty has bewitched a group of neighborhood boys. Isolated by their over-protective parents, they move like fleeting visions against the suburban landscape, luminous and unattainable. But when school hunk Trip Fontaine convinces Lux Lisbon and her sisters to go to the prom, the boys' romantic fantasies threaten to come true - until they are engulfed in a stunning chain of events that will change their lives forever.

The "ordinary" existence of an upper middle class family is shattered with the death of the older son and the struggle of the younger son against guilt and suicide.

Coming-of-age movie set in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the mid-1960s. Ponyboy and his two brothers struggle to find their place in a difficult world after the deaths of their parents.

A young boy and his parents spend the winter in a resort hotel which is possessed by ghosts.

Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time. An otherwise typical soldier in WWII, without warning, he jumps back and forth in his life with no control over where he is going next. Sometimes he is an ophthalmologist at home in suburbia; deep in World War II Europe, surviving the Allied bombing of Dresden; on the planet Tralfamadore, being held captive by aliens in an intergalactic zoo--accompanied by a porn star. In the end, he learns that the many tragic and sometimes funny ironies of life--the randomness of tragedy, the cruelty and senselessness of war, and man's complete lack of control over his fate--remain constant.

A drama set in post-World War II Brooklyn revolves around Sophie, a Polish Catholic beauty who survived Auschwitz, her lover, Nathan, and Stingo, a would-be writer. As the three grow closer, Stingo discovers the captivating and moving truths that each harbors.

The setting is a dusty Southern town during the Depression. A white woman accuses a black man of rape. Though he is obviously innocent, the outcome of his trial is such a foregone conclusion that no lawyer will step forward to defend him-- except the town's most distinguished citizen. His compassionate defense costs him many friendships but earns him the respect and admiration of his two motherless children.

A hard hitting docu-drama about two ex-cons who ruthlessly murder a Kansas family in 1959 in order to steal their non-existent stash of money.

Harry Potter, an orphaned child that has spent the first ten years of his life living under the stairs of his aunt and uncle's house, is invited to join the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He learns his destiny lies in the realm of magic and fantasy.

Although he has been missing for several years and the entire town thinks her father has abandoned her family, Meg steadfastly believes the best and protects her younger brother, Charles Wallace, from the brunt of the rumors and taunting. It is he, however, who convinces her to join him, the school sports star Calvin, and three unusual women on an interplanetary voyage to rescue their father from a vast evil.

Oskar is convinced that his father, who died in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center, has left a message for him hidden in the city. Feeling disconnected from his grieving mother and driven by an active mind that refuses to believe in things that can't be observed, Oskar begins searching New York City for the lock that fits a mysterious key he found in his father's closet. His journey through the five boroughs takes him beyond his loss to a greater understanding of the world around him.

Jesse Aarons is in the 5th grade and has trained all summer to become the fastest runner in school. He becomes upset when new classmate Leslie Burke outruns him and everyone else. Despite this and some other striking differences, the two become fast friends. Together, they create Terabithia where they rule as king and queen and is a land filled with monsters, trolls, ogres, and giants. This friendship helps Jesse cope with a tragedy that makes him realize what Leslie taught him.

Montag, a regimented fireman in charge of burning the forbidden volumes, meets a revolutionary school teacher who dares to read. Suddenly he finds himself a hunted fugitive, forced to choose not only between two women, but between personal safety and intellectual freedom.

Hazel and Gus share a sarcastic sense of humor, a distaste for the conventional, and ultimately a love that sweeps them on an unforgettable journey. Although the two teens face unlikely challenges with their health, their courage and dedication to each other prove that while life isn't perfect, love can still be extraordinary in this powerfully moving film based on John Green's New York Times best-selling novel.

When 14-year-old Susie Salmon was murdered, she left her unfinished life behind. Now from her place in a strange but beautiful in-between world, she must help her father catch her killer and protect her family before she can finally move on.

Tom and his friend Huck witness a midnight killing which leads to all kinds of difficulties when they swear not to reveal what they saw.