Making a movie out of a book is tough. I mean just stop and think about it. Not only do you have average movie-making problems such as keeping things moving and dealing with unforeseen obstacles, you also have to cut down on the story line. Books can get pretty long, people can spend hours for weeks on end trying to finish them and no sane audience member wants to sit in a movie theater for six hours straight just so the filmmakers can capture every little detail that the author puts in the book. There's no market place for a movie like that. The only time people could watch crazy movies like that would be the weekend, and then after attending really feel like they wasted an entire day because oh, look, they have. Of course there's television if you really want to cover the tiny details, but from what I can tell even "Game of Thrones" has digressed from its book's original plot line. So no movie will ever be like its book, and that's fine. It's completely unrealistic to expect anything else. However, that doesn't mean that all film adaptations are necessarily good ones. For anyone who's ever read the "Percy Jackson" books, then you'll know that the movie is just atrocious. "The Giver" went way too dystopian for a book that's been kicking ass before whiny dystopian teenagers took over. And "Twilight"... well actually "Twilight"'s movie was pretty in line with its book considering the fact that both of them had me laughing too hard to take either of them seriously. That being said, here are some movies that do live up to their books, even if they don't all necessarily live up to their storyline.

1. "Howl's Moving Castle"

This is one of those rare instances where the movie is nothing like the book in all the right ways. Hayao Miyazaki takes Diana Wynne Jones' charming tale and makes it his own. The general backbone of the story remains the same. Howl's still a wizard and Sophie is still an ex-hat maker turned old cleaning lady by the Witch of the Waste. They still live in a moving castle that's still wandering about Ingary, but that's when things start to get different. While Diana Wynne Jones' book very much focuses on the story of Sophie and her development from a quiet, timid, devoted daughter into her own person, Miyazaki uses her characters and settings for a different purpose: to remind us all of the horrors of war.

The two story lines are only barely alike, but since they are so different, they allow the viewer to each time be introduced to not just a new story, but also new aspects of the characters. Diana Wynne Jones herself laughed about how Miyazaki's version of her characters were much more nobler than the ones in her novel, and that she never had imagined their castle moving around on legs. Instead of trying to mimic her, Hayao Miyazaki just went off and did his own thing, creating a beautiful masterpiece that stands next to, not behind like in so many other instances, the book.

2. "The Life of Pi"

"Life of Pi" is a book that is so beautifully written that I consider it to be real due to the fact that I'm too in love with the story to think of it as anything but real. It's rich, colorful, vibrant, and it's a story that, as its critics and even its own characters put it, will make you believe in God. To reduce the story down to one sentence, it's about a guy, on a life raft, in the middle of the Pacific, stranded with an adult male tiger. Pi's life is a living nightmare, but through pure determination, wit and faith is he able to make it through. Each experience and memory leaves you breathless, and this is one of the few instances where I can say that I was happy to watch the movie before reading the book.

Yes, I know, you're supposed to read the book before watching the movie so that you can have this free slate to imagine the characters and settings in whatever way you like. Which works, for most stories, but not this one. You see, this movie is so fantastic, so ethereal, so otherworldly and beautiful that you have to see the movie before the book, otherwise when you're looking at the text and just trying to match an image with the description you're just not going to see the full picture that Ang Lee's gorgeous cinematography provides. Yann Martel's book gives you Pi's emotions, his inner thoughts and workings. Ang Lee's film provides with nature's power, with the awe of miracles and the pure beauty of the moment. Put these two together and you feel like you get this full, complete story, a whole life, and it's so beautiful that it's enough to take your breath away.

3. "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Both book and its film are classic, and if you've somehow gotten through the American education system without reading it then you better go find a copy because there's a reason why so many of us have read it. It's that good. Now it's movie may leave out quite a few things, like the Mrs. Dubois storyline along with a wide variety of characters, but I feel like it's filmmakers were right to leave them out. The focus of the film is very much the court case, and it should be. The film was released on December 25, 1962, right in the middle of the Civil Rights movement. As I said before, it's incredibly hard to fit an entire book into one movie and Harper Lee covers so much of the ins and outs of growing up that it makes it incredibly hard to fit it all in. The movie is strong enough to stand on its own, and Gregory Peck is Atticus Finch. I would say more, but I'm sure you've heard enough about the story from your English teacher to last you for a lifetime.

4. "127 Hours"

Like "Life of Pi", "127 Hours" is a story of survival. Unlike "Life of Pi" I would say read the book first if you want to be prepared for the part where he has to chop his arm of. "127 Hours" tells the story of Aron Ralston, a person that I am 100% sure is real and who also gets his arm trapped between a boulder and a canyon wall and is stuck there for, you guessed it, 127 hours.

The book is great, written by Aron Ralston himself, it's not just a book about survival, it's a book about living, about reflecting on the life you've already lived, about learning to live for the better, and James Franco, who portrays Ralston in the film, does a beautiful job of showing this. Yes, the film's cinematography is great, and yes, there is the whole awe and beauty of nature thing going on, but it's James Franco who really ties the whole thing together. This is a movie about how humanity thrives in the darkest of situations. Aron has absolutely nothing going for him when he falls into that crevice. He has no form of communication, no companion, no one knows where he is, his food and water supply is not nearly sufficient to last him the full 127 hours, and no matter how hard he tries that boulder isn't moving. Aron is pretty much dead the minute he finds himself in the bottom of that crevice and it's a fact he pretty much learns to accept. It's in these moments of acceptance and remembrance and celebration of life does hope spark and drive him to cut off his arm. Ultimately escaping nature's demise. And James Franco does a beautiful job of showing it. He easily makes Aron a completely lovable character who manages to find little flickers of joy and humour in some of life's darkest moments. We feel his pain and feel helpless at the fact that we, the audience, know where he is, know that he's trapped, dying, and that since we are only the audience, we can't help. It's a beautiful story that will remind you to live life to its fullest, and, maybe even more importantly, always tell someone where you are and where you're going.