Best movies based on or inspired by books of 2021

In 1939, Suffolk landowner Edith Pretty hires local self-taught archaeologist-excavator Basil Brown to tackle the large burial mounds at her rural estate in Sutton Hoo near Woodbridge. They ignore Brown, who left school aged 12, when he suggests the mounds could be Anglo-Saxon rather than the more common Viking era.

Entrepreneur Balram Halwai emails Chinese premier Wen Jiabao, requesting a meeting, and relating his life story. He states his belief that the Indian underclass is trapped in a perpetual state of servitude, like chickens in a chicken coop. However when his father is unable to pay off The Stork, the village landlord, Balram’s grandmother forces him to work in the village’s tea stall, and he never returns to school.

A female-driven neo-western set against a wildfire in the Montana wilderness. A teenage murder witness finds himself pursued by twin assassins in the Montana wilderness with a survival expert tasked with protecting him and a forest fire threatening to consume them all.

The film follows Mohamedou Ould Salahi, who is captured by the U.S. government and is languishing in Guantanamo Bay detention camp without charge or trial. Losing all hope, Salahi finds allies in defense attorney Nancy Hollander and her associate Teri Duncan. Together, they face countless obstacles in a desperate pursuit for justice.

Cherry drifts from college dropout to army medic in Iraq – anchored only by his true love, Emily. But after returning from the war with post-traumatic stress disorder, his life spirals into drugs and crime as he struggles to find his place in the world.

A a chilling, mysterious thriller about a family on a tropical holiday who discover that the secluded beach where they are relaxing for a few hours is somehow causing them to age rapidly, reducing their entire lives into a single day.

Mark, a teenage boy, has been stuck in a time loop, repeating the same day over and over again. At the community pool, he makes repeated attempts to impress a pretty girl by trying to save her from being knocked into the water by a thrown beach ball. Mark tracks her down and discovers that she is also living in the same time loop.

An epic fantasy adventure based on the Arthurian legend, The Green Knight tells the story of Sir Gawain, King Arthur’s headstrong nephew, who embarks on a daring quest to confront the eponymous Green Knight, a gigantic emerald-skinned stranger and tester of men.

A woman, while on a summer holiday, finds herself becoming obsessed with another woman and her daughter, prompting memories of her own early motherhood to come back and unravel her.

Billie Holiday spent much of her career being adored by fans. In the 1940’s, the government targeted Holiday in a growing effort to racialize the war on drugs, ultimately aiming to stop her from singing her controversial ballad, “Strange Fruit.”

The year is 1925. The Burbank brothers are wealthy ranchers in Montana. At the Red Mill restaurant on their way to market, the brothers meet Rose, the widowed proprietress, and her impressionable son Peter. Phil, one of the brothers, will end up launching a campaign against the young widow when she unexpectedly marries his brother and comes to live on the ranch.

Adapted from a short story in Murakami Haruki’s Men Without Women, a director’s wife was a playwright, but she died two years ago. When the director is invited to direct a play at a festival in Hiroshima he finds his chauffeur to be a stoic woman. The two share many rides and as gradually communication is initiated secrets and confessions are exchanged.