TheArchive: Reviewing the Rare, Retro, and Restored

In honor of National Library Week , we wanted to highlight amazing films based on amazing books. Literature has been a major inspiration for film; the 1899 silent film Cinderella , directed by Georges Méliès, is widely considered the first book-to-film adaptation .  And that tradition is very much alive today. Some of the biggest films in recent memory have come straight from the pages of a book. Project Hail Mary , based on Andy Weir's beloved sci-fi novel, stars Ryan Gosling in a beautiful survival story. Hamnet , adapted from Maggie O'Farrell's acclaimed novel, turns a quiet literary meditation on grief and family into a powerful historical drama. Emerald Fennell took on Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights with a bold new vision, and Denis Villeneuve's Dune films have reminded everyone just how epic a literary adaptation can feel. Dune: Part Three is arriving in December 2026.  Book-to-film adaptations are exciting because a novel can let us sit inside a charact...

Everyone goes through grief at some point, but it is hard to describe when you are in the middle of it. Grief can feel sharp and overwhelming, or it can be quiet, slow, and confusing. Sometimes it changes everything right away, and other times it quietly shapes how you move through life without others noticing. That is why film is such a powerful way to explore grief. The best movies about loss do not try to make it simple or offer easy answers. Instead, they show that grief is about more than just death. It is about memory, guilt, love, resentment, longing, and the challenge of moving forward after a life-changing event. In this blog, we will look at how film can help people process grief and how art can express feelings that are hard to put into words. This is what makes Train Dreams and Hamnet so powerful. These two films are very different, but both focus on what happens after loss changes a person’s life. They do not rely on dramatic speeches or easy resolutions. Instead, they...