7. Children of Men (2006)
To my mind,
Children of Men is one of the best sci-fi movie of the last 10 years, and that's mainly due to Alfonso Cuaron's unique and brilliant technical direction, and the way he loosely played around with P.D. James' source material. Cuaron's take on
Men isn't better then James', but the man knew how to adapt the novel in a way that made it relevant and cinematic without sacrificing the core themes of the novel. Saying that,
Children of Men remains an incredibly loose and ultimately unfaithful adaptation. These two entities really are worlds apart. There are reoccurring elements in the both, of course, but Cuaron mostly takes names and characters and makes them interchangeable: so Theo is a retired professor in the novel, whereas he's more of an average Joe in the book, the character of Julian has a different part entirely, and there's no Kee character at all. Cuaron also makes women infertile in the movie adaptation, whereas it's the men in James' book. Despite all the changes, P.D. James still praised Cuaron's movie greatly, which is probably the highest compliment he could have received.