The men who would be Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway called himself Nick Adams in stories he wrote about his own exploits, but Hollywood has not shied away from calling him by his own name. He has popped up in quite a few films, usually clutching a bottle of whiskey and threatening to beat someone up.
Genius (2016)
Dominic West's gruff Hemingway is the truthiest aspect of a literary biopic that seems to think that famous writers also pre-write their everyday conversations. West's amusing performance cuts through that bull in the starry story of pioneering editor Max Perkins, whose orbit also included F. Scott Fitzgerald (Guy Pearce) and Thomas Wolfe (Jude Law).
Hemingway & Gellhorn (2012)
Nicole Kidman plays war correspondent Martha Gellhorn opposite yet another pretty boy cast as Hemingway, Clive Owen. This one takes place at a career peak, after Hemingway published "The Sun Also Rises" and "A Farewell to Arms" and when he's at work on "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (dedicated to Gellhorn) and "To Have and Have Not."
In Love and War (1996)
Not only does Chris O'Donnell's callow Hemingway not seem like he's going to write classic novels; he doesn't seem like he'd know how to read them. O'Donnell looks excellent in mud-splattered World War I uniforms, but nothing he does suggests the Hemingway we know in this one, where he charms the nurse (Sandra Bullock) who cares for his wounds.
Midnight in Paris (2011)
If you're canceling Woody Allen — and there are plenty of reasons to do so — you'll miss out on Corey Stoll's smoldering, sexy Hemingway. Allen's time-travel comedy is slight but the Paris-in-the-1920s atmosphere is fun, as is the on-screen appearance of writing rivals Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Tom Hiddleston).
The Moderns (1988)
There's plenty of entertainment value in this depiction of what would become Hemingway's memoir "A Moveable Feast." Alan Rudolph's comedy/drama is largely set at parties at Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas' pad, where Hemingway (Kevin J. O'Connor) and other famous creative types pop in to have affairs and spill absinthe on each other.
