There may be plenty of movies that are as good as if not better than their respective books. However...I think that there is a trend amongst the works that you have listed--either they are short (Taming of the Shrew) and therefore easy to mimic or the books were nothing special (Jaws the book). Granted, I have not read all of these, so I surely can't comment on all of them. However, I think that length, style, and quality of LotR in general makes it particularly hard to match.
Slashdot Mirror
There may be plenty of movies that are as good as if not better than their respective books. However...I think that there is a trend amongst the works that you have listed--either they are short (Taming of the Shrew) and therefore easy to mimic or the books were nothing special (Jaws the book). Granted, I have not read all of these, so I surely can't comment on all of them. However, I think that length, style, and quality of LotR in general makes it particularly hard to match.