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I'm a big fan of Crichton, too. I've read Andromeda Strain, and I'd say the original movie was probably the most faithful to his book of any of them. His movies, of course, have usually depended on who was doing them, to do them justice.
Spielberg's Jurassic Park took some liberties with the original text, some of which were obviously to bring in a reasonable movie length, and some of which gave us different characterizations (and endings) for certain characters. Hey, it's Spielberg's movie, and I loved it for its adventure qualities and technical accomplishments, but it was almost a different story than that of the book.
Then there are things like Congo... a bad movie of a bad book. Oh, well.
My feeling is that a movie doesn't have to be absolutely faithful to the book, in order to be a good movie. If that were true, every movie would need to be 5-6 hours long, or more, just to include all the material in the book! So I consider every movie as based on all but the shortest book, or short story, but not an actual retelling of the book.
Another movie that was a great version of the book: Metropolis.
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