The screenwriting asshole/guru Robert McKee says in his book Story that it's no coincidence that the best film adaptations of books usually turn out to be based on either 19th-century novels or potboilers, because both are so plot-driven. He's got a point: compare Mario Puzo's The Godfather to Francis Ford Coppola's.
I'd do him one better, and claim that it's no coincidence that Modernist literature and narrative film both popped up at roughly the same time. With movies so uniquely well-equipped to tell a plot-driven story, it's no wonder that literary fiction advanced/retreated into work like Joyce, Proust, or Stein (or today, stuff like Pynchon).
But to answer your question, it's probably just something for dull-witted film critics to latch onto.