Bram Stoker's Dracula
Dir: Francis Ford Coppola
1992
****
I saw Francis Ford Coppola's 1992 hit Bram Stoker's Dracula when it first came out and liked it a lot but there were always aspects of it that bothered me. I re-watched it again recently and unlike most, I actually like it more than I did back then in 1992. Sure it's a bit camp, some of the acting is questionable and it looks a little dated, which is not necessarily a bad thing, no CGI is a welcome relief these days, although the street scene in 1897s London infuriated me with it's total architectural inaccuracies but I digress, the symbolism used, which was integral in it reaching it's now cult status, was meticulously clever, even though it was influenced greatly by the Dracula directors F.W. Murnau, Tod Browning and Roy Ward Baker, I believe Coppola tapped into Stoker's novel in a way that no film maker had done before. Gary Oldman was the perfect choice of actor, it's hard to watch any other actor in the role since his performance, indeed, no other Dracula film has been as popular since which is the sign that maybe, between Murnau, Browning, Baker and Coppola (not forgetting Herzog), the definitive story has been told.