Doctor Jack Seward: An autopsy? On Lucy?
Van Helsing: No, no, no. Not exactly. I just want to cut off her head and take out her heart.
118 years ago on the 26th of May, a guy named Bram Stoker published a novel that would change the world of horror literature forever.
To celebrate that day, I watched (2 days late but whatever) Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola.
It's the same story as always. Jonathan Harker (Keanu Reeves) drives to Transilvania to sell some rich guy a house in England. That rich guy is of course Dracula (Gary Oldman), whose shadow is really weird.
Dracula then gets to England and finds the rebirth of his long lost love, Mina Murray (Winona Ryder). The only person that maybe can defeat him is Prof. Abraham Van Helsing (Anthony Hopkins).
Most of the acting is great, Anthony Hopkins plays a crazy and kind of funny van Helsing.
Gary Oldman is really scary and in many different masks as Dracula. My favorite verison is probably when he is reeeaaally old. He has something eerie about him.
Winona Ryder is also good, she has some drastic changes in her character that she does pretty well.
One honorable mention goes to Tom Waits, who does an awesome job as the crazy Renfield. I love seeing him in movies.
My only problem with the acting is Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker. As a main character he is so boring and bleak, except for a little at the beginning we don't get any real emotions out of him. But I'm not the only one who hates his acting in this movie. Even he himself and director Francis Ford Coppola dislike it.
Visually, this movie is really good, most of the scenes look awesome. And I read that except for flames in the beginning it's all done on set, without any special effect work afterwards, which is really stunning (the flames in the beginning were also the worst looking effect I've seen in a long time).
I haven't read the book, just parts of it, but I know it's mostly done through letters or diary entries from different characters. And throughout the movie we get different characters reading their letters or diary entries, so that's probably a throwback to the book.
There are also some scenes out of older Dracula movies. For example two of my favorite lines from the 1931 Dracula are repeated in this movie. Also we got some scenes that reminded me of the 1929 silent movie Nosferatu.
Dracula goes through many costume changes. He starts of as an old man, he doesn't look like a typical old man to me though. Don't get me wrong, I love the look, but I can't say I've ever seen something quite like this.
Then we got normal Gary (not so) Oldman. Then we get a weird batlike creature. And a wolfman. I have to say, I didn't like the wolfman costume/makeup. It just looked weird. The rest of the costumes were okay, even though they weren't great. But acceptable.
There is some blood in it and some decapitations, nothing to crazy though.
Some characters acted weird. I won't give any specifics here because I don't wanna spoil too much, but in one scene Van Helsing acts in a way that doesn't fit his character (at least the way I saw him).
What I didn't like at all was the Romance angle, that I don't wanna spoil either. But I just didn't like it. It was a little boring and in some places just felt weird. Most of all it made Dracula a little less cool.
All in all this movie was great looking with awesome acting, but it had some flaws, points I didn't like. I still prefer the older versions to be honest. I give this movie 3.5 out of 5 stars, it is clearly watchable, but I've seen better.
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