Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992) Director: Francis Ford Coppola

★★☆☆☆

Despite having a brilliant aesthetic and an excellent performance by Gary Oldman as the centuries-old Count Dracula along with Anthony Hopkins as Van Helsing, Francis Ford Coppola’s interpretation of Dracula is sadly a convoluted mess of a movie. The plot is garbled and mostly incoherent. While the look and the mood of the film are captivating, the scenes simply do not flow together and the selection of Keanu Reeves as Jonathan Harker was surely a mistake and neither Winona Ryder nor Anthony Hopkins are able to fully actualize their characters with such a jumbled script. In some ways the film represents a departure from Tod Browning’s 1931 version of the story, as well as from the silent classic Nosferatu, but watching the full movie is a long and painful slog. It is excessive and indulgent in every sense –but at least it looks like a creepy gothic vampire horror movie.