Just Watched....

_Bram Stoker's Dracula_. Ok, I watched the first third. Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves were always caricatures, but this film must be worse in hindsight than it was when it won a bunch of Oscars. It replaces the sexual tension of the novel with pornographic spectacle. If you're looking for an engrossing period-piece a la _Barry Lyndon_, you've come to the wrong place. BSD is the monument to FF Coppola's cinematic arrogance because, after all, _Apocolypse Now_ actually works on its own terms. I laughed out loud at Ryder's and Reeves' first scene. I had to stop watching when I came to suspect that the entire thing was an intentional joke. I suspect all those critics in the early 90s praised it because they knew it was intended as an expensive, elaborate "look-how-far-we've-come-as-a-society" pie in the face of decadent Victorian morality. I get it, too, but it's just not funny anymore, if it ever was. Maybe in another hundred years, we'll rediscover artistic subtlety. One star.