Wonderful character development!

the audience applauded

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

This film may not be the best adaptation of Dracula, but it is definitely the most special version.Bravo! It combines the charm of a silent film with the beauty of ballet. How unique it is! Throughout the film, one can hear no dialog, only music. Ideas are conveyed through graceful dancing movements. Never seen anything like this! A vampire film done like this, WOW!Seeing Dracula portrayed by an actor who looks Asian is also very interesting.What ruins the film is the finale. What happens towards the end makes absolutely no sense. Apparently, Dracula killed the small group led by Van Helsing, including the leader himself. Then later suddenly these dead guys all miraculously came back, and staked Dracula to death instead. What is also incomprehensible is that Mina took up a crucifix to repel Dracula while she, being a newly made vampire, was not affected by the holy item at all.These faults/plot holes stopped this film from being the best Dracula adaptation on my list. The ending certainly remains to be tweaked a little bit.So far, the best adaptation of Dracula is a 2002 Italian version called "Dracula's Curse", which is my favorite.Forget about that crap by Francis Coppola. That 1992 version is an insult.

I really had no idea what to expect coming into this film. I had heard basically nothing about it other than it's good ratings, recommendation from Ebert, and I have been interested for a while now in Guy Maddin. This is my first time watching one of his films and I am borderline speechless. I didn't know he primarily works in the silent genre and to top that, this film is entirely a ballet. Filmed in mostly black and white with silent era techniques, Maddin creates and eerie mood with this take on Brom Stoker's classic novel. I've never seen anything quite like it. It sometimes looks like it from the silent era. It's impressive. My one complaint is the jumpy nature of the camera. I was sometimes focused on his dizzying camera work than what was going on, but still a very refreshing and awakening experience.

I enjoy ballet, and I like vampire films (especially the old ones), so why did this just not work for me? Well, I seemed to spend most of my time distracted by the dancing, or rather by the fact that the dancing was so difficult to watch because the dancers' feet were so seldom shown.I know these days showing off camera technique is considered more important than enabling audiences to get a proper look at the skills of dancers, ice skaters and gymnasts, who regularly seem to get the relevant parts of their bodies cut off on TV, but it does limit one's enjoyment.

I have been looking forward to this Canadian film ever since I saw Maddin's "The Saddest Music in the World" this summer. I finally found it for rent and was not disappointed. It is supposed to be a movie version of the Royal Winnipeg Ballet's adaptation of Bram Stoker's "Dracula." That sounds like something one should avoid at all costs. With Guy Maddin at the helm, it turns out it is a crazily perfect postmodern take on a classic, with a bit of ballet thrown in--and the ballet works! Maddin draws from countless styles and forms from cinema past (it is pretty much silent, and almost all black and white), and pieces them together to make an utterly gorgeous and often witty film. The actual plot adheres to Bram Stoker's novel more so than most movie versions I've seen, with a few clever twists thrown in. It is obvious which parts of the story Maddin adores and finds most intriguing. He devotes around 40 minutes to Lucy's story, and then zips right through Harker's in a couple minutes. Recommended to anyone interested in seeing a horror film that seems radically new yet oddly familiar. My Rating 9/10