Hacker Cinema
Bram Stoker's Dracula
1992 · Film · 128 min
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola
Count Dracula, a 15th-century prince, is condemned to live off the blood of the living for eternity. Young lawyer Jonathan Harker is sent to Dracula's castle to finalise a land deal, but when the Count sees a photo of Harker's fiancée, Mina, the spitting image of his dead wife, he imprisons him and sets off for London to track her down.
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7 comments on Hacker News
Bram Stoker's Dracula is one of my favorite movies and I'm thankful it exists.
Rumor is brandall10 is old enough to have seen the original Bill and Ted in the theaters and remembers the clusterf**k situation surrounding Dracula (https://bit.ly/3JlCppX). And other dramatic turns when paired against acting heavyweights like in the Devil's Advocate.
Acting is a craft. Criticism is healthy and isn't badmouthing. Keanu is a lovely human being. As an actor he lacks range for dramatic roles. He had some turns that showed promise (The Gift, the smaller films in his early career), but ultimately, that's not his forte. This is hardly a controversial opinion. He is a star and has created some iconic roles. It's fine to celebrate that and call it what it is.
Finally, brandall10 thinks kubancyk is likewise a swell guy and feels terrible that reddit isn't available and hopes he finds a better outlet soon for his lovely redditty musings.
I watched every single episode of Bewitched when I was a child. I watched and enjoyed The Wizard of Oz. I definitely enjoyed Bram Stoker's Dracula in my goth youth. Only a few years ago, I purchased a ticket to see one of my favorite actresses in The Importance of Being Earnest; while I only knew a little bit about Oscar Wilde's background, the production crew appeared for Q&A afterwards and explained every single detail of the play to demonstrate just how ga y it all really is, without explicitly portraying a single LGBT character or relationship.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with your list, even though some of those are mediocre at best, but yeah I did mean per year, and limited to Hollywood (Parasite for instance not counting). And no, ok, I will also straight up disagree with the second Knives out Movie which I thought was absolute trash. A perfect example of poor storytelling and the form over substance of modern cinema.
But just taking say 1992 you have Last of the Mohicans, The Unforgiven, My Cousin Vinny, Malcolm X, Bad Lieutenant, Scent of a Woman, Reservoir Dogs, Dracula, Chaplin.
And then a bunch of fun schlomp like Arizona Dream, Basic Instinct, Sister Act, Army of Darkness, Home Alone 2, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, The Mighty Ducks, Wayne’s World.
These are all undoubtedly great movies.
And then another huge bunch of watchable stuff easily comparable to some of your mentions like Watcher or High Life.
And 1992 is not an outlier.
In 1993 you have Jurrasic Park, Groundhog Day, Whats Eating Gilbert Grape, Scindlers List, Meanace 2 Society, Alive, Dazed and Confused, Falling Down, In The Name of The Father, True Romance, Demolition Man, Carlitos Way, The Secret Garden, Philadelphia, A Perfect Workd, Cool Runnings, Short Cuts.
In 1991 Silence of The Lambs, Ternimator 2, JFK, Point Break, Thelma and Louise, Boyz in the Hood, The Doors, My Own Private Idaho, Barton Fink, The Fisher King, Naked Lunch.
In 1990 Goodfellas, Hunt for Red October, Total Recall, Edward Scissorhands, Home Alone, Godfather 3, Dances with Wolves, Tremors, Back to the Future 3, Awakenings, The Witches, Wild at Heart, Jacobs Ladder, Nikita, Slacker, Millers Crossing.
And the quality difference is massive too, not just somewhat better. Like just Millers Crossing is miles better than anything that has been made in the last 5 years, and I’m picking at random.
In 1994 Shawshank Redemption, Pulp Fiction, Forrest Gump, The Lion King, Speed, Ace Ventura, Dumb and Dumber, Stargate, Natural Born Killers, The Crow, Clercs, Maverick, Ed Wood, In the Mouth of Madness, Interview With The Vampire.
I could go on.
And this is not even talking about how the 80s is a better decade for cinema, or how the 70s is the peak of the power of the author with far more experimental, artistic, and substantial productions.
Has quality declined? Yes. Massively. Humongously. Stupendously.
> Casting his own daughter when I think, Winona Ryder, dropped out was very nepotistic; and she’s a better director than actress.
While I'll agree Sofia is a much better director than actress (she’s a truly outstanding writer and director) and that Ryder would have been better (Coppola later did work with her on Bram Stoker's Dracula), I’m not going to be mad at him casting his daughter or even blaming it on nepotism. After all, all the previous examples of nepotism, like working with his father, his sister, his brother-in-law, his nephew, etc worked out quite well. Like, the whole Coppola family thing is that they all work together and hire each other. She wasn’t a great actress, but I don’t think she’s want sunk that film. The truth is, any film in a series coming 15 years after two of the greatest films of all time (and the rare sequel that is arguably better than the original, which was already a masterpiece) would have an impossible standard to live up to. Even if Godfather III was a perfect film, I’m not sure it could live up to the hype that the first two carried, especially after 15 years.
And it wasn’t a perfect film. It’s not a piece of garbage but it isn’t in the same league as the other two, which again, are two of the absolute greatest films of all time. But seeing how successful nepotism has been for the Coppola family, I think blaming his teenage daughter is fairly weak.
I could have sworn there was a very popular movie by that name released within the copyright window. Yep: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0103874/
But, sure, I guess Dracula is wide open for re-registration in a whole bunch of sectors.
Assuming the title is even provided in 4k/HD. For example, I checked right now and Bram Stoker's Dracula is 540p at a reported 838 kb/s, and picture quality is worse than the DVD, with horrible aliasing indicating poor encoding, so it's even below that of SD. This film has a true 4K Blu-ray remaster, so you'd be doing yourself a huge disservice streaming it in the quality Netflix serves.
To really put this in perspective, the picture quality that Netflix provides is worse than pre-digital analog film projection. Dracula originally screened in cinemas in 1992 looked (far) better than what you stream on Netflix right now in 2019. Now I know the consumer has always traded convenience for picture quality, hence the popularity of early home media such as VHS, but that was bound by the limitation of the technology back then. Right now, there's zero technical reason for why quality can't be better, ignoring bandwidth. It's a digression and the fact it's so tolerated makes me feel like I'm taking crazy pills. I'm not even a film buff, it's just that it's apparent like night and day, like a re-compressed jpg is.