Say this much for Anne Rice: she takes her vampires seriously. Even religiously. Not, however, docilely. Neil Jordan's screen treatment of her cultish novel rummages through the received lore as though trying on skirts and blouses, deciding against this one and for that one, and branching out experimentally into unexplored departments of hats and scarves as well. (Forget crucifixes and stakes through the heart. Sunlight, meantime, is still to be avoided, along with, less fearfully, food and wine. Blood of course remains the staff of life, or rather, of living death. Except: "Never drink from the dead." Etc., etc.) The pick-and-choose, add-and-subtract approach to the subject, undertaken with all the commitment of a kindergartner putting together a Halloween costume or constructing a "fort" out of sofa cushions, yields an intense interest in the lifestyle. Or to say it another way, an interest in the How-To's of everyday bloodsucking: the handiness of servants, slaves, prostitutes, or, in a pinch, rats, chickens, dogs. And the richly textured décors and costumes (late-18th-century New Orleans and on into 19th-century Paris) feed into this interest with almost anthropological authentication: Lifestyles of the Rich and Fiendish. The drawback of this area of concentration, though, is its inherent stagnancy. No moral or dramatic counterweight has been provided: no vampire hunter, no exponent of Christianity, no imperilled honeymooners -- in sum, no balance and no tension and no impetus. With Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Kirsten Dunst, Antonio Banderas. (1994) — Duncan Shepherd