Amadeus Dredd

Frankenstein 1994 produced by Francis Ford Coppola turned twenty five this year, I watched it again recently. First off I must say it's a film that doesn't leave you with a good feeling, most of the characters I either like or don't mind get killed off in pretty gruesome ways making me wonder what they did to deserve it. It doesn't pull any punches with its tragic story of one man with a singular obsession to cheat death. Kenneth Branagh directs and stars in the title role with his usual Shakespearean flair, he doesn't completely stay faithful to Mary Shelley's original book, but he gets the tragic and twisted figure of Frankenstein across regardless. There's also a good turn from Robert De Niro as the Monster, Helena Bonham Carter isn't playing a gothed up doll like princess for once and she's really good as Elizabeth. This is not a film or story for the faint of heart, it starts off pretty much straight away with one of the leads dying in child birth, and ends on a bleak note where you consider who the monster truly was. An excellent gothic horror adaptation of an old story, which I like and don't like at the same time because of its cold tone and depressing outcome. However perhaps that is the point, because life is not always sunshine and rainbows.