There are dozens of vampire movies (and also werewolf movies) which opens every year, and I still feel lured to this genre.
A good vampire movie has to meet the following criteria.
* It is dark
* Vampire is regarded as a noble creature, not just a beast looking for human blood
* Doesn’t rely on special effects
* Focus on the sadness and desperation which eternal-life vampire intimately possesses, not on their brutality

Recently I watched Underworld, in which the vampires and the werewolfs are fighting against each other (catching two birds with a stone!). Kate Beckinsale is cool. Somebody said that she is ” the most likely turning into B-listed acress in the coming 5 years” when she starred in Pearl Harbor, and I couldn’t agree more about it but she proved that she can attract people (I still don’t think she can act well). This is her movie. Scott Speedman, who in Felicity played a nice looking buddy who is constantly stalked by an insanely obsessed, clueless girl who has followed him all the way to college (I have never seen Fellicity for a single episode), is next to nothing here. The story is not convincing (as always for a vampire movie) but it is beautifully pictured and there’s lots of bullets. Enough said.

Here are the other vampire movies I have seen in the past and their ratings:

Interview with the Vampire (excellent)
Brad Pitt is actually the front person instead of Tom Cruise. The focus is on the innate sadness the Vampires have to carry through their eternal life (yes!). Plus I have Kirsten Dunst with a terrific acting. I always believed she was already an adult at that time.

Dracura (good)
Nobody seems to mention much about this film, but it is not bad. At least it has the most vampire-looking actor starring since Christopher Lee. The scene which transformed Lucy attacks professor Van Helsing is one of the most scary scene in the 80’s movies.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula (forgettable)
Coppola’s adaptation doesn’t live up to his past achievement, still better than the Rainmaker. The cast is extraordinally(as usual for his film) but because of wooden acting (Gary Oldman and Tom Waits are not bad, but pre-Speed Kianu Reeves ruins everything) and cheesy special effects (the make-ups should have been suppressed. But still better than that of the Wolf), plus not-so original story(literally based on Bram Stoker’s original tale) made it another once-is-enough movie. Worse, watching or even thinking about this movie makes me sad, since I have also watched the Godfather and Apocalypse now in the past…

Blade & Blade 2 (forgettable)
Here, vampires are treated just as a blood-sucking beast. Wesley Snipes should be thankful he was given the title role for this series, since if it wasn’t for the special effects this would started his downhill straight-to-video action career such as Van-Damme and Steven Segal.

Blood: The last vampire (excellent)
I think this is an excellent example if one wants to understand what the Japanese animation is about, beyond Miyazaki Hayao. The plot is rather weak, and the beasts are too much cartoonistic, but the very, very detailed animation, silky-smooth action scene, and the super-cool heroin is worth watching for anybody who loves cool-looking movies. I think this movie should have affected Underworld’s staff. These two movies have two things in common. Super cool heroin and silky-smooth action.