Gary Oldman

      I'd like to talk about one of the most brilliant actors to be on the silver screen, Gary Oldman. Oldman has a diversity that not many actors have. He can portray a lovesick count with a taste for blood just as smoothly as a crazed assassin with a mad brilliance to his technique.
     Oldman happens to star in three of my all-time favorite movies: Bram Stoker's Dracula, Immortal Beloved, and The Scarlet Letter. Granted, they are all love stories; but each has an aspect of its story that makes it so much more complex and dark than you everyday love story, such as The Notebook.
      Bram Stoker's Dracula  was done, in every aspect of the film, superbly. This is surely Francis Ford Coppola's finest work; the casting of Oldman as Dracula led to the instant classic the film became. The fact it incorporates aspects of the real Vlad Dracula's life makes this movie even the more eerie.
       Immortal Beloved is a less known story, and is also based partly on fact. It follows the love life of composer Ludwig Van Beethoven, as found in a famous letter he wrote to his mystery love. This film is highly underrated, and for anyone who is in the slightest bit a history buff a real treat.
       For anyone who, like me, read The Scarlet Letter and despised it--don't let the anguish of the book influence whether or not you watch the film version. The movie is absolutely wonderful;with romance, violence, and realistic depictions of the lives of the puritans.
      Other movies which feature Oldman include Basquiat, The Fifth Element,Hannibal,and Red Riding Hood.