Near-flawless

Rating: 9/10 (9 November 2018)

This is exactly what Chronicles fans should want of a screen adaptation: near-flawless, its few issues too mild to spoil plenty of great acting, superior cinematography and a script that totally captures the essence of the source material and its protagonists, leaving or changing nothing of consequence.
Tom Cruise mightn't be a great actor, but he always took his job seriously, and none proves it best than this, I sincerely believe his finest performance -and Anne Rice must've agreed, given her famous turnabout on him. Lestat's complex persona is all there: mercurial, expansive, narcissistic, often cruel and, for all his fledglings cared to see, also shallow, amoral and even unwise -except when, surprisingly, he chose not to be.
Brad Pitt does a good job as the brooding, often distressed Louis, but on occasion he lets affectation creep into his performance -oddly, to make the rather unnecessary point of being otherworldly. Kirsten Dunst, all of 10, portrays the mind of a woman in her 70s even more realistically than the 5 years old child she starts as. As for Banderas, I don't care that he looked too old (Armand's origins aren't explored here, so there's no need to stick to that detail). What he's asked to do -a 400 years old vampire who's ultimately far needier than those who seek him-, he does it well. Stephen Rea was the only one I really didn't like -a pity, as I like the actor a lot, but his performance was so over the top, it came across as clownish and dumb; plus, no offense, but amidst a cast of almost uniformly gorgeous people, he stood out like a sore.
The production values are top-notch, from the cinematography to the decoration and effects, the music immediately establishing the eerie mood. The vampire makeup is excellent -one thing I noticed is that, despite the heavy use of contact lenses, hardly ever do you notice the awkward "cross-eyed" effect when these displace; they must've taken great care to avoid this.