User Reviews

If you would like to see a really great performance by Nicole Kidman, pick up a copy of "To Die For" at your local video store. Directed by Gus Van Sant, screenplay by Buck Henry from the book by Joyce Maynard (both Henry and Maynard have bit parts in the film), "To Die For" is a wicked little gem of a film.

Kidman won the Golden Globe award for Best Actress for her performance, and frankly I thought she should have gotten the Academy Award (unless I remember incorrectly, I don't think she was even nominated for an Academy Award for it). But she is absolutely brilliant in it: chilling, funny, scary, sexy, and horrifically evil.

Kidman portrays Suzanne Stone-Maretto: a devious, calculating, self-centered woman who manipulates Larry Maretto (a very sympathetic performance by Matt Dillon) into marrying her, quickly tires of him when he tries to stand in her way of her greatest ambition in life, which is to be the next Diane Sawyer, and soon convinces her teenage lover to kill him for her. Sound familiar? "To Die For" was loosely based on the real-life story of Pamela Smart, who seduced her 15-year old lover into murdering her husband.

Joaquin Phoenix is Jimmy Emmett, the hapless student who becomes Suzanne's lover; Lydia Mertz is Alison Follard, a young girl who idolizes her; and Casey Affleck is Russel Hines, another student who gets caught up in the scheme. Illeana Douglas is great as Larry's acidic, loving sister Janice, who also gets one of the best lines in the film, and at the very beginning, no less; and Dan Hedaya is Larry's father, Joe Maretto. Dan Hedaya is a master of the "Believe me, you don't want to see me mad" performance, with obvious menace just under a calm surface. The casting is great, and the performances are all right on target.

Look for uncredited cameos by George Segal as a conference speaker, and David Cronenberg as...you'll just have to go see it.

Clever story with more depth that appears at first blush, directed with irony and a sardonic sense of humor by Gus Van Sant. Nicole Kidman plays an especially shallow TV weather person who gets some grunge kids to kill her husband for her. Her motive is, as Illeana Douglas, who plays the sister-in-law, says, "he got in her way." This is a nice study of narcissism metastasized into psychopathology. She is headstrong, motivated and rather stupid. She thinks only of herself and would do anything for herself and would do anything to anybody who got in her way. And amazingly, she does.

Matt Dillon is wasted as the husband (in more ways than one). I'm surprised he agreed to do the part. Kidman is mesmerizing and makes us believe in a slightly unbelievable character. We've all known narcissistic little darlings who would kill you for the right shade of eye shadow, but to see it acted out so coldly and with such appalling stupidity, yet with a psychology so bizarre that it has to be real, fairly takes your breath away. It was especially apt that she had him killed so that her pointless little docu-drama "Teens Speak Out" could become newsworthy enough for national exposure. Consicously she doesn't realize this: she has no introspection; she just acts.

Also cute is the way the picture is framed: a pseudo-documentary within a pseudo-documentary. Everything is so well orchestrated that when Kidman gets her surprising, but entirely appropriate comeuppance at the end, we are quite pleased.

(Note: Over 500 of my movie reviews are now available in my book "Cut to the Chaise Lounge or I Can't Believe I Swallowed the Remote!" Get it at Amazon!)

I can't just say this is a masterpiece, but it is really nothing less than a great movie. Nicole Kidman is convincing and amazing, Matt Dillon unlikely than the other roles he's been playing and Joaquin Phoenix sweetly innocent (in one of his best roles). Casey Affleck is also co-starring in a small role of Russell. Amusing as well as a serious movie, based on true events. Suzanne (Kidman) has just married Larry Mazetto, but she doesn't let her marriage stop her dreams of draw a little attention and becoming a big TV profile. In her way to the top, she must start from the bottom... and as time pass by, she becomes all more fixed by the thought of becoming TV star. It goes that far that she rents three teenagers for murdering her husband. A fine story of a woman who just wanted a little attention.

This is a so-so film. It is reasonably entertaining and has some good performances. I am struck by something in reading 20 or so of the 92 comments on this film. None of them have noted one of the more important facts about this story: that is that "To Die For" is loosely based on a real-life drama that unfolded in New England involving a teacher's aide named Pamela Smart who was convicted of having enlisted her teen-aged lover and some of his dull-witted school mates to murder her husband. A&E's series "American Justice" ran a very good episode on the subject which they, in true A&E fashion, re-air periodically. It is fascinating to see what Buck Henry did with that true story in "To Die For." Jimmy Emmett, as written by Hery and portrayed by Joaquin Phoenix, comes very close to Pamela Smart's real-life boyfriend (and I use the term BOYfriend advisedly). The real life teen was obviously smitten by the attractive older woman (Pamela Smart is no Nicole Kidman, but she was reasonably attractive and, more importantly for a teen-ager, willing). The scenes of his testimony during the trial of Pamela Smart are riveting because he was obviously so naive as to have believed that Ms. Smart was in love with him and wanted to be with him. Phoenix captures the mind of that teen confused teen brilliantly. In this case, seeing the real life story helped me as a viewer better understand Phoenix's take on the character.

On the other hand, Henry makes Suzanne a reprehensible character, too dim-witted to understand how little she actually knows; ultimately she wasn't even smart enough to realize that manipulating less-than-brilliant teens into an act of murder was not likely to end well. Henry, I think, took more liberties with the 'real life" character here than he did with Jimmy Emmett. The primary attribute Suzanne has in common with Pamela Smart is a willingness to manipulate teen agers to do her bidding. Nonetheless, Henry's take on Suzanne is Buck Henry at his leeringly sardonic best.

Nicole Kidman is not one of my favorite actors, but she does well in this role of Suzanne, largely due to Henry's wonderfully caustic take on the ambition to be a television personality. Suzanne's only talent is her looks, but the only people she can find who readily agree that has sufficient looks to be a TV news personality are a small group of troubled teen agers. No one else is fooled other than her equally love-struck husband (Matt Dillon).

"To Die For" is not a great film by any means. At times the story slows to a crawl as Henry tries to delve into some depth in the relationships. Of course that is not really what the film is about -- it's about Henry's acerbic take on celebrity in America circa the final decade of the 20th century. On that level the movie works. Where it doesn't work so well, despite the strong performance of Joaquin Phoenix, is in the portrayal of the teenagers. Their motivations are complex (more complex than simply having sex with the gorgeous older woman) and neither the screenplay nor the direction manage to pull off the merger of the dramatic story of Jimmy Emmett with the dark comedy of Suzanne.

Well, I sort of expected something a little different, but what I did get was pretty good anyway. I expected her to be clawing her way to the top through lies, trickery, deceit, and murder. She was clawing her way to the top, but she really did not seem to get anywhere.

This movie is about an obsessed woman named Susan. She is obsessed with being on television, and will do anything to get there. We are not sure if she went all the way with one television producer, but as far as she gets is a small cable channel in her home town. She has dreams of Hollywood, but she never really gets there, and I think that this is the main thrust of the movie - the fact that she is obsessed with something that she can never have.

The movie is told from the point of view of the characters looking back. It begins with the death of Susan's husband, and the characters look back to see how this happened. Her husband's parents had connections in the mafia, which is a very bad thing when it came to her lies and deceit to get her off of the murder charge.

She is a smart girl, but she is obsessed with one thing so much that she will kill for it. At first she seems to love this guy immensely, but as the movie drags on, she becomes more distant from him in pursuit of her goal - to the point that when he tells her to give up, he is no longer somebody whom she can look up to. He goes from being an encouraging friend to an arch-enemy.

This is a somewhat strange film, but it has been crafted well. I haven't seen many movies by Gus Van Sant, but after seeing the brilliance of My Own Private Idaho, I decided that I liked his work and will generally take an interest in movies that I know that he has made. This movie does not change my mind about him, but rather strengthens my view that he is an above average filmmaker.

Gus Van Zant's wildly original take on the pursuit of fame at any price is a gruesome black comedy that works flawlessly on every level. Van Zant comes at his story from the viewpoint of a series of narrators who see through media lusting Susan Stone Marretto as she stops at nothing to bask in it's spotlight. The media in turn is more than willing to accommodate.

Nicole Kidman as Susan is intimidating beyond the screen as she narrates much of her story into the camera. In addition to her remarkable seductive charm being put to use she also intimidates with a convincing icy coldness. She is the bold and the beautiful and Kidman is perfect to the role.

Having bullied her way into a job as a weather forecaster at a small audience cable station Susan never stops shooting higher. She enlists three aimless high schoolers in a plot to kill her husband so as to unburden her to pursue her career. With sex as a tool it is easy to convince the moronically dim Jimmy who masturbates to her late night forecasts to come on board. The three teens Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck and Allison Foland are uniformly brilliant particularly Phoenix as the clueless doomed Jimmy. Her husband Larry (Matt Dillon)it might be said is in the same boat. Dillon along with Ileana Douglas and Wayne Knight fill out the solid supporting cast as narrators and victims of Susan.

Buck Henry's biting script shows he has not lost his edge since his Graduate days. Director Van Zant's vision of a fin de siecle cross section of America is brutal and original. From those laboring for the American Dream to the bleak Lidsville existence of the teens Die burns with both nervous energy and tragic-comic farce. Accompanied by an all inclusive period music score Vant Zant's wide angle is both brazen and revealing from gaudy colored suburban drab sterility with hints of incest to tragic siding housing and an auto graveyard landscape that serves as a playground to the teens. Told in flash forward and back Van Zant's pace never lingers for a moment as it rapidly presents an in your face comic and tragic pastiche of dark Americana. Van Zant admirably expresses it with a bold visual flair keeping scenes lean and sharp that over a dozen years later still retain there power and energy. It is a vibrant piece of film making and a 90s classic.

"Suzanne's spotlight-craving impulse bares its teeth right away in the onset of their ill-fated marriage, during the honeymoon, the film suggests that there is no moral boundary in her pursuit of ascendancy (George Segal is spot on in a lascivious cameo), which guarantees that this glamour puss is totally unfit for the role of a traditional wife. Soon by hexing and manipulating three impressionable high schoolers, including putting out with Jimmy (Phoenix, still possessing a sharp jawline in his bizarre adolescent phase peppered by ennui and hormones, makes for a commensurable foil in the folie à deux), Suzanne hatches a rather facile plan to getting Larry out of her way and not for one second, dreads its grave consequences. Basking in the media circus in the wake of Larry's death, Suzanne finally becomes the cynosure she craves and she enjoys every minute of it, but the world is far much sinister than she thinks, a tit for tat awaits her just when she believes she can get away with murder by selling Jimmy down the river, a surprising cameo from Cronenberg is the icing on the cake."

-

Does anybody remember the T.V. movie "Murder in New Hampshire"? No? Well it's hardly surprising, considering it was a terribly dull, forgettable show based on a true story of a scheming, manipulative teacher who enticed one of her young students to kill her husband because she didn't like him any more.

With that in mind, it's hard to understand why a director of Gus Van Sant's calibre ("Drugstore Cowboy") would believe there was more to be gained from remaking this film with a slightly different angle, that of black comedy. Unfortunately Van Sant's film is not black, not humorous and not the slightest bit effective.

Nicole Kidman is really the only thesp worth watching, justifying all the rave reviews with probably her best performance to date as the ambitious, deceitful bombshell who wants nothing else but to be a TV. star. And if that means bumping off her strangling husband, then so be it.

In support of Nicole is an impressive cast headed by the hunky Matt Dillon, who plays the victim, a likable Italian guy with a big heart who falls for the gorgeous Sue Stone. Also stars Dan Hedeya, Illeana Douglas, Casey Affleck, Alison Folland and a most impressive Joaquin Phoenix, who gives the flick's other strong turn as the confused, unsure, but totally love struck teen whom Sue bends to her own will with ease.

What a shame the performances from Kidman and Phoenix are the only strong points of the movie. In his attempt to make a hip, observant film from Joyce Chopra's original, bland drama "Murder in New Hampshire", Van Sant has completely missed the mark. Having seen it all before doesn't help, but even if this isn't the case, our director has failed to create humour from any of the situations presented, and the script from Buck Henry hasn't nearly enough to get your teeth into. Kidman does her best in a role that, like an oasis, is surrounded by wide expanses of nothing.

Even the talking to the camera trick has no impact.

Sunday, March 10, 1996 - Knox District Centre