To Die For (1995)

Such a frustrating disappointment

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

(Originally reviewed: 12/04/2017) Nicole Kidman has many memorable performances to her name, and her performance here may just be her very best in Gus Van Sant's smart, effective thriller. The narrative is delightful, it tells the story in a unique way, by using the complexity of the character's to go into detail about what's going on and what the situations are, I admire a film that cares about having a well-structured story and complex character's that aren't pushed to the side, and here is a picture that studies it's characters very well, making the film more insightful than your run of the mill, routine thriller. Nicole Kidman play's TV weather personality Suzanne Stone, a woman with a lot on her mind, strong aspirations and energy, she is played brilliantly by Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillion play's the doomed husband 'Larry Maretto', a regular guy who wants nothing more than a normal life, owning a business, having kids, and being with his wife, he is very good, as well as Joaquin Phoenix who play's 'Jimmy' a weird college student with an obsession for Suzanne, and Illeana Douglas, who play's Larry's sister 'Janice', a likable woman who does not trust Suzanne all that much.The supporting cast also includes Casey Affleck as Russell, a class clown, Dan Hedaya, Larry's father 'Joe', a cautious and powerful man with connections to the Italian mafia, and Alison Folland as 'Lydia', one of the three students that agree to help Suzanne, she is as senseless as Russell and Jimmy but perhaps smarter in a couple of aspects. The performances are all convincing and respectable. The film possesses a really good soundtrack that includes Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Sweet Home Alabama' and Eric Carmen's 'All by myself', adequate pacing, some rich, terrific dialogue and a nice, at times smart sense of humour. Other things I admired include Gus Van Sant's very impressive direction, and the complexity of the character's, which are all unique and free of most clichés and typical stereotypes, so kudos to screenwriter Buck Henry who also star's in the picture as the school's principal.However there were one or two things that could have been better, such as the explicitly of the sex, the film is at times erotic, but I think they should have went for a full on 18 rated picture that showed a little more of the sex scenes, I felt as if Van Sant could have took a look at Basic Instinct and includes sequence as erotic as those, one other thing is the scene where her husband is discovered dead, she walks in and doesn't even cry after hearing the news that her husband is dead, which I found unbelievable, there is also no tears shed at the funeral, another obvious suspicion that she may have been involved, but aside from that, I found the picture most enticing, and fairly original for the most part. To Die For is a very good thriller with impressive direction, complexity within the character's and an excellent performance from the beautiful Nicole Kidman.

Nicole Kidman is such a good actress that, even in 1995 which was early in her career, she was able to carry a film that had very little plot indeed and no suspense since we knew from the very start that she was confessing a crime and the real killer, James, was in prison paying for the crime. We also knew the victim very fast because it was obvious anyway. And the end is what she deserves in the world of direct justice of retaliation. And yet what makes this film something more than just a plain tricky entertainment?The first thing is the woman this Nicole Kidman is personating, Suzanne Stone Maretto. That woman is a sociopath and apparently no one sees it. What's more she is an exhibitionist and everyone is blind to it. She marries for the money and the connections (with the Italian mafia). She is only in love with one single individual: her dog, and nothing else. She dares go to a high school class for some talk with the students and she sits on the teacher's desk, more or less facing the students with a mini-skirt (at eye level for the sitting students) that definitely does not reach under half her thighs. And no one, not even the teacher, tells her anything, discreetly of course, but that would seem necessary, especially in 1995, and though Monica Lewinsky was not yet an affair that kind of soft-cum-hard exhibitionism was not exactly kosher, at least in schools.Her desire to be on TV was an obsession and her mafia connections due to her marriage were naturally an argument understood by everyone without anyone having to mention them. So she got her two minutes of TV time at the highest of all peak hour time: the supreme prime time, the weather forecast.The second thing is the vision given in hat film of teenagers. Three are picked as the only ones we'll see, hence they are asserted as being representative, and in their class practically no other student is really visible, I mean shown in any way. Teenagers are easy to manipulate for sure, especially when they have penises that are bigger than their brains. Suzanne Maretto turns them into victims in one single instant and each one is the accomplice of the others. She picks the one who has the least brain and she has her puppet on her strings. The most surprising element is that no one seems to see anything nor to care – if they see something. The third thing is the fact that she manages to go through the whole assassination of her husband and the police and justice procedure unharmed because she tells a tall tale about her husband being addicted to cocaine to which the teenagers she has manipulated had introduced him, and they became feral when he decided to drop the habit. It is a pure lie but she can manage to get it through as if it were holy water or Saint Emilion wine. What's more she manages to practically have a press conference on the steps of the police station or court when she is apprehended for questioning. The cops are by far more lenient than they should be. You can beat about the bush as much as you want but something is fishy in this community (that reminds me a lot of Twin Peaks, echoed by "Teens Speak Out") where an unknown woman who marries the son of a mafia family is a social climber and gets her TV time that makes her locally famous, and from this moment onward she can do anything she wants even the most incredible capers and everyone let her do it and go on to doing more. Her blabber about "America, liberty and all the rest" is nearly an insult to the public who takes the tone of the declaration as a true American heart-deep truth and belief.Is it the very dark, octopus ink dark sense of humor of Gus Van Sant that makes all that incredible fable believable? Probably, plus the mesmerizing presence of Nicole Kidman and her partly denuded body under her mini-skirt probably that defuse any kind of inclination to protest. Give them the thighs they like and you can tell any kind of rant: they will accept it and believe it.A great actress in spite of all in a rather unfathomable rave-movie of the rave-party family. I loved the TV destroyed with a bat as if we were in some game of mailbox baseball.Dr Jacques COULARDEAU

Suzanne Stone Maretto (Nicole Kidman) is a TV weathergirl and an infamous tabloid sensation suspected of enticing teenagers Jimmy Emmett (Joaquin Phoenix), Lydia Mertz (Alison Folland) and Russel Hines (Casey Affleck) to kill her husband Larry Maretto (Matt Dillon). She is driven and would stop at nothing to achieve fame. His sister Janice (Illeana Douglas) didn't like cold Suzanne from the start.It has the noir style with characters doing interviews with the camera. Director Gus Van Sant has more style than a simple narrative. Talking directly into the camera adds to this dark comedy. It is the performance of Nicole Kidman that is the most interesting. She can be sweet and innocent in one moment. Then she's manipulative and ambitious the next. She delivers one of her best performances ever. It is a dark indictment of the modern obsession for fame.

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.