To Die For (1995)

In Little Hope, New Hampshire, the beautiful and hot Suzanne Stone (Nicole Kidman) wants to be famous and is an aspiring TV personality. She marries Larry Maretto (Matt Dillon), whose father owns a restaurant, and convinces him to use this savings for the university buying a Mustang for her and a condo. Then she accepts to work for the local station receiving minimum wage to develop her own projects, including one with youths in a public school. She meets the punks Jimmy Emmett (Joaquin Phoenix), Russel Hines (Casey Affleck) and Lydia Mertz (Alison Folland) and records hours of tapes interviewing them. When Larry invites her to work at the restaurant in a talent show that he wants to implement, Suzanne sees a threat to her planned career and decides to get rid of her husband. She seduces Jimmy and convinces him that she is in love with him. Then she tells that Larry is a brutal man and Jummy decides to kill him. What will happen to Larry?

"To Die For" is a great tale of ambition and manipulation. Gus Van Sant uses the documentary style to show a beautiful and sexy woman that uses her limited intelligence and her body to reach what she has planned for her career. The cast has great performance and Nicole Kidman is perfect in the role of Suzanne Stone. The screenplay has a sort of black humor and the conclusion is ironical. My vote is seven.

Title (Brazil): "Um Sonho Sem Limites" ("A Dream Without Limits")

Fmovies: There are some good things here - most notably the performances of Nicolle Kidman and Joaquin Phoenix - that nevertheless fail to coalesce into a satisfying whole because of the confusion of the central story. Kidman is great as the feather-brained harpy who will stop at nothing to be on television - the absolute narrowness of her world-view to the parameters of what fits onto the TV screen makes her a kind of female counterpart to Jim Carrey's Cable guy. But her single-minded devotion to this aim causes her subsequent actions to make little sense: would someone as ambitious as her really stick around in a nowhere New England town (humorously named Little Hope) rather than set out for the big time of New York or Los Angeles? Such a transplant would have given the movie a kick, since it would have set Suzanne's fundamental cluelessness against the reality of the television industry and how it actually works (to perhaps more humorous results than are displayed here).

But even if you can buy Suzanne remaining in her isolated little hamlet (and it must be said that the setting does allow for some subtler, more understated humor than the scenario drawn above would have), does it make any sense whatsoever for her to get involved with, much less marry, the Matt Dillon character? If we're really supposed to buy her as someone who thinks about nothing but television and making it in that medium, then what could she possibly see in Dillon, who is barely even familiar with TV? Any explanation would probably be lame, but what's lamer is the fact that the filmmakers don't even try to supply one! This leaves you with the sick feeling that it only happens in order to get the plot moving - the worst possible reason for ANYTHING to happen!

This fundamental flaw in plot logic really sinks the movie before it even has time to get going. That's a shame, because there are SO MANY good things here: Kidman's performance is wonderfully perky and shallow in all the right ways, and the candy-colored outfits that have been designed for her are a scream just in themselves. The narrative style is inventive, being told in flashback as a series of interviews - "Hard Copy" style, or even "Oprah" style - with the main participants, which in itself forms a meta-critique upon television and its reconstruction of the world (although, curiously, the film keeps dropping in and out of this style, and so waters down its effect). Finally, Phoenix is at once both hilarious and heartbreaking in his portrayal of a trailer park teenager so besotted with Kidman and the sophistication she supposedly represents (the joke's on him, of course) that he'd literally do anything for her, which is exactly his undoing. Watching him, I kept thinking of Dustin Hoffman's groundbreaking performance in The Graduate and how it operated on the twin levels of satire and true sympathy all at once. Phoenix, in my opinion, hits the same bulls-eye.

Other enjoyable performances come from Ileana Douglas as Dillon's sister, wonderfully nasty and sarcastic when discussing Kidman (and then surprisingly touching and vulnerable when you're least expecting it) and Wayne Knight as the head of the cable station where Suzanne comes to work. If you know Knight only as Newman on TV's "Seinfeld" and so believe him only capable of wild over-acting, his performance here is a treat: his baffled and understated responses to Suzanne's dippy ideas and shenanigans are some of the funniest things in the picture

This film is fantastic and Nicole Kidman was made to play Suzanne Stone.

It's an acute satire on American obsession with television and unreal picture of life that comes with it. It's extremely funny, moving and shocking at the same time. Also the way it was filmed and put together is quite original and suits the movie's main theme perfectly! Must see!

To Die For fmovies. This is a different story and definitely interesting. The movie is listed as a comedy but it's more of a drama. Yes, the comedy is there but it's dark humor and there is violence and tragedy here.

Nicole Kidman is very good as the beautiful and ruthless blonde who has big television ambitions. I don't know if I ever saw Kidman look this pretty, which is saying a lot. Matt Dillon co-stars and is excellent, too, as are the two young no- name actors, Joaquin Phoenix and Allison Foland. Ironically, Phoenix, has become a big star, most recently playing the legendary Johnny Cash in "Walk The Line." When this movie came out, few people knew him.

Illena Douglas gives an underrated performance and I always enjoy the odd Dan Hedaya. Anyway, if you want to see something different in the way of a story, this movie falls in that category.

I'm a little hesitant with my rating of 8 because this isn't really a film to be taken too seriously; having said that, I was glued to the screen and it holds up to repeat viewings so that says a lot.

It's peculiar that the closing credits of this film bear the usual disclaimer that "any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental" when the film is in fact the story of New Hampshire school teacher Pamela Smart, who did indeed co hearse a teenage student into murdering her husband in pretty much the exact same manner as depicted here. Writer Buck Henry has changed the characters name, occupation, and a number of the irrelevant details, but this is unmistakably the Pamela Smart story.

Played as dark comedy...! The heretofore unimpressive Buck Henry redeemed himself in my eyes with this wickedly amusing script.

While peppering us with the kind of mirroring observations about the shallowness and stupidity of the media and the society it reflects which makes us both laugh and squirm with more than passing discomfort, the top-notch cast masterfully play out the excellent script in such a mesmerizing fashion you simply will not believe nearly two hours are gone when it is over.

Nicole Kidman in particular displays intelligence and acting prowess I never imagined her capable of; she is in practically every frame of the film and while her character is truly despicable, you can't stop watching. The three teens, played by Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck, and Alison Folland (who stands out as the easily led girl with a not too subtle lesbian infatuation on Suzanne Stone) are engaging. Perhaps the best of the cast after the lead is Illeana Douglas as the deliciously smart ass sister-in-law, she had me in stitches! From the opening credits of rushing reporters superimposed over headlines and newsprint, to the closing credits overlaid with the rather brilliantly selected Donovan song Season of the Witch, this one is a must see film from an era of otherwise bland cinema.

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.