To Die For Movie Review

Gus Van Sant's To Die For is indeed a movie to die for. With a fine-tuned screenplay by the great Buck Henry (who appears in a side-splitting cameo as a high school teacher), To Die For takes an up close and personal look at a cable TV weather girl who will do anything (well, almost anything) to be a network anchorwoman with a household name. Just one thing; she is initially attracted to the good-looking Italian lug played by Matt Dillon. But when Matt becomes her husband, he wants her to help out with the family restaurant and intends to fill her up with little bambinos. What's a future national celebrity to do? That's right, go to the local high school and enlist the three most dazed and confused kids there to rub out Dillon. How? Well, one chunky kid (Alison Folland) absolutely idolizes her and does anything her heroine asks her to do. And Joaquin Phoenix is so sexually obsessed with her that he lets himself be dragged into murder just to keep her in bed with him. Only the audience and the wonderfully snide Illeana Douglas as Dillon's sister see through this self-absorbed temptress played to the hilt by Nicole Kidman. The last time they filmed this variation on the Pamela Smart story, adorable Helen Hunt played it straight in 1991's Murder in New Hampshire, the obligatory “fact-based” television movie. But novelist Joyce Maynard, Buck Henry, and Gus Van Sant took the bare bones of the case and ran with it in a bold effort to shred our tattered visions of the media to a pulp. It won't, of course; this is Kidman's breakthrough movie, the one that she will always be identified with, even when she is wheeled out for cameo roles in the 21st century. I do worry about Joaquin Phoenix, though. River's kid brother looks so strung out in every single sequence that his presence feels like a cruelly evocative in-joke. Matt Dillon sheds his sexual charisma to play Kidman's worshipful schnook. And newcomer Folland is impressive as the clunky fan who, like the ill-fated Barbara Bates in All About Eve, fragments into many images of herself, even more than her role model. Slap this movie and the Simpson trial in a time capsule for centuries, and wonder what the future will think about our time.

1995 (R) 103m/C Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, Joaquin Rafael (Leaf) Phoenix, Casey Affleck, Alison Folland, Illeana Douglas, Dan Hedaya, Wayne Knight, Kurtwood Smith, Holland Taylor, Maria Tucci, Susan Traylor; Cameos: George Segal, Buck Henry; D: Gus Van Sant; W: Buck Henry, Johnny Burne; C: Eric Alan Edwards; M: Danny Elfman. Golden Globe Awards ‘96: Best Actress—Musical/Comedy (Kidman); Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards ‘95: Best Actress (Kidman); Nominations: British Academy Awards ‘95: Best Actress (Kidman); MTV Movie Awards ‘96: Most Desirable Female (Kidman). VHS, LV, 8mm, Closed Caption, DVD