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| To Die For [Region 2] | ![To Die For [Region 2]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/519M220XEBL._SL160_.jpg)
 enlarge | Director: Gus Van Sant
Actors: Nicole Kidman, Matt Dillon, Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck, Illeana Douglas
Category: DVD
Buy Used: $16.81
Avg. Customer Rating:  63 reviews
Sales Rank: 233477
Format: Pal
Language: German (Original Language)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 4040316533980
ASIN: B00005NT5C
Theatrical Release Date: October 6, 1995
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: PLEASE READ FIRST!!!IMPORTANT!!! IF you are purchasing DVD, VHS, or BOOK please see Amazon description for LANGUAGE, REGION and Format FIRST!!! If you are purchasing DVD or VHS, PAL FORMAT WILL NOT PLAY ON US PLAYER.REGION 2 WILL NOT PLAY.PLEASE DO NOT BUY if you don't have either multisystem or PAL player. Please verify amazon description of LANGUAGE, BOOK or DVD COULD BE IN GERMAN. PLEASE SEE AMAZON PRODUCT DESCRIPTION AND PICTURE FIRST!!!Delivery time 2-3 weeks.
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Amazon.com essential video
If anyone ever doubts whether Nicole Kidman is a good actress, they should immediately be required to watch this outrageously wicked comedy from 1995, for which Kidman deservedly won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Leading Role. While director Gus Van Sant handles the fact-based satire with razor-sharp precision, Kidman delivers a deliciously devious performance as Suzanne Stone, a small-town New Hampshire housewife who fancies herself the next Barbara Walters, Jane Pauley, Diane Sawyer, and Maria Shriver all rolled up into one meticulously coiffed package. So determined is she to have a successful career on TV that she'll stop at nothing--even the calculated murder of her husband (Matt Dillon)--to get the attention she feels entitled to. To carry out her scheme she recruits some unwitting local teenagers including one boy (Joaquin Phoenix, matching Kidman's excellence) whose infatuation with Suzanne leads to sexual escapades and predictably troublesome consequences. It's a satirical comedy in Van Sant's capable hands, but it's so close to tabloid reality that the film never seems implausible--which only gives it a funnier, more blood-chilling quality of humor. Featuring Illeanna Douglas, George Segal, and Seinfeld alumnus Wayne Knight in memorable supporting roles, this is one of the best comedies of the '90s--especially if you prefer comedies with a decidedly darker edge. --Jeff Shannon
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| Customer Reviews: Read 58 more reviews...
 Interesting Movie July 26, 2008
THis is one of Nicole Kidman's earlier movies that is just fun to watch. Unfortuately the fun is loosely based on a true story. But still a good movie to watch.
Pitch perfect example of misguided reasoning's... June 20, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I had heard a lot of great things about Nicole Kidman's performance in this black comedy, so many good things that I had to check it out. The problem was that I could never find it anywhere. Then, gloriously, it came on Encore the other night and so I DVR'd it and settled down to take in the gift that is Kidman. What I found was not just Kidman's finest screen performance ever, but quite possible Gus Van Sant's finest film ever. `To Die For' is just that, a film that is to die for. It is funny, smart, witty and darkly powerful; a film that plays to its strengths, and thankfully it has many of them.
Gus Van Sant is a hit-or-miss director with me. He has a unique style that I appreciate when it is channeled properly (ala `Elephant') but find myself put off when it is misdirected (circa `Psycho'). He attempts to commercialize his talent with mixed results, at times drawing enough star power to make up for lack of material (witness `Good Will Hunting') but then there are times when even his best efforts result in mediocre offerings (take `Finding Forester' for instance). There is no denying that Van Sant has talent and he has vision, and I respect that, but at times that talent and vision is muddled and produces films I don't feel are really up to par. Regardless though, I still longed to see `To Die For' if not for Kidman and Kidman alone.
Luckily for me, Van Sant is at the top of his game here and matches Kidman's brilliance step for step, pace for pace. Kidman plays Suzanne Stone, a young and ambitious woman who will do anything to achieve the fame she knows she is destined for. She marries Larry Maretto, a good looking Italian man who supports her dreams and believes in her, but his support is not enough for it alone won't get Stone what she wants. When Stone takes her ambitions to the next level, trying to engage some high school students in a news segment, she meets three particular students who prove to be the key to Stone's inevitable success. Jimmy, Russel & Lydia are putty in Stone's hands, easily manipulated and convinced to go along with Stone's scheme to rid her of her husband and catapult her to the spotlight she so longs for.
Fame comes at a cost; and that cost is something Stone will soon have to pay.
Van Sant films this black comedy as if it were part mockumentary, which aids in adding connectivity to the film, for it allows the characters to engage to audience and make them a part of the film. As each actor talks directly to the viewer we begin to feel like a part of their schemes and thus feel an intimate relation to the film. Even though the film has some devastating situations (murder and adultery) they are played out much like a Coen film, used for comedic effect and so while we are allowed to judge we are never allowed to judge too harshly.
Nicole Kidman is a force in this film, a dynamic ball of comedic energy. The way she can consume her character, delivering each and every line with precision and dedication, creating a character that is funny as can be yet serious as heart attack. She brilliantly manages to coat her satirical performance with enough genuine sincerity that her character becomes a real person instead of a farce. Matt Dillon is sorely underused as Larry, Stone's unsuspecting husband. He manages well with what he is given, but the film (like Stone) is pretty much uninterested with him. Joaquin Phoenix, Casey Affleck and Alison Folland are wonderful as the three dimwitted students whom Stone uses and abuses. Phoenix has the most screen time, for he plays Jimmy, the student who falls for Suzanne and thus becomes the focus of her attention. Phoenix has surely turned in finer performances (it's nice to see the fine actor he's become) but this is far from a bad performance. He captures the mental level of his character, which isn't high mind you, and manages to make him interesting. His first line in this film alone is priceless. I also enjoyed the supporting performances by Illeana Douglas and Dan Hedaya who managed to make their small roles seem larger than they really were.
In the end `To Die For' is a brilliant satire, a fantastic film about the dangers of fame and obsession. Sure, it may seem far fetched at times but that's what a satire does; it blows truths out of proportion in an effort to cause the audience to realize the facts resting before their eyes. In a world so obsessed with being on the top of everything, of being in front of the cameras and in the magazines and on the lips of every living breathing human being, `To Die For' is a wonderful example of why that particular thinking is so far off the mark.
Underrated classic May 8, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Suzanne Maretto (Nicole Kidman) wants to be a star. For her whole life she has focussed on her goal of becoming the next Barbara Walters. The problem is that she's not all that bright and not all that talented, not that she is aware of this. When she perceived that her husband (Matt Dillon) is standing between her and fame, she enlists the help of three teenagers (including Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck), whom she is working with on a documentary, to murder her husband for her.
"To Die For" is a highly underrated movie, based on a novel that you probably didn't know existed (although, it is also excellent - the book is by Joyce Maynard). When this film was first released, most of the reviews that appeared in the newspapers were less than glowing, which put me off this film for a number of years, and when I finally did see it, I was astounded by just how good it is. I suspect the reason why many of the critics didn't like this film was because it is a black comedy and as with most black comedies, if the humour isn't to your taste, it can end up falling flat or not being understood at all. The film is also made in a documentary format, which I can imagine might also annoy some viewers (generally, I don't like this format, but in this case I didn't mind it. It doesn't get in the way of the storytelling). However, I thought this film was great.
"To Die For" is a cross between a well-budgeted studio film and a high quality indie. Clearly this film had a reasonable budget and it stars Nicole Kidman (in the best role of her career), but the director is Gus Van Sant and the cast is a who's-who of indie regulars (Affleck, Phoenix, Matt Dillon, Ileana Douglas, etc). The result is a combination of the best aspects of each of these types of film. Add to that a script by Buck Henry (who co-wrote "Get Smart"), and as far as I'm concerned, you have a classic.
"To Die For," a Non-Linear Social Satire of Dark Proportion April 11, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Nicole Kidman is excellent here as "Suzanne Stone-Maretto," the central hub of a two-hour-long blonde joke called "To Die For" (1995). It just may be Director Gus Van Sant's best film. If the film's darkly straight-faced humor weren't so blantantly bust-out-laughing obvious in its dialogue, the screenplay would be as dark as a noir film with Kidman as the story's femme fatale for everything happening in it. The film's non-linear narrative goes between normal story-line scenes, "afterwords" regarding the incidents in summary, and a scene having the in-character, narcissistic Kidman staring straight into the camera as though the audience were being brought straight into the film's narrative. Also bringing the audience straight into the film's narrative is a talk-show scene with both the parents of "Suzanne" and the parents of her husband, "Larry Maretto." This has the added effect of heightening the need for recognizing the wake-up, distress call on society, particularly involving the current television media which is what the film comments on directly. Even though the film was released in 1995, its point is just as relevant today, maybe even more so.
It seems universally perfect as a comment on narcissism, schizophrenia, and psychological superficiality, here developed dually as a social object, perhaps even mass paranoia--recognizably using sexual overtones to provide at least part of its exploitation--and the implications of a pseudo-social mentality of acceptance-through-denial by consumers who don't recognize it. The more sex, the more reality t.v., the more Jerry Springer rednecks the film utilizes, the more it reveals the dirtiness of what people enjoy watching. The film here is standard intelligence training in psychology, and justified, because it pulls away the curtain showing a much darker image than an audience expects or knew existed. Appropriately, it is Critic Rex Reed of the New York Observer cited in bold on the back of the DVD case: "Humor, tragedy, sex--this movie has everything!"
Matt Dillon plays "Larry," the newly-wed husband to "Suzanne." Dan Hedaya plays her father-in-law, "Joe Maretto," and Kurtwood Smith plays her paternal father, "Earl Stone." It's easy to see how she and her biological father have certain character traits in common.
The side-story of "Suzanne" documenting the lives of three adolescents, two of them played by Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck (Ben Affleck's brother), comes center-stage later in the film when the point for having this side-story becomes apparent. Its relevance to the whole of the film's statement furthers the film's theme--that tabloid talk shows exploit and distort the normally private lives of typically poverty-level citizens, provoking them into things like violence, not only metaphorically but also directly, out of the interest in such things brought on by television consumerism. One of the non-linear elements has the parents of both "Suzanne" and "Larry" on a tabloid talk show, and it's no different than watching Jerry Springer. For this and other non-linear scenes, the film restrains itself from fully providing the reason for them until the film's very end as though it were reserving a joke's punchline.
Portrait of a Female Psychopathic Narcissist March 8, 2008
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
To Die For is an excellent, detailed portrait of a female narcissist. This movie is no comedy. If you ever have the great misfortune of tangling with one of these psychopaths, trust me, you WONT be laughing.
Nicole Kidman plays Suzanne Stone, the girl who grows up as the center of her family's never-ending attention, the Golden Child Who Can Do No Wrong. As life goes on, Suzanne hones her manipulation skills, and marries Larry (played by Matt Dillon), who reflects back to Suzanne the image of herself that she wants to believe and see. Perfect!
That is, until Larry demands that the marriage include him. In bed one morning soon after being wed, Larry wants to make love with Suzanne. She icily shoves his hand away saying "get your hands off me." She has to get ready for work, to "fix my face" for the world. It's performance time, and Suzanne is always on. Larry just doesn't get it. Their life is about HER, not them. When Larry broaches the topics of having children and her helping him out in the family restaurant business, Suzanne decides he has to go. This girl has global aspirations. She won't be marginalized with motherhood and a family business!
When Suzanne lands a job at a community TV station, she turns a small job fetching coffee and running errands into her role as the weather girl reporting from "The Weather Center." She soon executes one of her many grandiose schemes: making a documentary about high school teenagers in their natural habitat. Enter Joaquin Phoenix's character Jimmy Emmet, an introspective but deeply lost teenager who falls hard for Suzanne. She soon sexually manipulates Jimmy into doing her bidding, with promises of eternal love and "then we can always be together." Her blinding charisma engulfs Jimmy and friends Russel and Lydia, and of course she heartlessly kicks them all to the curb the instant she achieves her goal.
If you know anything about narcissism, you'll see all the high points in To Die For: grandiosity, complete disregard for the feelings of others, ice-cold manipulation, and lightning-fast betrayal once the narcissist has achieved her goal. You're seeing how a psychopath operates. If only the narcissists of the world found the same fate as Suzanne Stone. I strongly recommend To Die For.
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