To Die For (1995)
Directed by Gus Van Sant
Suzanne Stone wants to be a world-famous news anchor and she is willing to do anything to get what she wants. What she lacks in intelligence, she makes up for in cold determination and diabolical wiles. As she pursues her goal with relentless focus, she is forced to destroy anything and anyone that may stand in her way, regardless of the ultimate cost or means necessary.
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What critics compared To Die For to
Marla has deafening echoes of not just Gone Girl ’s Amy Dunne (a blunt, sliced blonde bob; the icy, clipped voiceover) but also Nicole Kidman’s Suzanne Stone in To Die For .
It’s a bold, full-bodied performance that ranks alongside To Die For, Dogville, and Margot at the Wedding as the riskiest high-wire work of her career.
While there is the hint of a better, more ruthless movie lurking here (Gus Van Sant�s To Die For would be an excellent role model) what Bad Teacher delivers is still satisfyingly snarky.
You can imagine Lou building his own media empire with Nicole Kidman’s newscaster from To Die For.
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Kudos to acting, script Yes, this is a blatant feel-good movie, and it seems to be a strange choice for Van Sant, who made his reputation as an edgy, indie type who brought us "Drugstore Cowboy" (1989) and "To Die For" (1995).
"I think that when I was starting out and was making my first three films, Mala Noche [1985], Drugstore Cowboy [1989], and My Own Private Idaho, before I went into another arena, which was Even Cowgirls Get the Blues [1993] and then To Die For [1995], which don't really connect to my own genres, and I'm now into this, aside from Psycho [1999], into this Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester area.
Now Gus Van Sant, onetime guardian of the quirky avant guard ( "To Die For ," "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues"), takes on an After School Special of a script about a ghetto littérateur savant and his reclusive white mentor, and creates "Finding Forrester" -- a solidly enjoyable, fairly cerebral feature raised above its roots by stout performances from its two leads.
But what happened to the off-kilter film-maker last seen at work in To Die For? Van Sant shoots and paces Jamal's developing relationship with Forrester as generically as it's scripted; a weakness all the more apparent when compared with Curtis Hanson's far saltier treatment of similar themes in Wonder Boys.
Yes, this is a blatant feel-good movie, and it seems to be a strange choice for Van Sant, who made his reputation as an edgy, indie type who brought us "Drugstore Cowboy" (1989) and "To Die For" (1995).
This villain is played by Nicole Kidman with an icy cruelty that made my daughter marvel, “She’s really good at being an evil villain, isn’t she?” (My daughter’s never seen To Die For .) Kidman’s willingness to get silly is matched by the rest of the film’s human cast, including Julie Walters as the Browns’ hard-drinking housekeeper, Peter Capaldi as a meddlesome neighbor, and Jim Broadbent as a twinkly shopkeeper.