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")

In a black comedy loosely based on the infamous Pamela Smart murder case, Nicole Kidman takes her obsession with becoming a celebrity to the ultimate extreme. That she was one high maintenance woman Matt Dillon must have known when he married her. But bow completely amoral she was, who could have guessed? After all she was a woman To Die For.

To Die For is one of the best film commentaries on the culture of celebrity and what we will do to become one, at least some of us. If you don't think there is a lot of truth here, just think about what certain people are doing right now to become a lackey for Donald Trump and a best friend of Paris Hilton. And they're doing it on television for millions to see.

Nicole Kidman is at her most beautiful and most amoral in To Die For. She's married to working class guy Matt Dillon who helps run the family restaurant owned by his father Dan Hedaya. Nicole works too at the local television station run by Wayne Knight and starts out as a receptionist, but works her way up to weather girl. But she's got ambitions for so much more. But all she sees is her average guy husband standing in the way.

To aid in her ultimate plan she befriends three misfit teens, Casey Affleck, Alison Folland, and Joaquin Phoenix and uses sex with Phoenix as a drug. He becomes obsessed with her and soon he and his friends are willing tools in her schemes.

I have to say that in this film Nicole Kidman gives what I think is her best performance. Director Gus Van Sant really brought a good one out of her. There isn't anyone who watches this film who wouldn't be a willing tool for her. The three teen accomplices are all good and stand out individually with Folland who was making her screen debut and Phoenix both touching in their own way.

But I do like Dan Hedaya in this also who uses some old fashioned methods to get his vengeance, old fashioned family style vengeance I might add.

Anyone who is interested in the cult of celebrity as both a serious study and entertainment should not miss To Die For.

I'd heard a lot of good things about this one but never actually saw it. Now I have, and I'm not impressed. Maybe you had to be there at the time. The faux documentary stylings are interesting and could be seen as a precursor to the found footage wave of modern cinema, but other than that...so so. The black comedy aspect works well and the acting isn't half bad from across the cast, but I did find it rather long winded and obvious, taking a very long time to get anywhere.