Queen Of The Desert
BB.5 (out of 5) Bored of life in the quiet English countryside, Gertrude Bell (Nicole Kidman) heads to the middle east at the turn of the century to turn the entire Arab world… Continue reading
Tag Archive: Nicole Kidman
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Lion
BBBB (out of 5) A little boy who lives with his brother, sister and mother in a tiny, poor Indian village gets lost at a train station while waiting for his brother to fetch… Continue reading
Genius
BB.5 (out of 5) Diligent Scribner editor Max Perkins (Colin Firth) has been the hand behind some of the most influential literature of the early twentieth century, with the likes of Hemingway and Fitzgerald to… Continue reading
Nightmaster
BB (out of 5) Silly action film that will have some appeal for young people, though it’s too violent for the very young. A group of high school students in a grimy future… Continue reading
The Invasion
BBB.5 (out of 5) Fourth version of the classic Jack Finney novel, this time with Nicole Kidman as a doctor who becomes aware that there are visitors who blending in a bit too easily.… Continue reading
The Railway Man
BBB (out of 5) After meeting on a train, former nurse Nicole Kidman falls madly in love with train enthusiast and World War II veteran Colin Firth and feels no hesitation when he asks… Continue reading
Paddington
BBB.5 (out of 5) Michael Bond’s delightful character creation, a veritable institution in England that was inspired by the sight of refugee children arriving in London in World War II, is brought to… Continue reading
Grace Of Monaco (Princess Grace)
BB.5 (out of 5) The film’s opening disclaimer of being a fictional story based on factual events should mean that we get a similar experience to The Queen, a film that uses a… Continue reading
Before I Go To Sleep
BB (out of 5) Nicole Kidman wakes up beside Colin Firth and has no idea where she is. He explains to her that, thanks to an accident years earlier, she has brain damage that causes… Continue reading
Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus
BB.5 (out of 5) Steven Shainberg follows up his breakout success Secretary with another film that promises to bring life on the margins to the forefront but is not nearly as boundary-busting as… Continue reading
Trespass
B (out of 5) A film so ludicrous it must be seen to be believed. Nicolas Cage and Nicole Kidman live a gorgeous existence in their isolated manor, comfortable in their one-percentage and keeping a… Continue reading
Dogville
BBBB.5 (out of 5) Lars Von Trier has made his most audacious film yet with this powerful drama, whose most extreme moments are so over the top as to actually make them humorous.… Continue reading
Just Go With It
B (out of 5) Adam Sandler‘s brand of comedy is stale and this unwatchable remake of Cactus Flower is scientific proof. He is once again the loveable schlub who bags an untold number of gorgeous… Continue reading
Batman Forever
BBB (out of 5) Gone are the good old days of Tim Burton’s menacingly creepy Gotham City. Director Joel Schumacher has turned the Caped Crusader’s hometown into a bloated colour parade, beautifully designed… Continue reading
The Client
BBBB (out of 5) The best John Grisham novel adaptation made so far (and most likely ever) is this excellent thriller starring newcomer Brad Renfro as a young Louisiana pre-teen who witnesses a suicide… Continue reading
Dead Calm
BBB.5 (out of 5) Following the tragic death of their son in a car accident, married couple Sam Neill and Nicole Kidman decide to get away from it all and enjoy a nice, relaxing vacation… Continue reading
Stoker
BBB.5 (out of 5) Mia Wasikowska is devastated when her father dies on her eighteenth birthday in a freak car accident, but thankfully her handsome young uncle (Matthew Goode), about whom she previously knew… Continue reading
The Stepford Wives (2004)
BB.5 (out of 5) Updating a novel written in the sixties that was a satiric examination of America’s response to the new feminism might seem as pointless as Guy Ritchie’s modernizing Lina Wertmuller’s… Continue reading
Rabbit Hole
BBBB (out of 5) This delicately beautiful film begins with married couple Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart bereaved by a personal loss and seeking comfort in group therapy. Their tragedy, it turns out, is the… Continue reading
Happy Feet
BBB.5 (out of 5) Cutting loose while wearing a tuxedo: is there anything more adorably cool in the animal kingdom than a penguin? In this film by George Miller, the master behind such… Continue reading
Moulin Rouge!
BBBB (out of 5) Forcefully passionate, Australian director Baz Luhrmann’s third film drops you immediately into a carnivalesque world of magical and musical mayhem, telling the story of a young writer (Ewan McGregor) who… Continue reading
Australia
BBB (out of 5) Stuck-up British aristocrat Nicole Kidman arrives in Australia to inquire after the husband she amicably separated from years earlier to decide what is to be done with their costly outback ranch.… Continue reading
The Golden Compass
BBB.5 (out of 5) The first book in Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy is an exciting, highly imaginative romp with Dakota Blue Richards giving a wonderful performance in the lead. She plays the centre of a prophecy… Continue reading
Days Of Thunder
BB (out of 5) The formula is mighty tired in this completely unoriginal race-car film starring Tom Cruise. Presumably intended as a project for Cruise to incorporate his love of car racing into… Continue reading
Far And Away
BB (out of 5) Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman made three movies together during their marriage, all of them proof that they shouldn’t make movies together. Cruise stars as a plucky young Irish… Continue reading
Nine
BB.5 (out of 5) Maury Yeston’s musical play, adapted from Federico Fellini’s classic 8 1/2, is brought to the big screen by Chicago‘s Rob Marshall. Daniel Day-Lewis subs for Marcello Mastroianni as the filmmaker who… Continue reading
Cold Mountain
BBB (out of 5) During the civil war, a soldier (Jude Law) reads a letter from the woman waiting for him (Nicole Kidman) back home and decides to leave the battlefield and head… Continue reading
Birth
BBBB.5 (out of 5) Ten years after her husband collapsed and died while jogging in Central Park, Nicole Kidman is celebrating her mother’s birthday when a little boy enters the room and tells her… Continue reading
The Interpreter
BB.5 (out of 5) The intellectual process by which a person decides to make a movie about political oppression in Africa and casts Nicole Kidman as its representative is one that completely escapes me;… Continue reading
Eyes Wide Shut
BBBB (out of 5) Fascinating, final film by Stanley Kubrick requires mountains of patience but is quite rewarding. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman play a happy ‘vanilla American’ couple whose stability is thrown… Continue reading
Bewitched
BBB (out of 5) Surprisingly charming comedy inspired by the original television series. Will Ferrell plays an obnoxiously self-centred movie star whose latest bomb has forced him to take the lead role in a… Continue reading
Practical Magic
BB.5 (out of 5) Here’s an unfortunate waste: gifted actors, a great germ of an idea for a story (New England witches and their personal problems), all undone by a hackneyed script and… Continue reading
Flirting
BBBB.5 (out of 5) John Duigan’s sequel to The Year My Voice Broke is superior to its original. It continues the adventures of a young Australian boy (a superb Noah Taylor) who moves… Continue reading
The Paperboy
BB.5 (out of 5) The southern gothic madness is laid on ridiculously thick for this adaptation of the novel by Peter Dexter, saved from years of development hell by Precious director Lee Daniels.… Continue reading
To Die For
BBBB (out of 5) Nicole Kidman couldn’t be more electrifying in this excellent adaptation of the Joyce Maynard novel, with a screenplay written by Buck Henry. She plays a raucously ambitious woman who… Continue reading
Panic Room
BBBB (out of 5) Fans who were disappointed by the filmed adaptation of the novel Sliver will find much recompense in this taut Ira Levinesque thriller. Jodie Foster (at her most assured and… Continue reading
In The Cut
BB.5 (out of 5) Meg Ryan plays a dowdy English professor who comes home to her grungy Manhattan apartment to find a detective (Mark Ruffalo) waiting in her stairwell who tells her that… Continue reading
Birthday Girl
BBB (out of 5) Nicole Kidman is marvelous in this odd little tale about a straight-laced bank employee (Ben Chaplin) who sends out for a Russian mail-order bride and gets a lot more… Continue reading
The Hours
BBBBB (out of 5) The feat of simply deciding to turn Michael Cunningham’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel into a film is reason enough to praise this effort, which could not have been a small… Continue reading
The Peacemaker
BBB (out of 5) Don’t listen to the mean old critics who tore Dreamworks Studios’ first production to pieces (or the box office results which didn’t exactly break the bank). While Mimi Leder’s… Continue reading
The Human Stain
BBB (out of 5) Anthony Hopkins practically sleepwalks through his performance as a literature professor who is forced into retirement after more than thirty years of devotion to his college, following a comment regarding… Continue reading
Malice
BB.5 (out of 5) Nicole Kidman and Bill Pullman play a happy couple whose lives are destroyed when a surgeon (Alec Baldwin) performs an operation on her under the influence of alcohol and destroys her… Continue reading
Margot At The Wedding
BBBB (out of 5) Nicole Kidman gives a layered perforamnce as a successful writer returning to her childhood home to reconnect with her estranged sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh). The two of them haven’t spoken… Continue reading
The Portrait Of A Lady
BBBB.5 (out of 5) One of the richest and most rewarding adaptations of a Henry James novel. Nicole Kidman is at her peak as a young woman from America who travels to Europe to… Continue reading
The Others
BBBBB (out of 5) Terrific thriller directed by Alejandro Amenabar and produced by Tom Cruise, who took on the project after he bought the rights to Amenabar’s Open Your Eyes and remade it… Continue reading