Courtesan Glamour: Watching Moulin Rouge! in 7th grade

Nicole Kidman, as Satine, a light-skinned woman with loose ginger hair, is gazing at the camera with a look of dangerous seduction on her face.

|Olga Tchepikova-Treon| I saw the “Lady Marmalade” music video before I saw Moulin Rouge!. Performed by a hot quintet of pop-singing ladies (Missy Elliot, who I admired for smooth dance moves; Christina Aguilera, entering her exciting dirty grrrl phase; P!nk, a tomboy role model;… Continue reading

A Subtle Kind of Jackhammer: Moulin Rouge!, Pop Art, and the Cinema of Baz Luhrmann

A man and woman smile at each other under a red umbrella in a rainstorm.

| Dan McCabe | Baz Luhrmann isn’t your typical “great” filmmaker. His style hits audiences like a jackhammer. Moulin Rouge! (2001) is technically a period drama, but you could be forgiven for thinking the period was the 1990s and not the 1890s… Continue reading

A Stanley Kubrick Christmas: Intense Paranoia and Masquerade Orgies

Masked group at the orgy staring ominously.

|Dan Howard| There’s certainly something about the holiday season that strikes a chord with filmmakers. Whether it’s Todd Hayne’s Carol, Tim Burton’s Batman Returns, or Shane Black’s Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, any film using Christmas as the backdrop for a non-holiday story sets… Continue reading

A Woman’s Place in Television, Ambition and Murder: Gus Van Sant’s To Die For

Nicole Kidman with strawberry blonde hair, purple eyeshadow, dark pink lipstick, dark pink jacket, gold earrings, staring into the camera in midspeech with white background. White text, "You're not anybody in America unless you're on TV," fills bottom of image.

|Penny Folger| To Die For plays at the Trylon Cinema from Friday, January 10th through Sunday, January 12th. Visit trylon.org for tickets and more information. Gus Van Sant’s To Die For, released in 1995, showcases a bristlingly ambitious woman named Suzanne Stone, played by Nicole Kidman, who will stop at nothing… Continue reading

Columns on Kidman: Revisiting To Die For 30 Years Later

A black and white newspaper photo of Suzanne, portrayed by Nicole Kidman, happily reporting the weather for a television news broadcast.

|Ben Jarman & Carey Nadeau| To Die For plays at the Trylon Cinema from Friday, January 10th through Sunday, January 12th. Visit trylon.org for tickets and more information. The teens in this film are not realistic. That’s the only negative thing I thought about Gus Van Sant’s To Die For, but I… Continue reading

Ghosts in Spain: The Complicated History of Amenábar’s Breakout Hit

Nicole Kidman cries while looking through a metal gate in the fog front of a large mansion.

|Malcolm Cooke| The Others plays at the Trylon Cinema from Friday, January 10th through Sunday, January 12th. Visit trylon.org for tickets and more information. Director Alejandro Amenábar wrote the music for his third film, The Others (2001), just like he had for all of his previous projects. He was admittedly still an… Continue reading

Love, Grief, and Reincarnation: The Legacy of Glazer’s Most Controversial Film

|Malcolm Cooke| The scene begins at the opera. Arriving late, Anna (Nicole Kidman) and her fiancé Joseph (Danny Huston) push their way intrusively past a dozen audience members. Once seated, the shot holds on Anna’s face for over two minutes, an image director… Continue reading