SpIFF’s final weekend … and Kidman, too

Good weekend for movies coming up. Not just that SpIFF is continuing/concluding but that AMC is, strangely enough, opening a couple of independent/alternative selections. One is the French animated flick “The Illusionist,” the other a Nicole Kidman drama titled “Rabbit Hole.”

Like “Another Year” before them, they’ll likely play a single week and then disappear.

But I find “Rabbit Hole” particularly fascinating because of Kidman. Makes me want to do a top-whatever Nicole Kidman list. For example:

“To Die For”: This Gus Van Sant film is the project that proved to me the woman could actually act. Until then, she had shown promise. But by playing the duplicitous high school teacher, Kidman finally broke away from her early Australia years and her strange coupling with Tom Cruise.

“Margot at the Wedding”: It takes nerve to play a thoroughly unlikeable character as Kidman does here. She’s the sister who, narcissist that she is, plays her son like a plastic ukelele while spoiling pretty much everything for everyone else at the event in question (including her sissy, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh).

“Dogville” : This proved to me that Kidman wasn’t above accepting a challenge, which is what any actor has to do when he/she agrees to work with/for Lars Von Treir. And as the outcast looking for love in all the wrong places, her character proves tougher than any of us have the right to expect.

“Moulin Rouge!” : Yeah, the glow has dimmed on Bal Luhrman’s reputation. But he had enough flash to pull off this bit of musical fluff. And Kidman fits right in.

“Birthday Girl” : Like the great Meryl Streep, Kidman can do a mean accent. And as she proved in “To Die For,” she can smoulder. Which she does particularly well here. Ben Chaplin agrees.

“Eyes Wide Shut” : Stanley Kubrick may have thought his little mediation on love, marriage and loyalty was more exotic than it turns out to be. But he certainly knew how to shoot Kidman, whose confession to husband Cruise is the movie’s high point.

“Dead Calm” : Early in her career, a tousle-haired Kidman wasn’t above doing cheap action. As the object of Sam Neill’s love, and Billy Zane’s psychopathic tendencies, Kidman proves she can play sexy and perky.

“Flirting” : Made during the waning days of her Australian career, just after she starred in “Days of Thunder” and just before she couple up full time with Cruise, this shows the Kidman that was and might have stayed had she remained Down Under. Sort of an Aussie “Masterpiece Theatre” type.

“The Hours” : Kidman’s top moment to date, the one that has her playing Virginia Woolf and winning an Academy Award in the process. Even with the fake nose, which was barely noticeable (although more so once you realize it), Kidman pulls off a performance that pulls everything together: smouldering intensity, painful vulnerability, understated beauty … and an abiltity to read lines as if they come from her soul and not from some cheap script.

Nine films. Most lists comprise 10. I left it blank so you can add anything you want.