Birthday Girl [VHS]

Birthday Girl [VHS]
by Jez Butterworth

Birthday Girl [VHS]

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Product details

Actor: Ben Chaplin, Kate Lynn Evans, Mathieu Kassovitz, Nicole Kidman, Vincent Cassel
Director: Jez Butterworth
Writer: Jez Butterworth
Producer: Colin Leventhal
Producer: Diana Phillips
Producer: Donna Grey
Producer: Julie Goldstein
Producer: Paul Webster
Writer: Tom Butterworth
Edition: VHS Tape
Audio: English (Original Language); Russian (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
Running Time: 93 minutes
Release Date: 2002-08-13
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Publisher: Walt Disney Video
Studio: Walt Disney Video

VHS Movie Reviews of Birthday Girl [VHS]

Movie Review: Don't waste your time or your money.
Summary: 1 Stars

A horrible movie. I was expecting great things from Nicole Kidman. How could she make this movie.

Movie Review: Twists Come Early On In This Drama
Summary: 4 Stars

Thiis is another one of these modern-day British crime films that are a bit quirky . It's not wild like "Snatch" or "Sexy Beast" but it's interesting and it has some rough characters.

It also has a corny and somewhat predictable ending but early in the show - not late - has some neat twists to make it very interesting for the first-time viewer. Basically, it's about a low-key British male who sends away for a Russian "mail order bride" who winds up, with the aid of two Russian male friends, providing a couple of big surprises.

Ben Chapin and Nicole Kidman co-star, and are very good, as are Vincent Cassel and Matthieu Kassovitz as Kidman's Russian cohorts.

Kidman once again proves she's far more than just a beautiful face. She can act.

Movie Review: That Darned Internet...
Summary: 4 Stars

John Buckingham, a terminally dull, lonely bank employee (Ben Chaplin) finds a russian bride named Nadia (the sizzling Nicole Kidman) through a web site. Upon meeting, they discover that they don't speak each other's language. Not to worry! This odd couple find mutual understanding through, um... bondage! What starts out as a sweet / funny love story becomes a crime drama when Nadia's "cousin" and his friend (Vincent Cassel from Eastern Promises) arrive unanounced for her birthday. Kidman's Nadia is scorchingly hot, seductive, and dangerous. She is the answer to John's dreams and nightmares. BIRTHDAY GIRL belongs in the special Nicole Kidman section of every DVD collection...

Movie Review: From Russia With Love
Summary: 5 Stars

Ben Chaplin gives an underplayed and terrific performance as a regular guy in England who knows that everyone is not lucky enough to meet the love of their life by chance. To this end, he decides to help things along via the internet, sending for a Russian girl he hopes will be the one.

This Jez Butterworth directed film is full of surprises as it moves from a tentative romance to a crime thriller of sorts and back to romance again. It is all done so well that your interest never lags and you have absolutely no idea how this journey will end. It is presented in an off-beat manner, however, and it is easy to understand the great divide between those who love this film and those much less enthusiastic.

Nicole Kidman is sexy and wonderful as John's would-be bride Nadia. The awkwardness of their first meeting at the airport and the drive home, punctuated by Nadia throwing up, is perfectly captured. She speaks no english whatsoever and John considers sending her back at first. But Nadia is sexually agressive and wants to please John, each encounter better than the last. It is John's heart, however, which is finally given to Nadia, as he begins wearing the ring she gave him everywhere.

But their tentative romance takes an unusual turn when two of her pals from Russia show up to see her. Vincent Cassel as Alexi and actor/director Mathieu Kassovitz are very good as her seemingly harmless friends. An advance made by one of them towards Nadia, however, turns this into a crime thriller, John having to commit a crime to save his newfound love. Only too late does he realize something much more is really at the heart of the matter.

To reveal anything further might ruin the film's impact for those viewing this for the first time. Through all the shifts in genre, however, there is a certain mood of loneliness and anguish for love which runs through the fabric of this film like a soft yet unbreakable thread spun with great care by Chaplin's every guy performance and the increasingly haunted eyes of Kidman's Nadia, a window to her heart.

Set in England but actually filmed in Kidman's home country of Australia, she is quite fabulous in Birthday Girl. Those weary of paint by the numbers formula romances will find this refreshing and enjoy it more than others. It is definitely one of those films which either hits you just right or all wrong. A fabulous little film you'll have to decide on for yourself.

Movie Review: Extremely Awkward
Summary: 2 Stars

This movie was really awkward throughout. I don't know what else to say about it as the premise is obvious. It's not really extremely thrilling, but more like I said an extremely awkward movie. No one got killed really but, you'll want to avert you're eyes often during this movie, at the awkward mail order relationship.

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Summary of Birthday Girl [VHS]

If Birthday Girl is a far-fetched thriller, it's also a slice of absurdist fun populated by some awfully interesting actors. Nicole Kidman plays Sophia, a chain-smoking, mascara-smudged, wildly sexual mail-order bride from Russia who answers an Internet plea for companionship from a lonely British bank employee, John (Ben Chaplin). For a while, the two make a startling and intriguing pair: she apparently speaks no English and he naively frets over the veracity of the Web business that brought them together. The gorgeous Kidman and sad-eyed Chaplin are briefly the engine of their own unique movie, but then the other shoe drops. Sophia, obviously up to something mysterious, is paid a visit on her birthday by two Russian "cousins" (French filmmaker Mathieu Kassovitz and one of his own frequent stars, Vincent Cassel, also seen in Brotherhood of the Wolf). Suddenly, John's quest for a lover becomes a web of deceit and corruption. Directed and cowritten (with his brother Tom) by Jez Butterworth, Birthday Girl is hampered a bit by sluggishness and insufficient character development. But it is also original and strikingly entertaining. Tom Keogh

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