Nicole Kidman’s Dead Husband is Reincarnated and Nicole Kidman Pees on Zac Efron To Save His Life

And other April 2024 watches.

Nicole Kidman in The Paperboy. Photo: Lionsgate.

The Paperboy
First time watch
What if I told you Nicole Kidman peeing on Zac Efron was the most reasonable part of this film? The Paperboy is smutty and sordid and transfixing. Every person in this movie is so squarely within their flop era that it’s like a solar eclipse, blink and you’ll miss it, everyone just goes for it. Kidman, Efron, Matthew McConaughey, David Oyelowo, John Cusak¹, Macy Gray. The Paperboy is hot and sticky and tender, thrilling and drastic and eerie. It was booed at Cannes, but I was won over by it. It is big in every scene, in every way, and sometimes becomes too much. But I’ve had enough restraint: The Paperboy is big. It’s the other pictures that got small. 

I went back to the Vulture In Conversation with Lee Daniels² and was struck by this line, about Monster’s Ball specifically, but Daniels’ movies generally: “To me, part of cinema is shock. You have to elicit erotic feelings, you have to elicit laughter, you have t…