Born in Hawaii but raised in Sydney, Nicole Kidman is a major figure of world cinema, working with directors from America and Denmark to Greece and Chile. She has never played it safe or not trusted her instincts. And when critics occasionally snipe from the sidelines, she produces a performance that leaves everyone breathless. She also has the grace and charisma of a star, which is no doubt why Kidman was chosen to play Grace Kelly in Olivier Dahan's Grace of Monaco. Dahan has a thing for stories about stardom, having made La Môme (aka La Vie en Rose) about French songstress Édith Piaf. Grace Kelly almost became French when she gave up being Alfred Hitchcock's muse and married Monaco's ruler, Prince Rainier III. As with all biopics, one can be distracted by issues of how well an actor is capturing an icon, but relax and focus on Kelly's search for fame and happiness – and the prices paid. Scott Murray

MOVIE
Australia (2008)
7flix, 8.30pm

There are single-word film titles that say it all: Titanic, Armageddon, Australia. But how can a nation be summed up in one word or one film? By the time you have made a movie, the county will have already morphed into something else. Yet, filmmakers have long tried to encapsulate a nation in a single statement, often driven by love. Director Baz Luhrmann, who had just finished the Red Curtain Trilogy (Strictly Ballroom, William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!), leaves Sydney, America and Paris behind for the dusty outback. Although his film sympathetically raises challenging questions about Australia's first inhabitants and spiritual guardians, it is largely an epic romance between an iconic white Aussie bloke (Hugh Jackman) and a prim English lady (Nicole Kidman), set against a mythic landscape, which is foreign and frightening to one and embraced by the other. SM