This mother-and-son couple (sometimes a triple, if they pick up another nasty type along their merry way) travel around the country insinuating their way into people's lives, bilking and killing them. It's based on a true story and it's done in a documentary style, with "witnesses" being "interviewed" on camera and so forth.
I don't really know how accurate it is historically, not having followed the actual case -- two tawdry pinheads who see others as nothing more than targets. In real life, Mrs. Kimes, like some other people who are into manipulation and power, was probably stomach-churning. There's a pun lurking in there somewhere. "Kimes" = "chyme." "Stomach-churning." (An awful pun, come to think of it. Can I take it back?)
The movie is played for laughs. Murders take place off screen. Everyone overacts as if projecting to the farther rows of the Colosseum. Especially Judy Davis. She wears this TERRIFIC black wig that comes across like a Bishop's miter. The gyri of her overly made-up face constantly rearrange themselves like a holographic relief map of various rugged areas -- Bashkortistan, Nepal, The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes -- morphed from one to another by computer graphics. My God, I never knew there were so many expressions available to the human puss. Her gestures are equally broad and her voice changes from wheedling to shrieking in a picosecond as circumstances demand.
Her proper-looking son on the other hand, though obedient, is reserved and efficient in a more ruthless, less theatrical way.
They must have had a lot of fun making this movie about two serial killers. All the stops are pulled out. If you liked "Mommie Dearest" you ought to love this one. They could use the same tag line -- "The Biggest Mother of Them All."
I don't really know how accurate it is historically, not having followed the actual case -- two tawdry pinheads who see others as nothing more than targets. In real life, Mrs. Kimes, like some other people who are into manipulation and power, was probably stomach-churning. There's a pun lurking in there somewhere. "Kimes" = "chyme." "Stomach-churning." (An awful pun, come to think of it. Can I take it back?)
The movie is played for laughs. Murders take place off screen. Everyone overacts as if projecting to the farther rows of the Colosseum. Especially Judy Davis. She wears this TERRIFIC black wig that comes across like a Bishop's miter. The gyri of her overly made-up face constantly rearrange themselves like a holographic relief map of various rugged areas -- Bashkortistan, Nepal, The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes -- morphed from one to another by computer graphics. My God, I never knew there were so many expressions available to the human puss. Her gestures are equally broad and her voice changes from wheedling to shrieking in a picosecond as circumstances demand.
Her proper-looking son on the other hand, though obedient, is reserved and efficient in a more ruthless, less theatrical way.
They must have had a lot of fun making this movie about two serial killers. All the stops are pulled out. If you liked "Mommie Dearest" you ought to love this one. They could use the same tag line -- "The Biggest Mother of Them All."