Personally speaking, I can’t wait to watch life tear you apart.

I’ve never found Nicole Kidman particularly attractive. Part of that is no doubt due to my instinctive aversion to any vagina that has been sullied by that psychotically-grinning, couch-bouncing, Thetan-nuzzling nutjob to whom she was once wed. But it’s probably more about how damned cold she is as an actress. It’s the same issue I once had with Charlize Theron, before she showed her chops in Monster; her beauty always seemed to lack passion, or at least obscure it.

But in Stoker, I absolutely loved her. And it was all down to this moment, this scrap of performance where she took full ownership of that icy persona and channeled it into an expression of bitterness and spite so visceral that it made a generally dream-like, otherworldly film snap into sharp focus.

Yeah, I’m a pervert, so I loved all the saddle-shoed, incestuous piano-playing and murder, but it was Kidman’s magnificent little monologue that made Stoker one of my favorite films of 2013.