The Lovely Bones (2010)

The Lovely Bones is based on a novel of the same name which I haven't read about a girl in the 1970's (Saoirse Ronan) who gets killed by a seemingly harmless man (Stanley Tucci) after trying to escape him and goes to a purgatory- like world meeting a mysterious heaven girl and watching her family (Mark Whalberg, Rachel Weisz, Susan Sarandon, and Rose McIver) mourn her and trying to find a way to kill her killer. This film was directed by Peter Jackson director of both The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit trilogies and he is excellent with the wonder and terror of the death world scenes and the suspenseful scenes with Stanley Tucci. The acting is also great Tucci is terrifying, Ronan is believable, Sarandan is funny, and Whalberg and Weisz do great with the drama. Overall it's a long and drawn out fantasy, drama, thriller with great performances, suspense, and family drama but on the flip side it has long periods of boredom, cheesy Christian imagery (and I'm a Christian), and it can get down right weird and morbid for a PG-13 movie. 6.5/10 focus on the suspense and drama, make it R Rated (which it comes close to being with Tucci's character), and cut down on the scenes with the mysterious heaven girl.

The Lovely Bones is the right movie if you like fantasy, melancholy, and experiments, Jackson's work is a very fine balanced mix of fantasy, drama, and thriller: a dead girl must find her way to find peace and let go of the past, a family in despair trying to cope with the loss and trying to find the body of her missing daughter. And there is, of course, the question if the killer will get his punishment.Mr. Jackson, of course, knows his business and the cast (Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg, Saoirse Ronan, Susan Sarandon, and Stanley Tucci as the sicko) just plays fine and touching. Also, the scenes playing in the afterworld are fine crafted eye-candy.Some viewers seem to feel offended by the mixture of child-abuse and -killing and the redeeming part of the after-world scenes, I personally don't see it that way, for me, The Lovely Bones is poetry in motion pictures. If you like to watch touching and emotional movies, this is one for you, you will get the whole range of human emotions: sadness, loss, anger, despair, happiness, love. For the connoisseur of the unusual, The Lovely Bones is - lovely.

Kudos to the set designer and location people. I grew up in Norristown, Pennsylvania shortly after the time that the story would have taken place. According to the book, that was the approximate location of where the story takes place. Everything in the set design and location is spot on as to what it looked like during that time frame. It was incredibly eerie because there is a farm across the street from the High School (Norristown Area HS)and a field where all of the dark parts of the story take place. They really did their homework and did a fabulous job of re-creating the setting of the story. Parts of the movie were shot in towns around Norristown/West Norriton, which really paints a picture of what the area looked like back then. Thanks for re-creating a part of the past and showing off my hometown (even though it is a fictional story).

This will go down in history as the most infuriating, abominable film I've ever seen. My expectation of this film at the start was that the victim would communicate with her family from the beyond, offering clues to help them solve the murder and capture the murderer, essentially seeing that justice is ultimately served for the victims of this psychopath before they are able to move on from purgatory. No. This is not what happens. At. All. The protagonist instead spends her time aimlessly floating around in a mystical lala land, totally disconnected from and seemingly unable or unwilling to communicate with the earthly world. Meanwhile, years are passing and everyone seems to want to move on from what happened apart from Susie's father who with no help from Susie eventually suspects the creepy neighbour. But when he follows him one night and sees him enter a cornfield, he gets beaten to near death by a school kid, making zero attempt to defend himself from the attack. That is pretty much the entirety of the father's contribution in trying to solve his daughter's murder for the whole movie. Later, the sister again with no help from Susie breaks into the neighbour's house just as he's plotting to kill her too and finds a crucial piece of evidence, the killer's journal plotting out all his prior murders. She barely escapes him and then with the evidence in hand, runs home and while the killer is still in his house packing for his escape, the director chooses this moment for the mother to arrive home and reunite with the family after abandoning them. So instead of this being the part where the police are urgently informed, tens of police cars come wailing down the street and an arrest is made, everyone just stands around, seemingly forever, wasting precious time just staring at each other in slow motion, while letting their daughter's murderer get away for NO REASON. Susie's body meanwhile is bound for a landfill while the psychic who can see dead people instead of yelling out and letting someone know to not bury her body lets Susie possess her so she can experience her "first kiss". This is much more important than using this crucial moment to phone the police, stop Susie's body from being dumped and buried in a landfill, or you know, catch the killer before he flees the state, who mind you, takes an entire hour in slow motion to dump the body. So it's not as if they didn't have abundant time and opportunity to call the police and get the guy arrested. But alas, it seems no one, not even the victim herself is interested in catching the killer in this movie. If she did then she would have asked the clairvoyant to call the police instead of using her to kiss her teenage crush. But let's face it, if this movie was at all interested in a fair resolution for child murder victims then Susie could have reached out to the clairvoyant for help at any time. Why Susie even bothered hanging around in purgatory when she did nothing the whole time, I'll never know. Eventually, his victims all meet up in heaven, dancing around joyfully among fields of sunflowers, seemingly celebrating their death, while their killer goes on to live to a ripe old age presumably taking a lot more victims with him. This movie is downright depraved where death is almost celebrated no matter how brutal, horrific and unjust the murder and psychopathic murderers are allowed to get away with it despite how easy it would have been for police to arrest the guy on several occasions. An utterly atrocious movie.