The Lovely bones

Director: Peter Jackson

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Saoirse Ronan, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon

Year: 2010

Genre: Drama / Thriller

Rating:

Cinema-Reader – 7.9
IMDB – 6.7
FilmAffinity – 6.2

(Click picture for Trailer)

Cinema-Reader Synopsis:

Susie (Irish young actress Saoirse Ronan) is a 14^th year-old girl murdered under brutal circumstances by her enigmatic and sombre neighbourhood Mr. Harvey (Stanley Tucci). However, she remains in the in-between, a world full of magic and beauty from where she’s watching over her family and even her murdered which keeps haunting her even in the afterlife.

However, Susie’s devoted father (Mark Wahlberg) still determined to find out who’s her daughter assassin even if his marriage with Abigail (Rachel Weisz) falls apart due to the sorrows caused by the cruel happening.

When finally all fingers points towards Mr. Harvey, just a clue proving he was involved within Susie murder is missing.

The final countdowns started as his evil and perturbed mind has led him to set his eyes over a new victim, Susie’s little sister.

Cinema-Reader Review:

Lord of the Ring Director Peter Jackson is up again with a film based on a novel (Alice Sebold's bestseller). However, in this adaptation he rules out epic to focus on an inner story full of magic and imagination.

Although panned by both critics and public, his visionary conception of filming makes this movie stand out from other clapped previously by critics within the same contest.

For instance, last year Spike Jonze’s Where the wild things are also spins around an imaginary world that blossoms out of the imaginative mind of a child. Nevertheless this movie deals with afterlife and death, the magic of this in-between world made up by Susie (Saoirse Ronan) and captured by Jackson seems more fulfilled, more imaginative rather than Jonze’s.

Plus the performance on Stanley Tucci’s side (aka Devil weras Prada), acknowledged with Academy Nomination on Supporting Role category, boosts the whole movie to an upper level that no many people has been able to see so far.

For the record, by saying this I’m not saying that The Lovely Bones is a master peace and the audience is a bunch of yahoos with no clue about what cinema is. Nothing further than that.

However, I’d like to add that, and despite other comments posted by the one writing defending the value of a good script over the visual impact of a movie, here the visual beauty through Jackson’s glass deserves more than rotten tomatoes.