The Lovely Bones (2009)

Directed by Peter Jackson / Written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Peter Jackson (based on a novel by Alice Sebold)






I love the way this movie sounded: The voice editing was beautifully done and I really enjoyed the music. The story was good as well, even though it was unneccessarily heavily foreshadowed - despite that it still did manage to have some small yet signifigant surprises in the end. I liked what this movie had to say about family and loss and, like the title says, how they grow bones around that loss, creating new life around the shadow of a tragedy. This movie wasn't really about Susan Salmon, it was about her family and friends. What disturbed me was the occasional stiffness of the 3D-animation and -backgrounds: This was definately not the best CG I've seen. The imagery was fascinating, though, yet it's finest moment was not in any of the digital scenes but, in my opinion, in the scene where the murderer bathes himself clean. I was fascinated by that and some of the other visual ideas, for example the scene where Susie steps inside her murderers house and discovers the other victims. I love how it shows the whole house as a tomb or a memoir to all the killings he's committed. The beautiful Saoirse Ronan did a good job acting, and I think we'll be hearing more about her in the future. The actors did an all-around good job, but the deepness of the tragedy didn't show on all of them. Something about Mark Wahlberg disturbed me as insincere. Holly Golightly was plain annoying, stereotypic and seemed like a useless character. Why was she in this film at all?