{"id":6738,"date":"2010-01-24T18:46:33","date_gmt":"2010-01-25T02:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=6738"},"modified":"2010-01-24T20:32:55","modified_gmt":"2010-01-25T04:32:55","slug":"the-lovely-bones-peter-jackson-2009-usanew-zealand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=6738","title":{"rendered":"The Lovely Bones (Peter Jackson, 2009): USA\/New Zealand"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy<\/a>.\u00a0 Viewed at Camino Real Cinema.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 The Lovely Bones<\/em><\/a> is the hope that grows from the tragic events of one American family.<\/p>\n

Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is an average teenage girl, growing up in the early 70’s,\u00a0who dreams of a career and of\u00a0her first kiss.\u00a0 For her birthday she receives a new 110 Instamatic camera with a box full of film.\u00a0 Susie sets about aimlessly shooting pictures of everything around her, running through the entire box of film, and fantasizing about a career as a photographer.<\/p>\n

Susie’s dreams never materialize, since she is soon stalked, raped, and brutally killed by\u00a0her neighbor George Harvey (Stanley Tucci).\u00a0 Suddenly Susie finds herself in a spiritual\u00a0limbo – or purgatory as it were, where she\u00a0witnesses the\u00a0slow unraveling of\u00a0her family’s lives, and also the activities of her former killer – who is preparing for his next victim.<\/p>\n

Jack Salmon (Mark Wahlberg) is Susie’s dad, and he is committed to finding her killer, even at the collapse of his marriage to Abigail (Rachel Weisz).\u00a0 Abigail’s glamourous\u00a0mother, grandma Lynn\u00a0(Susan Sarandon), soon steps in to lend a hand and some unwelcome advice – which is\u00a0mainly to ” accept the facts and move on.”<\/p>\n

The Salmon family have every imaginable conflict come their way, and wait ’til you see what becomes of grandma!\u00a0 Somehow they survive, and this is what the film is about.\u00a0 It is about forgiveness, acceptance, personal choices and mis-directed anger.\u00a0 The horror is merely the sub-text of the story, with the primary theme being moving forward and moving on.<\/p>\n

The cast is solid, with Stanley Tucci in a stand-out performance,\u00a0as\u00a0the serial killer with a\u00a0calm, methodical demeanor.\u00a0 Susan Sarandon, who never seems to disappoint us, holds her own, as the shallow but loving\u00a0grandma Lynn, with hidden\u00a0inner strength.<\/p>\n

There are some questionable moments, such as when the family sits down to dinner without Susie.\u00a0 They discuss\u00a0the absence of their fourteen year old\u00a0casually enough to get through dinner, yet immediately after Jack is suddenly panic stricken, to the point of over-reacting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0There is a bit of a “McGuffin” within the plot concerning a certain photograph, when towards the end it\u00a0builds\u00a0\u00a0 up\u00a0suspense, but\u00a0falls a little flat, leaving one feeling a bit cheated.<\/p>\n

Other than that, Susie’s celestial journey is\u00a0quite\u00a0inspiring and also visually stunning.\u00a0 Overall a beautiful and uplifting film, and conversely a suspense driven\u00a0highly-charged thriller.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy.\u00a0 Viewed at Camino Real Cinema. \u00a0 The Lovely Bones is the hope that grows from the tragic events of one American family. Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan) is an average teenage girl, growing up in the early 70’s,\u00a0who dreams of a career and of\u00a0her first kiss.\u00a0 For her birthday she receives a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}