Movie Details
| Title: | The Lovely Bones | |
| Director: | Peter Jackson | |
| Year: | 2010 | |
| Genre: | Ghost | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.05.10 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (8)
- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
- The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies
- The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug
- King Kong
- The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King
- The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
- They Shall Not Grow Old
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.05.10 | DVR | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2010 Behold DVRfest 2010! I'm getting back to my roots this year, meaning I have 6 random movies on my DVR, some of which have been there since June, and I'll be clearing them out over the next two nights. Traditionally this has been a time for me to reflect on all the movies I saw over the past year - the one-person festival serves as an anniversary of this website as well as an excuse to clear the DVR and to spend the weekend watching movies - but the past three years or so I really haven't seen that many so tonight's going to be more about seeing if I stay awake than any long pontifications on the nature of my movie-watching habits. Still, I'm glad to be celebrating my 6th year of cataloging every movie I see and have 6 pretty random films lined up for the occasion. First up is this Peter Jackson movie that I never got around to seeing upon release. I really don't even know much about it (picking the genre was hard!), just that it had pretty lukewarm reception and now he's kind of retreating back to Tolkein territory... usually not a great sign. I'm still hopefull though so let's get this show on the road! it's 10:45 and I've had a pretty long week at work. Here's to me not falling asleep and waking up on the couch at 5am with my contacts stuck to my eyelids! Back after the movie... Huh. Well... It looked pretty. Stanley Tucci was in it more than I thought he would be, which is half good and half bad. The good because I thought he was the only actor doing any work on screen but bad because he was such an... easy choice. I think maybe if I was bald or balding I'd be mad at this film because he's the only hair-challenged guy in this and he's 100% creepo child-killer. And you see like 18 shots of his thinning pate before you even see his face. But aside from him (and a cameo from some avid book-buyer in a trenchcoat in the very beginning) i kind of felt like everyone just had to stare off laconically for the whole movie while the girl whispered at the audience. This was one of those movies that seemed to play in slow motion, which really doesn't make sense considering Jackson's previous work (excusing King Kong perhaps, which also plodded along but at least had action sequences to spice things up). And there's plenty of his "trademark" extreme close-ups and wide angle lenses when it's creepy time but all the effect shots and really everything else after the girl dies (which happens quite soon) felt like a test to see when I'd start dozing. I think it may be one of those cases where the book should've remained a book. The story immediately felt disconnected for me and wasn't helped at all by Wahlberg who I guess hasn't been pushed as an actor before or since Boogie Nights with a side order of I Heart Huckabees (Maybe he'll be good in The Fighter, he's in that right?) who I never empathize with probably because the ghostly communion scenes are honestly a little confusing. I never really got how she got to see back into our world and only really saw the reflection thing at the end when there seemed to be a whole big scene building tension toward Tucci being stopped from pushing a certain piece of evidence into a safe hiding place but then Hitchcock's bomb on the bus actually blows up followed immediately by an incident so arbitrary that it gives no pay-off at all. Parts were pretty though. I guess there's that. It's just sad when I remind myself of Heavanly Creatures and The Frighteners and compare them to this. Don't really know what happened but it's a pretty big mis-step. Moving on, an old-school horror movie I taped off TCM during Halloween weekend. I've done this for the past several years in hopes of getting a movie just like this to fill out my DVRfest schedule and was kind of surprised to see this year that, aside from the Boris Karloff marathon where all those movies run together for me, this is really the only one that stood out as something I hadn't seen. I saw the re-make in the theater for some reason and left not happy. Let's hope the original is more fun and less Shannon Elizabeth trying to act. |
