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The Lovely Bones |  | Director: Peter Jackson
Actors: Saoirse Ronan, Mark Wahlberg, Rachel Weisz, Stanley Tucci, Susan Sarandon
Studio: Paramount
Category: DVD
List Price: $29.99
Buy Used: $4.08
as of 9/6/2010 16:39 PDT details
You Save: $25.91 (86%)
New (36) Used (38) from $4.08
Seller: goHastings
Rating:  146 reviews
Sales Rank: 1051
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Language: English (Unknown)
Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Region: 1
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Running Time: 136 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.5
MPN: 097363524243
UPC: 097363524243
EAN: 0097363524243
ASIN: B001QOGYAO
Theatrical Release Date: December 11, 2009
Release Date: April 20, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
After a fourteen-year-old girl is murdered, she reaches out from the afterlife to help her family find her killer and move on with their lives.
Amazon.com
Director Peter Jackson takes a personal, risky leap in his direction of the film version of Alice Sebold's bestselling novel The Lovely Bones. Yet the leap pays off, in emotional depth and riveting visuals that transport the viewer to other worlds--even ones the viewer may not want to visit. The Lovely Bones is lofted by its star-making performance by the young Saoirse Ronan (Atonement), who plays Susie Salmon, the 14-year-old girl who is murdered early in the film, and who narrates the action from her "in-between place" after dying but before going to heaven. Ronan makes Susie as earthy and awkward as any young teen, yet her presence, and her gorgeous pale eyes, remind viewers that she's otherworldly too. The Lovely Bones takes some big departures from the book, as many critics have pointed out, but it works well on its own merits. The drama involves how (even whether) Susie's family will recover after her ghastly murder, and what happens to her killer and the futile-seeming search for justice and closure. The entire cast is stellar, including Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz as Susie's nearly destroyed parents; the composed young New Zealand actress Rose McIver, who plays Susie's younger sister, whom Susie watches grow up to be the young woman that Susie will never get to be; and Susan Sarandon, the boozy, wisecracking grandmother who may or may not be able to help keep the family from splintering into a million pieces. The other true standout is Stanley Tucci, almost unrecognizable as the quiet, creepy neighbor who kills Susie, obsessing over every detail and perhaps having left a whole trail of gruesome murders in his shambling wake. Jackson's deft direction keeps the mourning humans moving along believably, numbly, and gives breathtaking life to the afterlife, in scenes of fantasy and dread that recall his Heavenly Creatures. The film is rated PG-13 but is not recommended for younger teenagers because of its intense subject matter, though handled delicately. --A.T. Hurley
Stills from The Lovely Bones (Click for larger image)
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 146
 Beautifully Done August 27, 2010
Kazza
I gave the movie a try since I fell in love with the book when it first came out. I think Peter Jackson did a fantastic job with this film. The beauty in the film and the way some of the scenes were filmed deserves acknowledgment. Obviously this is a rather dark subject and at times a dark film, but I think that it is still enjoyable. The audience probably appreciates the lack of some rather specific and horrific descriptions from the book. I recommend giving it a try, especially if you read the book and liked it.
Serial Killers Must Die August 17, 2010
Aurum Rabosa (The Great Basin)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
17 years ago we drew slips of paper for our term paper assignments in forensic science at Harvard. I got the hardest, serial killers. What I learned still haunts me to this day. The press is constantly getting it wrong mixing up mass murders with serial killers. Serial killers get a degree of pleasure I seriously doubt we normal people can understand. They're wired wrong. But once they discover that the dominance and control they exert over their victims gives them the ultimate thrill they cannot stop. They rehearse, they practice, they study, they strive for perfection in kidnapping and murder. If caught they can no longer enjoy their ultimate thrill. They can only lie in their prison bunk, masturbating to their memories, awaiting execution. Think about the ultimate thrill, is it jumping out of an airplne for your first parachute jump, is it climbing El Capitan, is it scuba diving to maximum depth and looking up to see the surface hoping the bends will not defeat you, is it surfing a 60 foot wave, is it riding a bike on the edge of a cliff, or racing it down a steep moutain through the trees? A serial killer's rush is greater. Alice Sebold must have some profound insight into the psyche of the serial killer. Now I have to read her book.
 What a beautiful movie ! August 13, 2010
Gilberto Dotti Cesa (Flores da Cunha, RS Brasil)
I read a review in Highdef Digest by Aaron Pack and this movie received 1,5 stars. I just can say this "reviwer" doesn't have the minimum conditions to write about movies. The lovely bones has a good story, great visual, and sometimes it is tense, sometimes it is sad, but always very beautiful. Sorry Aaron Pack, you are in the wrong work !!!
"the world without me in it" August 9, 2010
Only-A-Child
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"The Lovely Bones" is based on Alice Sebold's hugely popular 2002 novel of the same title. Like almost all adaptations it takes some liberties with the source novel's story, but I think it manages to preserve the essence; so that you feel the story more even if you do not understand it as precisely. Unfortunately most of the comments and reviews are rather useless for anyone thinking about viewing the film or for someone looking to better understand what they just viewed. So here are a few random points to consider.
The film is basically a blend of "The Dust Factory" (2004) and "Speak" (2004); with elements of "Silent Hill" (2006) and "What Dreams May Come" (1998). If you like that type of stuff you should get off on "The Lovely Bones". If this sort of story is not your cup-of-tea there is still enough quality acting and imagery to make it time well spent for a technical film buff.
As in the novel, the entire story is told from the point-of-view (POV) of 14-year-old Susie Salmon who became the victim of a serial killer. The main character tells her story in flashbacks and subdued voice-over, as she observes the world from a personalized transitional realm between earth and heaven. Looking into the world much like the penguin in the family's snow globe, as her grieving family tries to cope with her death and her brazen killer goes largely unnoticed.
The distanced voice-over gives Susie more dimensionality; her calm tone is often contradicted by what is happening in the frame and it contrasts nicely with the shallow (but normal) teen qualities of her character before death. "Depth" is an important symbolic element in the story, which is full of juxtapositions between closed places (sinkholes, basement, a compartment under the floorboards, dollhouses, ships in bottles) and bucolic vistas. There is an especially effective montage early in the film as the editor cuts back and forth between the trapped Susie and her unsuspecting family at the dinner table; with each cut Susie looks smaller and younger.
"Atonement's" Saoirse Ronan plays Susie, and her subtly expressive performance elevates the film to "must see" status. A young actor this instinctively talented and effortlessly charming only comes along about once in a decade, and rarely are they matched with a role this perfect for them at a particular point in their careers. Ronan should have a lengthy and very successful acting career but it is unlikely that she will again play a character that is such a perfect physical and emotional fit. For serious film buffs this is one of those historical moments.
Ronan's performance transcends the genre, unexpectedly causing the film to work as a very affecting coming-of-age story. Susie clings to a living world that is lost to her in much the same way that Georgia Lass did in the "Dead Like Me" series, and in the process experiences things that positively change her, even after her death. Allowing her to reconcile things and to even appreciate "the lovely bones that had grown around my absence" as she comes to terms with "the world without me in it".
Director Peter Jackson chooses to emphasize her in-between world with a lot of expressionistic special effects visuals. While this was not a point of emphasis in Sebold's novel, film is a visual medium and these provide an opportunity to introduce symbolic connections between the two worlds and to showcase Susie's journey. Even more importantly, Jackson nicely fills the frame with Susie's innocent features as she bravely navigates her strange land with looks of wonder and on occasion looks of terror. Using a 14-year-old girl amplifies the emotional power of this stuff, it simply would not have been as effective with someone a different age. Lurking beneath his psychological thriller storyline, Jackson steers the film toward a rather deep allegorical take on an existential theme. It explores the isolation of someone as they realize that they no longer belong in the world.
I am not a Peter Jackson fan; his films, from minimalist efforts like "Heavenly Creatures" to exercises in excess like "King Kong", have never really connected with me. And he was probably not the ideal choice for a film like "The Lovely Bones". But his only real misstep here, the insertion of Susan Sarandon's comically overplayed grandmother into the middle of the story, was not significant enough to be a fatal flaw. And another director might not have chosen to emphasize the process of Susie growing stronger, which I found to be the most appropriate emphasis for a "practical" adaptation of the original story.
Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.
 The Lovely Bones. August 5, 2010
Sushi Girl -Laura (Gainesville, Florida)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The Lovely Bones, is a book written by Alice Sebold back in 2002. A book which caused much controversy over its subject matter of rape,and murder and its aftermath on a family and community. Its also a book that is much loved by its fans and I have to say that when I read it one of the first things that popped into my head when I finished it was "This will be a hard book to turn into a movie" and I was right. Peter Jackson, of Lord of the Rings fame, BUT who also did Heavenly Creatures a film which I absolutely love. I thought that because of the subject matter of Heavenly Creatures, young girls, murder, deep emotional observations and characters...that he would be able to tackle The Lovely Bones on the same level and skill. I was wrong.
The movie sets looked good, I really got that "we are in the 70's" vibe from it. Outfits, houses, knick knacks, hairstyles, cars, posters on the walls, it all gave us a good solid place to start from. It was cast pretty good as well, Mark Wahlberg belongs in that era for sure. Susie Salmon played by Saoirse Ronan can carry a drama as we have seen in Atonement (Widescreen Edition), and the rest of the cast was adequate. Too bad that none of them really needed to have any acting skills, because Peter Jackson didnt write a movie that required them.
All the skills needed was a good set designer, hair and makeup and CGI expertise.
This movie basically just took the story from the book, barely touched on the good parts or left them out all together, and then expected us to connect some dots that were never on the same page at the same time. Even if you had never read the book, you would leave feeling like something was missing. There was no character development, no crafting of the sense of Susie and her family and what they meant to eachother. There was no descriptions of the community in which this horrible crime took place, or any in depth look at the investigation itself! The scene where her mom and dad are in bed and crying about how she is gone forever...flat and deviod of any real emotions. We arent shown how this affected this family except for the father breaking his ships in a bottle and even that was empty.
As for the "heaven" that Susie ends up in, I can only say that I was hoping that my TV had suddenly switched to cable and I watching some horrible Disney Channel tweens daydream while she was in math class. I felt like Lisa Frank Lisa Frank Motivational Stickers - Over 1500!decided to direct this instead of Jackson.
The characters of Ray, Ruth, Detective Fenerman, Buckley, Lindsey, Holly, and even Abby and Jack were never explored!! Even the main character of Susie? What do we get from what they showed us? Barely anything for us to sit down for 2 hours and whatever minutes and care about the outcome.
The Lovely Bones needed to be made into a movie, but it should have been done ina way where it honored the book and how powerful it was. This version, didnt. I cannot recommend this to any fan of the book, or even someone looking for a dramatic movie to watch.
a reviewer from [..] said it best "The Lovely Bones is pretty much what I anticipated from the director of an epic trilogy of plus-sized fantasy flicks and an oversized remake of a classic, lean thriller. Jackson is so in love with the material and the premise that he can't resist expanding upon its themes, conflating them with his own ideas on grief, mortality, and the rich fantasy life of teenage girls. The film veers uneasily between entrancing poetry and wrongheaded melodrama, stopping along the way for left-field slapstick and old school cheap thrills"
Showing reviews 1-5 of 146
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