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The Lovely Bones (2009)
A landscape of dreams
This is an odd film, and oddly touching.
I have not seen any of Peter Jackson's films, and, I imagine, this one uses the same sort of technology that his other fantastical films employ, and that adds to its eeriness.
The oddness of The Lovely Bones probably is the consequence of its intermingling two genres. The over story is a typical sexual murder, search, and revenge story. But that plot spawns another, the fantastical account of the murdered girl in her transition from life to death and from the attachments of earth to the bliss of heaven. The problem for the murdered girl, who serves, also, as the omniscient narrator of the entire movie, and as a powerful guiding force for the living who knew her and loved her, is to disconnect herself from life by the accomplishment of unfinished business.
What gives the film peculiarity, depth, and resonance is the subtext, which is conveyed by the sort of narrative displacement common to dreams. Traditional psychoanalytic interpretation suggests that the murdered girl's father's guilty, repressed, inadmissible incestuous desire for his daughter is displaced onto her killer, and it is resolved by the end of the film because of his search for the killer, his own both real and symbolic brutal punishment, and the restoration of his marriage and his reintegration as a husband.
The murdered girl is played by Saoirse Ronan, and without her there would not be much reason to see the film, but because she plays the girl, the movie is worth watching, as she always is. The rest of the cast is quite good.
Man of the Year (2006)
Time, unfortunately, has vindicated this film
I am not a great fan of Robin Williams, although I recognize the immensity and diversity of his talent. And I do not think much of Barry Levinson. But this film is prescient, except that Tom Dobbs, unlike Trump, is a decent man.