The Lovely Bones

Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones” got terrible reviews since it was released, and that’s why I didn’t see it in theaters and waited until it was available on DVD, although I had bought the audio book and listened to it and was very enthralled by the brutal story of the 14 year-old girl raped and killed by a pedophile and then watching the life of her loved ones (and hated one) through the years that followed. The brutality of the story, told from a young girl’s point of view, who still has her innocence and dreams, is very original and heartbreaking.

I can see why the movie got back reviews. Frankly I would have given it a “C” as well if I was a critic. I think Peter Jackson paid too much attention on the computer graphics and how beautiful the shots looked, that he forgot how to tell the story. The pacing of the movie was very strange, way too slow most of the time. Too much time was spent on slow shots that had way too much sentiment, and it felt like watching a Chinese soap opera most of the time. In fact, I had to fast forward through many scenes because they were excruciatingly slow.

So what would have been the better way to capture the sentiment in the book? I think what literature does best that movies fail to do is best exemplified in this movie. It’s how the emotion evolves over long time passage. Part of the wonders of the book is the opportunity for us to see how Salmon watches her family through the years. How she aches for them, how she wants Ray Singh her boyfriend, and how precious her moment with him is at the end when she borrows her best friend's body. But somehow when all this was expressed on the screen, it lost its power, and we had to understand everything intellectually rather than emotionally.

There are a couple of sequences I really liked in the movie, though. The scene that Harvey attacks Salmon in the underground shed is pretty scary, and I was worried that Jackson would show the ugly and disturbing images of Harvey attacking her. But instead, he shows her getting away. For a moment I thought she actually does get a way. But the tone of the sequence remains horrifying, and soon after we realize the world around her is different. It looks like heaven (or hell), the lights are extremely bright, and the streets are eerily empty. Then we know she has already been killed by Harvey.

Another scene I liked is where her sister Lindsey finds Harvey's journal under his bedroom floor. There is an intercut sequence of her carefully putting the wood back in place, while Harvey is listening intently in the basement. She inevitably makes a sound, and the chase ensues. I thought it was a pretty original scene.

Kickass

I have been telling everyone that “Kickass” is American Pie meets Goodfellas. I believe it’s a pretty accurate observation. And that’s why I didn’t like it. I feel there are two completely different stories in two completely different styles, and one contantly reminds the viewer that the other wasn’t real. These two different styles simply don’t work well together.

I do have to give the credit to the filmmakers to attempt such combination for originality. I am notoriously well-known for resisting new things, so maybe I am wrong to think it doesn’t work. After all the movie got good reviews from critics and a lot of people liked it.

The movie tells the story of a highschool teenager who wants to be a superhero. He buys a superhero outfit and starts roaming the streets to do good, only to get his ass kicked. The antagonist of the movie is a ruthless gangster, whose son shares the same ambition as out main character. The catalyst of the movie is Nicholas Cage, along with his daughter Hit Girl, who has been framed by the gangster and done time in prison. His wife became extremely depressed and died of overdose while he was in prison, but somehow managed to give birth to Hit Girl. So now the father and the daughter are teamed up to revenge. Their goal is to kill the gangster.

When our main character comes across Cage and Hit Girl, he realizes that he is never gonna be a true superhero, in spite of the fact that some luck has brought him Internet fame. In the meantime, the gangster Frank mistakes the damages Cage has done our main character’s doing. Eventually, our main character and Cage and hit girl are pushed to a corner. Cage dies, and our main guy and the hit girl team up to defeat Frank. At the end, we see Frank's son has now become the new villain and a sequel is implied.

I thought it was interesting to see how a normal teenager with the desire of being recognized and getting the girl of his dream attempt to become the superhero, and when reality kicks in, he realizes that there is no way he can be one. I also like the idea of his meeting someone he considers the true superhero, but I wish the rest of the movie (from midpoint on) was about how the main character changes through close interaction with Cage and Hit Girl. I lost interest in the movie from the midpoint on, because the characters remained disconnected with each other, and at many places, our main character became so passive I lost interest in him altogether. Yes, he does take action at the very end, but it's way too late for me to care about him.

It’s interesting to see the style of high school comedy and bloody gangster dramas in one movie. When Kickass gets stabbed in the stomach and then ran over by a car, the scene is so brutal that it shocked me. It got my interest right away, but somehow when the movie got back to the tone of High School comedy and then went back and forth between the two styles, it lost me because I didn't really believe in the world anymore.