The Missing Man.

I saw Titanic when I was 11 years old. Like most people in the planet I became truly obsessed with it. Curiously it happened around the same time when I'd become truly interested in films and wanted my life to revolve around them.

Part of my self-education consisted of me going to the video club and renting up to eight tapes to stay in with during the weekend.

One of my first missions was to watch every movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet. One weekend I went home with Heavenly Creatures and Total Eclipse.

Watching Kate and Leo take on homosexual affairs after having watched them play the ultimate heterosexual couple was all sorts of shocking. Of course back then, I was aware of my own sexual orientation and like any prepubescent was both terrified and excited about the possibilities it offered me.

I remember watching Heavenly Creatures locked up in a room where to this day my parents probably thought was my porn space. It wasn't.

I remember thinking quite clearly that I assumed that any signs of homosexuality in the media I consumed would immediately point the people around me towards the feelings I had inside.

I vividly remember what then became my favorite shot in Heavenly Creatures,

It was the violent transformation of Pauline (Melanie Lynskey) into Orson Welles from The Third Man. I too understood why Juliet (Kate Winslet) saw this. I too was conflicted inside, I too felt like I needed to replace my own desires and fantasies with socially adequate figures.

The violent way in which Welles attacks her makes clear how Juliet is trying to fight something within her she doesn't understand.

I saw this movie for the first time almost fifteen years ago and this image remained burned in my subconscious ever since.
I never tried to commit a murder or developed violent tendencies, instead I chose to watch this moment as a life affirming instant, where Juliet's love for the movies expresses itself in such potent way that she fears its powers yet finds comfort in their magic, even if, in this case, it wants to kill her.

In the very same way the movies have remained with me and sheltered me from all fears, doubts and even sadness, they are the one thing in life I consider to be truly heavenly.

PS:

This,

reminded me of this...

This post is part of Nat's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series.

The Lovely Bones ***

Director: Peter Jackson
Cast: Saoirse Ronan, Rachel Weisz, Mark Wahlberg, Susan Sarandon
Stanley Tucci, Rose McIver, Nikki SooHoo, Carolyn Dando
Michael Imperioli, Thomas McCarthy, Reece Ritchie

Based on Alice Sebold's bestseller "The Lovely Bones" tells the story of Susie Salmon (Ronan) a fourteen year old girl who is raped and murdered by her neighbor George Harvey (Tucci) on December, 6, 1973.
"Back when people believed things like that didn't happen" narrates Susie from beyond the grave as the film follows the aftermath her murder has in the lives of her family and friends.
Stuck in a sort of limbo ("the blue horizon between heaven and earth" she calls it) she seeks redemption for her crime and tries to comfort her family by communicating with them.
In that way we meet her mother Abigail (a terrific, understated Weisz) who has denial issues, her father Jack (Wahlberg who had rarely been so moving),who becomes obsessed with solving the murder, sister Lindsey (McIver), little brother Buckley (Christian Thomas Ashdale) and crazy grandma Lynn (Sarandon who despite being the kind of character who always has a lit cigarette and a drink, remains compellingly watchable in the actress' hands).
Coming from an extensive special effects background Jackson once again tries to push boundaries creating Susie's personal heaven.
The results consist of majestic New Zealand vistas enhanced with computer effects which represent Susie's mood.
Jackson comes up with some clever setpieces, but there's nothing we hadn't seen before.
The most spectacular "effect" in this in-between is Ronan herself. Giving yet another breathtaking performance, the actress turns Susie into a girl next door. The kind of which you would've noticed if she went missing. She's sweet in scenes where she tries to reach out to her father (she's spectacular with Wahlberg) and punches your gut in her scenes with Tucci.
Ronan's ability to act like someone her own age seems easy to achieve, but definitely requires a special effort because child actors are always thought to be playing themselves.
Most special of all are her reactions with Reece Ritchie, who plays the guy Susie has a crush on. Her blushes are honest and real and when she escapes his kiss, but then accepts an invitation from Harvey, she doesn't become an accomplice in her own death, but acts like a girl that age would. When faced with the prospects of love she doubts herself and naturally trusts an adult more.
Whoever ended up adapting Sebold's book would've had trouble encompassing the author's rejection of the howcatchem and her delicate portrayal of grief. Jackson is no exception and sometimes he dedicates all his resources towards creating unjustified tension and police drama (Imperioli plays the detective in charge).
Scenes involving Harvey are all overwrought and storybook creepy, Tucci overdoes it by using every creepy trick in the notebook. Suspicious hairstyle, conniving mustache, weird accent, weirder walk. It's a surprise that it takes them so long to even think of him as a suspect.
But this makes sense when you think that the whole film is seen through Susie's perspective. When someone else becomes suspicious of the quiet Mr. Harvey, it's not an adult, or even a human being, but the Salmon family dog; who probably cared for Susie.
Maybe the Mr. Harvey we're seeing has nothing to do with how adults see him and Susie-being a child and all-overdoes the creep factor so that we too get to hate this man.
If this was Jackson's intention it gets lost from time to time in the war between style and substance he holds throughout the movie. "The Lovely Bones" has some serious elliptical problems and some characters act out of seeming deus ex machina.
But most of this can be forgiven for Ronan, who makes this almost heavenly.

The Ten Movies That Defined My Decade.

5. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring
(Peter Jackson, 2001)

When Sam (Sean Astin) and Frodo (Elijah Wood) decide they will leave the fellowship behind and go to Mordor on their own I couldn't believe it.
When minutes later the screen just faded to black and "directed by Peter Jackson" appeared my jaw fell to the floor.
Before entering the theater that December afternoon almost eight years ago, I had an inkling of what J.R.R. Tolkien's books were all about (although I'd ignored my father's advice that I read them since I was a child).
However I wasn't expecting for a movie cliffhanger to be like the ones on TV. Sometimes we have to wait a few months to know what our favorite characters will go through, but a whole year?
And when it had been this damn good!
Of course during the next two years I always attended the first screening of each chapter on the day of the premiere and in the meantime obsessed about the books (read the three and "The Hobbit" in a few weeks), the music and the Oscars they stacked.
I still am pissed about Ian McKellen losing his Oscar...
But the movies worked on more than a personal level, they reminded me of cinema's ability to take us back to a prime state of wonder, almost like being a child where you just can't believe what you're watching and are too fascinated to start wondering the machinations behind it.
The movies, not so surprisingly, became a sort of tradition in my house for half the decade. We would religiously watch the previous chapter(s) before going to bed and running to the theaters the next day to see the new one.
"The Return of the King" premiered here on a Christmas day (the only one of the trilogy they didn't open on the worlwide premiere) and it truly was the best present anyone-OK a film buff mostly-could ask for.
Now that the decade is over I look back and realize that most of the images I have from this movie don't correspond to the final, awards laden, chapter, but to its humble start which tremulously came to the world and changed it forever.