Below are Mini Reviews from Cineman Syndicate for two films opening on December 11, 2009.

THE LOVELY BONES. Far from the shudder-and-cry experience of reading Alice Sebold's novel, this lava lamp of a movie gives Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings Trilogy) a chance to fashion another world. Unfortunately, his vision of the afterlife for Susie Salmon (Ronan), the fourteen-year-old murdered by a neighbor (Stanley Tucci) in 1973, is pretty cheesy -- akin to remnants of an Age of Aquarius shag carpet. Moreover, it deflects from what made the book so powerful: earthbound melodrama surrounding Susie's grieving parents (Rachel Weisz and Mark Wahlberg) and tender insights into the arrested blossoming of a teenaged girl. Jackson is more concerned with modeling a Plasticine ghost story. (PG-13) FAIR DRAMA. Director -Peter Jackson; Lead - Saoirse Ronan; Running Time - 135 minutes. 

INVICTUS. Clint Eastwood stays behind the camera for this salubrious, fact-based mix of political biography and sports. Morgan Freeman portrays South Africa's newly elected president Nelson Mandela, who, along with the white captain (Matt Damon) of South Africa's rugby team, helped inspire a radically reformed nation during the 1995 Rugby World Cup. Mandela is depicted as a font of wise aphorisms, a leader overflowing with realist insights. And the movie stays on an abstract level without asking the audience to feel the sting of apartheid or racial division. Yet it works due to the inherently vicarious nature of sporting success and Mandela's masterful use of symbols to foster healing. (PG-13) GOOD DRAMA.  Director - Clint Eastwood; Lead - Morgan Freeman;  Running Time - 133 minutes.  

(Both capsule reviews by John P. McCarthy)

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