"These were the lovely bones that had grown around my absence: the connections - sometimes tenuous, sometimes made at great cost, but often magnificent - that happened after I was gone. And I began to see things in a way that let me hold the world without me in it."

This little gem is based on a fictional novel. Not only it's just fiction, it also belongs to the supernatural category of fiction. However, it tells the story of something very real, something that could happen to anyone in any part of the world, something you wish would never ever happen to your loved ones. This story holds a very powerful message, and for that, it deserves to be acknowledged and awarded. Personally, I would be very upset if it doesn't get an Oscar nod this year.

The story is narrated by Susie Salmon (played by the wonderfully talented Saoirse Ronan), and even from the very beginning it's very easy to fall in love with her. Believe me, this is coming from me, who absolutely abhors her character in Atonement, so this could not have come from a more objective point of view. She was murdered when she was 14 years old, and continues to narrate the story from the afterlife. It's a perfect combination of The Sixth Sense and Disturbia, blended together in a colorful Pleasantville-esque packaging. This movie is really something, I tell you, something I did not expect would come out of the mind of Peter Jackson.

The star-studded cast did not disappoint either. Mark Wahlberg and Rachel Weisz played the tortured parents so convincingly, you could feel the pain of their loss. Susan Sarandon adds a comical feel into an otherwise stressful, gloomy environment as the chain-smoking bottle-chugging grandmother. But most of all, Stanley Tucci delivers one of the most menacing performances I've ever seen from him as the disturbed sexual offender George Harvey. Gone and erased were his previous image in my head as that ridiculous faun in Midsummer Night's Dream, or the flamboyant designer in The Devil Wears Prada. All I see now is a serial pedophilic rapist, and that, my friend, is what I call a powerful performance.

It is a very sad story, indeed, but one that truly must be shared. I do hope that a lot of people, especially young girls, would go and see this movie, so that they may realize (as early as possible) the kind of dangers that lurks just around the corner, in the familiar faces that they perhaps see every day. This doesn't apply just to young girls but to women of all ages. It is sad that the world has come to this, and never will I be able to understand why some people do incredible evil things, or why sometimes bad things happen to good people. So, thank you, Alice Sebold, for writing such a profound story, and to you too, Peter Jackson, for bringing this important message to life in a movie.

And to all of you, I wish you a long and happy life also.