After not one, not two, not three, but four three-hour epics spanning a decade of production, Peter Jackson revisits his Heavenly Creatures phase. This looks real good.

The man’s a hard worker, and while some knocked King Kong for being shallow, I thought it was a well-directed adventure, which is saying a lot for a genre overstuffed with mediocrity. The poor guy must’ve starved himself skinny and spurted out gray hair directing and perfecting, evidence the man is a slave to his passions. Here, just look at this picture:

I never cared for the first two installments of Lord of the Rings: sub-par screenwriting and editing stretched to three hour length. Then he did The Return of the King, and then King Kong. Regardless of your opinion of those films, the man’s direction improved. With his adaptation of Sebold’s “The Lovely Bones”, it could be that those four epics were really just practice, and now we’re about to see the real Peter Jackson, the one who put himself on hold since finishing “Heavenly Creatures.”

“Well that’s preposterous!” you say. But look at Guillermo del Toro. He made “Chronos,” an original vision, then hit his stride with mainstream entertainments like “Hellboy” and “Blade II.” Then he surprised everyone with his Arthur Machen-esque “Pan’s Labyrinth.” Quite a parallel, I think. Both directors seem to share the notion that horror and fantasy are alike; that there’s real beauty to be found in the ugliest of places…if only we could be bothered to be courageous and embrace it like their protagonists.