lavatch This is one of the better films that extrapolates from that horrible day on September 11, 2001 in a moving fictional story. Although sentimental in tone, it is difficult not to admire the stellar cast and the clever plotting of the film.The principal conceit of "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is the process of a search that is foreshadowed at the start of the film of the young Oskar Schell taking the challenge of his dad to search for a non-existent sixth borough of New York. That search transitions into a search for the missing box that will be unlocked from a key left by the father prior to his death on 9/11.The little kid who plays the role of Oskar was described in the DVD bonus segment as a child genius who learned Mandarin and won a bundle on the television show Jeopardy, prior to being recruited for the film. The mantra of Oskar is "never stop looking"--words that were circled on a newspaper clipping left behind by the father.My favorite character in the film was the Renter, an elderly man from the old country who befriends Oskar and helps him on his quest. Max Von Sydow was terrific in the role of the "silent" character, whose past life is never revealed in the film. Could the Renter be the father of the dad, whose name appears on the logo of the family jewelry business, Schell & Son Jewelers?SPOILER ALERT: The mother character, played effectively by Sandra Bullock, loved the son so much that she was shadowing his every move in the long search through the boroughs of New York for the missing lock. She met with the various Black members on the son's checklist, preparing the people for his visit. Unfortunately, this moving part of the story led to a major plot hole, as the couple who owned the vase and ran the estate sale should have been alerted to the importance of the key by the mother's visit, prior to the arrival of the son. There were other instances where the film stretched credibility. It tended to venture into the area of the supernatural, just falling short of a film like "The Sixth Sense" in the improbable search of young Oscar and the connection of sixth borough plot with the lock-and-key. It was almost as if the Renter could have been a figment of Oskar's vivid imagination. At some point, the filmmakers had the obligation to have everything make sense in such a realistic film.

The Movie Diorama Nominated for Best Picture back in 2011 which garnered some hate, with many considering that it should've been omitted. I can say with the utmost of confidence, I infinitely disagree to the nth degree and I've calculated that the percentage of those unfair critics were wrong. A young boy with traces of Asperger's syndrome stumbles across a key that his father hid away before his death during the 9/11 attack. We join him on a journey of self discovery as he tries so desperately hard to find what it unlocks. This is without a doubt one of my favourite dramas. It leaves me breathless after every viewing, beneath my lifeless exterior I become an emotional wreck. A narrative rich with character, emotion and sweetness that it'll have you smiling, laughing and tearing up. It's a simple story about closure, a boy wanting the seemingly impossible unanswered questions answered. With this, we experience a tale of people, grief and loss. To illustrate the importance of everyone having their own story and sharing them felt refreshing to watch. Overcoming fears, family relationships and the tragedy of a terrorist attack were also included. Yet the plot never felt overstuffed, each element was dealt with such love and tenderness that they intrinsically linked together to create a relatable story. The 9/11 attack never felt exploited, it was a means to project melodrama and how the characters dealt with their emotions differently. To then include Asperger's Syndrome allowed our main character to have a different perspective to the tragedy. He didn't immediately cry or visibly show grief, instead he kept it in his intricate mind which established a difficult relationship with his mother. His unpredictable and distraught behaviour enabled moments of conflict with other individuals which heightens the emotional investment to the story. The acting was magnificent (particularly Horn and Von Sydow), the score was touching, perfectly paced...my appreciation for this drama knows no bounds.

James Just as it took British Director Paul Greengrass to address the issue of the September 11th flight that was brought down by its passengers in Pennsylvania in his 2006 film "United 93", so here it is left to Britain's Stephen Daldry to try to make some sense of the unbelievable tragedy and loss that the destruction of the Twin Towers denoted (for people all over the world). That was always going to be a tough one, and all the more so when whimsy and near-fantasy occasionally seem to mingle in with the biggest of all real-life stories, in which any form of good news is at an absolute premium.Doubtless many will feel that Daldry has not done the job properly, given the immense sensitivity of the issue, but that cannot be my view. "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close" is actually a masterpiece that puts this reviewer strongly in mind of the very best work of Polish Director Krzysztof Kieslowski, with huge meaning imbued in an eclectic mix of one-off, chance-based mega-events and the ostensibly-uninspiring and uninteresting minutiae of everyday life. Here is a film of more than 2 hours that twists and turns, goes fast and slow, shifts emotions, seems to be becoming too light-hearted and then switches to deadly serious, and perhaps even taunts its viewers to reach for the "off" button more than once as it peaks into its most way-out moments.My strong advice is not to do that.Of course, Daldry had some help here, in the unlikely and amazingly appealing form of "Jeopardy"-winning schoolkid (and non-actor) Thomas Horn, who appears aged around 14 and has not the slightest difficulty in upstaging veteran co-stars Tom Hanks (playing the father marooned on the 106th floor of one of the WTC Towers), Sandra Bullock (playing the widowed mother) and Max Von Sydow (playing the father's father, traumatised into muteness by his earlier-life experiences). It is a remarkable performance as a bright, intense, over-sensitive, troubled boy with mental-health issues even prior to 9/11, whose dad bonds with him and attempts to draw him out with search-games that offer an intriguing (and actually quite authentic-looking) mix of fantasy and science. The early scenes with father and boy together will invoke something special in any actual (or would-be) father of sons who takes the trouble to watch.Given that the New York background also allows for wartime Germany side-stories, as well as the tales of countless others putting a brave face on misery and loss, the September 11th events are - miraculously as it may seem - put in some kind of wider context in this movie. New York stars here as no-nonsense, but also eccentric and diverse, tough, with a wry sense of humour - the place that draws and has drawn refugees, sufferers and exiles for centuries. All of that is present, and much more besides, but the message is of victory over sadness and gloom, of people learning to own their sadness and shedding their selfish concerns to help somebody else. The city of individualists somehow came together on 9/11, and the characters in this film do the same in response to events following on from that tragedy-cum-outrage. Ironic that brutality and suffering are needed to bridge what would otherwise be unbridgeable gaps, yet amazing and beautiful that that can be so. At moments, this movie trumpets to the skies the true wonder that is man's humanity - rather than inhumanity - to man.This is then a simultaneously warm and weird offering that steps beyond any obvious background of description, yet offers something new and fresh and supremely meaningful.Genuinely what movies should be about.

TheBlueHairedLawyer To be fair, I do think that most of the actors did a good job, and that the general plot of this film as well as its camera work, it was all done very well. But the main character, that annoying as hell little boy, he got on my last nerve and his behaviour (which by the way has been chalked up to autism in the film, because I suppose all autistic children must be little monsters who bother people and slap their parents and curse and swear) got on my last nerve every time. I loved the scenes with the various people who he meets on his journey through New York, from a friendly drag queen to a woman going through a messy breakup with her husband, but we hardly get much more than a glimpse into all their lives because the film is so focused on this self-indulgent, bratty and rude little snot of a child who whines repeatedly in narration about what a huge toll 9/11 took on his own life, but who is too focused on himself to see what the disaster did to his mother or to anyone else who lost loved ones when it happened. I think that the doorman (only a minor character) and the grandfather were both certainly some of the most interesting in the story, bringing some comic relief to various scenes, and later on profound sadness in the grandfather's case. 'Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close' is in many ways akin to the 2015 film 'The Rainbow Kid' with its journey of quirky characters met along the way, except that in the case of the latter, the main character was actually likable. I mean this boy in here is so pretentious and nasty and self-centered that it almost had me thinking he'd make a good villain! I felt horrible for his mother and kept wishing under my breath that she'd lock him out of the apartment during one of his little day trips just to teach him a lesson in respect.