REVIEW: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011): Dir. Stephen Daldry. Written by: Eric Roth. Starring: Thomas Horn, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock, Max von Sydow, Viola Davis, John Goodman, Jeffrey Wright, Zoe Caldwell. Rated PG-13 (Intense emotional themes but nothing offensive). Running time: 129 minutes.

2 stars (out of four)

The images of 9/11 are indisputably among the most indelible and powerful of our time. They hardly need any assistance to have an emotional impact. Indeed, when some additional effect does accompany them – a soft glow around the edge of the frame, slow motion, dramatic music – like in Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, a mopey melodrama directed by Stephen Daldry, they actually cushion the images and dampen their impact. The harrowing, indescribable feelings of those individuals who lived through that day are transformed into more familiar, more digestible shades of sadness, which allow us to leave the theater feeling an undue sense of catharsis and resolution.

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close is a Very Serious movie about a Very Serious subject. Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn) lost his father, Thomas Schell (Tom Hanks), in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, a day young Oskar refers to as “The Worst Day.” We see their impossibly heartwarming father-son relationship through flashbacks and Thomas Schell is a clear frontrunner for Father of the Year. (Oskar even refers to him as “the greatest father in the world” late in the film.)

When he was alive, Thomas played a game with his son they called, “Reconnaissance Expedition,” which involves Oskar searching about the city for clues to riddles his father has created for him. In order to solve the riddles, he must wander around Central Park, retrieving artifacts and talking to strangers. The film’s image of New York City is an overwhelmingly and unrealistically friendly one. (For every grumpy person that tells Oskar to kiss off and go away, there are ten who welcome him with open arms and provide him with a genuine life experience, a proportion I would argue is closer to its inverse in reality, but whatever.) Even the homeless are pretty cheerful.

One such riddle, which is left unsolved at the time of his father’s death, has Oskar looking for a mysterious sixth borough of New York. After the Worst Day, the project is forgotten until a year later when Oskar discovers a new clue: an envelope marked “Black” hidden inside a blue vase in his father’s closet. Inside the envelope is a key. What does the key open? Does the key signify a new Reconnaissance Expedition? Or is it meant to help Oskar discover what and where the sixth borough was?

Oskar takes a shot in the dark and (correctly) assumes the key belongs to someone with the last name Black. He sets out to talk to everyone in New York City named Black – there are over 400 in the phone book, never mind the unlisted ones – and ask them if they knew his father. Along the way he meets a kind woman (Viola Davis) and her ex-husband (Jeffrey Wright), jokes with his building’s doorman (John Goodman) and strikes up a friendship with the mute, old man (Max von Sydow) who rents a room from his grandmother (Zoe Caldwell). Oskar’s mother (Sandra Bullock), an emotionally vacant woman following the Worst Day, pays disturbingly little attention to where her son goes all day long. A last minute twist tries to paint her as Mother of the Year, but I didn’t buy it.

Oskar is a certain breed of movie child, remarkably insightful and poignant at all the right moments. He is the kind of child who at times acts strikingly like an adult but then falls back on childish emotions, usually when convenient for the plot. Newcomer Thomas Horn, a very articulate and talented young actor, was apparently discovered on Jeopardy’s Kids Week, which should give you an idea of the type of kid he is. In the film, Oskar explains he was tested for Asperger’s syndrome but that the tests were not definitive. The film is less ambiguous and portrays Oskar quite clearly as having the disorder. He is a mathematical thinker, able to create complex organizational systems but is also prone to emotional fits and social anxiety.

Mr. Horn’s performance is impressive and I do not doubt that it is an accurate portrayal of Asperger’s syndrome. As the story’s protagonist though, is Oskar maybe too precocious? I want to tread lightly here because I do not wish to be insensitive but I wonder, does director Stephen Daldry occasionally manipulate Oskar’s condition to increase the film’s weepy quotient? When Oskar monologues about the chaotic nature of the world around him, is the film using the boy’s power of articulation to further drain our tear ducts? Would a less cogent child have the same emotional impact?

Mr. Daldry is not an untalented director and he creates a number of lovely, small moments with his characters. The way Oskar hides under the bed and scratches at the floor on the Worst Day. The gentle kidding of a father who never condescends to his son. Unfortunately, he is not as adept in working the larger mechanisms of the story. The film is too long and its pace dwindles to a crawl in its midsection.

I was also disappointed to find that the driving forces of the film – the riddle Oskar’s father left him, the significance of the key – are not satisfyingly resolved and the film mostly shrugs them off as serendipitous necessities of the plot. Of course, in a film like this, the destination is less important than the journey. I’m not sure the journey is much more meaningful though. The movie dispenses some vague lessons about the beauty of life but nothing that warrants evoking the images of the smoke billowing from the Twin Towers or the Falling Man. There is no need for us to shy away from these images but it is imperative that we do not misuse them either.

- Steve Avigliano, 1/30/12

REVIEW: Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 (2010): Dir. Lee Unkrich. Written by Michael Arndt. Featuring the voices of Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Joan Cusack, Ned Beatty, Don Rickles, and Michael Keaton. Rated G. Running time: 103 minutes.

3 ½ stars (out of four)

We all outgrow our toys eventually, but the wonderful thing about great films, and this is especially true of great children’s films, is that they grow with us. I was 6 years old when the first Toy Story came out and 10 when I saw the second in theaters, and in revisiting the films I found they’ve not only lost none of their charm, but in fact resonate with me more than ever. Toy Story 3, arriving nearly 11 years after the first sequel, is the most sophisticated of the series, in both its animation and its message, ending the series on a poignant and wholly satisfying note.

Toy Story 3 finds Woody and Co. in a dark place – and not just in the literal sense of their placement in the forgotten toy box. Toy population in Andy’s room has shrunk after years of yard sales and garbage days, leaving only a handful of sentimental favorites left – both an economical decision by the filmmakers to not overcrowd the film with unnecessary side characters and also a heartbreaking reminder of the toys’ impermanence. As Andy packs for college, he must decide whether to hold on to these mementos of his childhood, donate them to a local daycare or forsake them to the dump. Andy, the sentimentalist he is, elects to store them in the attic with the exception of Woody, who gets an honored placement in the college box. When Andy’s mother mistakenly brings them out to the curb – a reasonable misunderstanding considering Andy packs them in a black garbage bag – the toys decide they’d rather be donated than trashed and they hitch a ride to the Sunnyside Daycare Center.

Sunnyside, in typical Pixar inventiveness, is an exciting new world filled with vibrant colors and the promise of being played with by children all day long. It seems to them Toy Heaven, an eternal life of playtime. When children grow up at Sunnyside, explains a stuffed bear and leader of Sunnyside named Lots-O’-Huggin’-Bear (Lotso for short), a new generation of kids replaces them. You’ll never need to feel the heartbreak of your owner outgrowing you because there will always be another child ready to play with you.

Woody, who has accompanied his friends this far, refuses the invitation to this seeming utopia and, in spite of his friends’ behest, embarks on a journey back to Andy’s. His failed escape, another of the thrilling toy’s-eye-view action sequences we’ve come to expect from the series, ends when a little girl, Bonnie, snatches him off the ground and brings him home. Bonnie’s room proves to be another temptation for Woody, a place where he can get all the loving, one-on-one playtime he no longer receives from Andy.

Woody’s dilemma is rendered temporarily moot, however, when he learns from Chuckles, a less-than-cheerful clown and Sunnyside veteran, that Lotso is in fact running a totalitarian regime under the guise of a toy’s paradise. The flashback sequence detailing Lotso’s past and the subsequent breakout plan that Woody hatches have more excitement than most contemporary crime films and serve as a reminder of why Pixar is still tops in animation. The studio crafts complex stories that don’t insult a child’s (or an adult’s for that matter) intelligence, and thrives on visual and narrative inventiveness.

And this is only the main narrative thread. The film is peppered with clever details and inspired tangents that come together nicely by the climax. Watch how the film shows Mrs. Potato’s ability to see in two places at once, after she leaves her detachable left eye in Andy’s room, or how the “men” of the Sunnyside toys gamble in their spare time. There’s also an ingenious subplot involving Barbie’s seduction by fashion of a Ken doll, a comedic highpoint of the film. There are a few recycled ideas – as an antagonist, Lotso recalls Toy Story 2’s Prospector in both his voice and cane-assisted walk, and when Buzz is set to “demo mode” it's a bit of a retread of his encounter with a fresh-off-the-shelves Lightyear model from Al’s Toy Barn – but even these familiar elements improve upon the original ideas enough that they remain fresh.

Toy Story 3 is every bit as imaginative and funny as the first two installments (without getting too joke-y, something the previous were even at their best), but has an emotional core that elevates and enriches its predecessors. The film, and the series on a whole, teaches acceptance of life’s changes and shows how this leap of faith is often rewarded with joys previously unknown. In the first film, Woody doesn’t want to accept that Andy might have found a new favorite toy in Buzz, but he ultimately forges an indelible friendship with the space ranger. In 2, Woody and the gang begin to accept that their owner will one day grow up, an acceptance that becomes fully realized in this film. This theme is echoed throughout the film and we see how Lotso’s reluctance to accept his own abandonment has corroded him.

The opening scene of Toy Story 3 recalls that of the first film, with Andy as a child acting out an imagined battle between Woody and Mr. Potato Head. But while the first film allowed us to observe a child playing with his toys, this one invites us inside his imagination and we see the action play out with all the dazzle Pixar’s animation team can afford. Andy’s experience is not one that we watch from a distance, but is in fact representative of what we all go through in our adolescence… and beyond.

The final shot, of white clouds on a blue sky, is a direct reference to the first image of Andy’s wallpaper at the start Toy Story. As Andy leaves his room and his toys for college, we realize that he is not abandoning that old room, but rather moving on to a larger arena, that of the real world. The room is a training ground, preparing Andy for life until he is ready to go out on his own. The films, now a completed story, offer us a similar training, showing the value in letting go and moving on to better things. And that’s something I’ll never get too old for.

** NOTE: I saw this film in Disney Digital 3D for an extra $3 and it added little to the film experience for me except a dimmer picture. More on 3D next week though.

- Steve Avigliano, 6/18/10

You May Have Missed...

The following are three movies released this year that are no longer in theaters, but either will be on DVD soon or already are.

Ponyo - 3 stars (out of four)

An unusual and wonderful fantasy about a magical fish, Ponyo, who eventually becomes a little girl on land and befriends a kindergarten-aged boy named Sōsuke. Ponyo is much more of a children’s story than past Miyazaki films and so the film is imbued with a sense of innocence. Despite its relatively straightforward narrative, Ponyo’s animation has a strangeness to it that takes the film to a place of playful inventiveness uncommon in most children’s movies. The American voice-over actors are even pretty good, including Liam Neeson, Tina Fey and the youngest siblings of Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers (don’t worry: they’re cute enough as the kids’ voice and they only sing in the credits). Ponyo may not be the strongest film Miyazaki has made, but it’s a charming adventure and better than just about every animated film that doesn’t have the word “Pixar” attached to it. Ponyo is not yet available on DVD in the United States.

Adventureland - 3 ½ stars (out of four)

Greg Mottola’s follow-up to 2007’s Superbad isn’t as funny as its predecessor, but it’s not intended to be. Adventureland is more heartfelt and arguably the better film. That’s not to say Adventureland isn’t funny – Mottola’s autobiographical take on summer jobs, trashy amusement parks and young romance are all the funnier in their true-to-life honesty. The movie stars Jesse Eisenberg as James, essentially a matured version of the Michael Cera character, and Kristen Stewart as his romantic foil (I promise, she only makes the Twilight-mope face in a few scenes). Along with a number of great supporting roles, including SNL-ers Bill Hader and Kritsen Wiig, Adventureland pulls off a rare feat: it is an emotionally resonant and memorably hilarious movie. Adventureland is now available on DVD.

Angels and Demons - 1 ½ stars (out of four)

2006’s The DaVinci Code was everything the book was: hokey, full of plot holes and largely mindless in spite of its lofty ambitions as a thinking man’s action film. Angels and Demons is all that and more: a disastrous example of what happens when the talents in front of and behind the camera are only in it for the paycheck. Tom Hanks has gotten a haircut, but his performance is almost entirely camp. As director, Ron Howard does little to make the hackneyed script bearable, although the script does remove author Dan’s Brow’s final absurd twist (where the Pope is revealed to have a child). The movie would be tolerable if it weren’t for the film’s stubborn insistence of credibility. Its scientific storyline about anti-matter is as ridiculous as its attempts to provide historical and religious insight. I’d recommend it as unintentional entertainment if it weren’t an interminable 140 minutes long. But if someone puts together a good YouTube compilation like The Wicker Man, by all means, check it out. Angels and Demons will be available on DVD November 24.

- Steve Avigliano, 10/12/09