Have you seen the film Extremely Loud And Incredibly Close ?
I think it is one of my favorite films now. It has gotten only 46% approval from Rotten Tomatoes approved critics and a 62% from Rotten Tomatoes audiences. I like that better than anything: to disagree with everyone about it.
I will be brief about my criticism of the criticism.
On Rotten Tomatoes:
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/extremely_loud_and_incredibly_close/
Critics Consensus:
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close has a story worth telling, but it deserves better than the treacly and pretentious treatment director Stephen Daldry gives it.
I have written briefly about my daughter, who lived in New York at the time.
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2011/05/death-of-bin-laden.html
The memories still move me to tears, and there are places in the film where the young Thomas Horn as Oskar Schell hears his father's messages from the World Trade Center that I have to fast forward through even now.
Perhaps what critics deem "treacly" and "pretentious" is a manner of story telling that allows those who still feel the pain to be able to deal with the story. The only thing I fault in the film is the story of the grandfather, played by Max von Sydow, but this seems to be one of those truncated things that ended up on the editing room floor.
There seems to be no real resolution to that part of the story, but maybe I missed it. I'm watching it again, so I'll pay close attention.
Anyway, in case you noticed, Viola Davis as Abbey Black first meeting Oskar Schell opens her front door just a crack and resists his attempts to enter her house...
...which just throws me back to Viola Davis as Captain Gordon, the person in charge of the Solaris space station in the 2002 Solaris. She opens her cabin door just a crack, and resists George Clooney's attempts to enter.
Sometimes I wish I had a tambourine to keep me calm and cool.
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