Stephen Daldry has previously made three feature films and been Oscar-nominated as Best Director for each of them, so Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close demands to be taken seriously, and certainly will be by many awards pundits and critics. An adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 novel, the movie purports to filter anguish and the experience of loss through the prism of a quirky young boy. In reality, it’s a preening, somber, pretentious and contrived film, a tapestral effort of skilled tradecraft brought to bear upon a self-serious framework of overt manipulations.

Screenwriter Eric Roth jettisons the ethnic specificity and pares down the source material to focus almost exclusively on young Oskar Schell (Thomas Horn, above right) and his unusual quest to emotionally reconnect with his father (Tom Hanks), who perished in the World Trade Center terrorist attacks of September 11, by finding the lock that a key from his closet fits. But the result takes on the qualities of an overly mannered exercise in stimulative poignance. Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close exists less to tell a story than to make an audience feel, and boy does it know it. For the full, original review, from Screen International, click here. (Warner Bros., PG-13, 128 minutes)