Hugo (2011)

Spectacular! Jack and I honestly had not read anything about this before we chose to see it Wednesday, but we loved Martin Scorsese's PG 3D masterpiece about a boy living behind the clocks in Paris' Montparnasse train station. With live action supplemented by lush computer-generated graphics, it features outstanding performances, gorgeous images with saturated color, a rich score, and it's no wonder the National Board of Review picked it as the Best Picture of 2011, with Scorsese winning Best Director. Asa Butterfield (The Boy in the Striped Pajamas) who plays Hugo, was 12 when the live action part was shot in the winter of 2010 as was Chloë Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass) who plays Isabelle, but he looks much younger. In any case, these young actors are superb, as are Ben Kingsley (after I wrote about him in The Wackness he was in Elegy and Shutter Island) as Papa Georges, Helen McCrory (Narcissa Malfoy in the Harry Potter franchise, Cherie Blair in The Queen (2006)) as Mama Jeanne, Sacha Baron Cohen (covered in Brüno) as the silly Station Inspector (his humor is physical this time, rather than raunchy dialogue), and, in small parts, Richard Griffiths and Frances de la Tour (they performed together in The History Boys (2006), among others), Emily Mortimer, Jude Law, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Christopher Lee. All but two of these actors are British, and everyone in the movie speaks English with a British accent, even though it's set in Paris. Written things are in French, but the dialogue is not. Moretz' and Stuhlbarg's accents are good, to my ear.

Rule #2 is strictly observed as the camera/computer zooms around the city. I saw many parallels to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button with all the clocks but, in this case, the clocks and machinery are plot-driven rather than metaphors. And the machinery is quite wonderful--technology of the early twentieth century and before.

Scorsese (summary in Shutter Island--this is his first movie in seven years not starring Leonardo DiCaprio) makes a cameo in a flashback of the happier days of Georges and Jeanne--he plays a grinning photographer with a big noisy flash (when his character turns around we can see it becomes someone else). His artistry is predictably apparent in every frame, this time working from a script by John Logan (Oscar-nominated for co-writing Gladiator (2000) and writing Scorsese's The Aviator (2004), he also co-wrote Any Given Sunday (1999) with Oliver Stone, co-wrote The Last Samurai (2003), and adapted the stage play into Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), among others) adapted from Brian Selznick's historical fiction picture book The Invention of Hugo Cabret. If you are familiar with the book or with certain historical elements you will not be surprised by any of the plot, but we weren't and so we were! I see now that the author Selznick has his own cameo as "Eager Student," but we missed it. Here is his photo so you can find him when you see it. I think the "official behind the scenes video" from that site is full of spoilers, so perhaps you shouldn't watch it yet.

Composer Howard Shore (won three Oscars for two Lord of the Rings movies (2001 and 03), among his 87 credits, from big studio pictures to little independents, and plenty of Scorsese's work) could get another Oscar nod for his sweeping, Parisian-style (think accordions) score. You can listen to the whole thing numerically on youtube (14 was hidden--I had to go to 15 to find it).

We recommend this for anyone who has the attention span to sit through a movie that is two hours and seven minutes long. It's rated PG for "mild thematic material, some action/peril and smoking." We debated whether to spring for the 3D, because Thor's was so bad. I read some audience comments and decided to go for it. And despite being outfitted with "child size" glasses (learn from our mistake and check the wrapper before you go in) that barely covered our prescription lenses, it was totally worth it with magnificent pictures to go with everything else. Not just for kids. See this before the Oscars.