Hugo Shines and Reminds Audiences Where the Beauty of Film Came from and Where it Should be Going

Hugo (4 1/2 out 5 Stars)

Directed by: Martin Scorsese (Raging Bull, Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Departed)

Written by: John Logan (The Aviator, Gladiator)

Starring: Asa Butterfield, Ben Kinglsey, Chloe Grace Moretz, Sascha Baron Cohen, and Christopher Lee

Imagine a world where renowned director Martin Scorsese directs a beautifully moving family film.  Looking at the four films mentioned above, and knowing his other films Hugo is a different pace for the director.  The result is one of the most beautifully moving stories about a boy who loses his father works in the clocks at a train station in Paris, and embarks on one of the greatest adventures, and these things all connect with the birth of cinema.  There is not much more to ask for.

Hugo starts with our young hero, Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) wandering through clocks winding them, and making sure they work properly.  In the train station he sneaks up to the toy shop and attempts to steal a wind-up toy.  In his effort to steal the toy he is caught by the shop owner (Ben Kingsley) and his notebook and things are confiscated by the shop owner.  This interaction sets up the whole premise of the film where Hugo meets a young girl; her name is Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz).  Isabelle  is the goddaughter to the shop owner , whom she lovingly refers to him as Papa George.  As two young children come together they embark on adventure that connects an automaton that Hugo's father was working with Papa George.  The result is an adventure into the birth of cinema.

Martin Scorsese has moved away from the traditional style of film he directs and he transports viewers into a beautiful world.  As a viewer you can tell that Scorsese loves films, and that this film was a passion project for him.  The film centers around the birth of film making.  Papa George is in fact Georges Méliès, one of most well renowned film makers from the late 1890s through the early 1900's.  Méliès saw film making as process, and art form that could transport viewers into a magical adventure.  Méliès was a magicians prior to being a director, actor etc. and used the magic of editing to create over 500 films.  Scorsese's passion for film and the subject matter is beautifully woven into his direction, and this is his best work since 1990's Goodfellas.

The acting in the film is good.  Asa Butterfield does a wonderful job as Hugo; he plays, the young boy lost, seeking something bigger so well!  Chloe Grace Moretz is one the most talented younger actresses working today she can kick ass and swear in films like Kick-Ass and then create a much softer lyrical character like Isabelle.  There are a few side vignettes throughout this film which center around some wonderful performances from Christopher Lee, Sacha Baron Cohen, Emily Mortimer, Frances de la Tour and Richard Griffiths.  While this vignettes were sometimes distracting, or out place (my only complaint) the acting was great so there were rarely times I felt they took away from the pace of the film.  The main culprit was the one note performance by Sascha Baron Cohen, who while funny was sometimes too cartoonish.  Then there's Ben Kinglsey who played Méliès; his performance is so beautiful and displays a great range showing the role passion played in defining cinema.

The film's star in my book is the beauty captured in the editing, cinematography, art direction, and every other technical aspect.  This is a spectacularly beautifully shot film.  This is also a film that must be seen in 3-D.  I hate the way 3-D has taken over films today, but this film uses the 3-D element better than any film I have ever seen to date.  I felt as though the 3-D makes this film whole and helps to capture the beauty of the story, and the nostalgia of the beginning of film making.

2011 has been the year of nostalgia.  The Artist is nostalgic for the era of silent films, Midnight in Paris is nostalgic for different eras of writing and creativity in France, and Hugo is nostalgic for the birth of the cinema.  Hugo did a wonderful job of transporting me back in time to an era about love and passion. Méliès loved making films, and Scorsese perpetuates that emotional experience in this film.

Academy Awards Best Picture Revisited: The Departed (2006)

When I got back home from Thanksgiving in Albany I did two things, I went to the gym, and then ate Thanksgiving left overs while watching The Departed.  The Departed is the first Best Picture winner I am re-visiting.  The other nominees in the Best Picture category this year were Babel, Letters from Iwo Jima, Little Miss Sunshine, and The Queen.

The Departed was directed by the brilliant director Martin Scorsese.  Scorsese is known as one of the best film makers living today, and he is one of my favorite directors ever.  I love his style of direction, there is always this dark gritty feel, but he also puts unique touches to each film he directs making them all different.  Scorsese's first major film was Mean Streets in 1973 which started his long standing working relationship with Robert DeNiro.  Scorsese continued on this brilliant streak of film making with Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974), Taxi Driver (1976), New York, New York (1977), Raging Bull (1980), The Last Temptation of Christ (1988), Goodfellas (1990); he lost me after this and then in 2002 had a resurgence with Gangs of New York (2002), and The Aviator (2005).  While the the films in the 2000s were not his best this man has made some of the best films ever!  Ironically prior to this Oscar ceremony Scorsese had never won an Oscar.  In fact in 2005 Oscar host Jon Stewart joked Three Six Mafia has one Oscar while Scorsese has zero.  This was a funny joke, but I think the Academy finally got that they had left one of the best directors of all time empty handed and did not want to do the same thing to him that they did to Alfred Hitchcock.

Now I am not saying Scorsese and his film should not have won (although I would have not picked him for director or this for film), but I am glad the Academy got over their bias for his films, and awarded this movie as the Best Film of the year.  The Departed was a solid film, with solid direction.

The best part about the 2006 Best Picture race this year was that the Best Picture race at the time was a big question mark.  Going into the night there were a couple the field was pretty divided.   Letters from Iwo Jima was a surprise nominee and had Clint Eastwood a person who had directed two Best Picture winners.  Iwo Jima was the least likely to win though because the film is in a foreign language, and did not have as much support going in. The Queen was had a shot, as an important bio-pic about Elizabeth II, but the Best Actress prize was the trophy the Academy wanted to bestow to this film, as they saw the film was about Mirren's performance.  And then there were three. Babel was seen as the big sweeping drama that spanned countries and interconnected people in different stories.  Babel won the Gold Globe for Best Drama, but just was too weak of a film.  The critics were not that supportive of it, but it did have a lot of nominations. If there any year where a comedy was going to win this award it would have been  Little Miss Sunshine.  Little Miss Sunshine won Best Picture at the American Film Institute Awards, the Producer's Guild Award (the equivalent to Best Picture), and the Screen Actor's Guild's Best Ensemble Award.  These are three hefty trophies.  When the nominations were announced Little Miss Sunshine only had four nominations and no editing nomination, the film was sunk.  Films rarely win Best Picture without an editing nomination.


The Departed's win seemed destined in the stars. Thinking back to that year, although my memory is cloudy, most people's predictions ranged from Babel to Little Miss Sunshine to The Departed.  Babel had the most nominations.  Little Miss Sunshine had heart.  The Departed had the trump card, Scorsese.  The Departed only had five nominations: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Supporting Actor (Mark Wahlberg) and Best Film Editing.  The surprising thing about the nominations was that Leonardo DiCaprio was nominated for Blood Diamond and not this film and Academy Award favorite Jack Nicholson was also not nominated.  With a small total number of nominations, and two big stars snubbed, this made the film look weak, but it took home the big prize at the end of the night.

I am glad this was an exciting year in this category (for once), but there were several films that should have been nominated in this category and were not.  My personal pick for the Best Picture of the year was Pan's Labyrinth. The film had 6 nominations and won three trophies, and it shockingly lost in Best Foreign Language Feature.  The other two films that should have been nominated were Children of Men (3 nominations 0 wins) and United 93 (2 nominations 0 wins).  I can understand why these three films were not nominated as they are more divisive, and not see as larger crowd favorites.  If the the Best Picture race looked like this: Children of Men, The Departed, Little Miss Sunshine, Pan's Labyrinth, and United 93-I would would have been a happy person.