User blog:Moehoward/Hugo (a review)

Hugo 2011, directed by Martin Scorsese. Starring Ben Kingsley, Sacha Baron Cohen, Asa Butterfield, Chloë Grace Moretz, Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer and Christopher Lee.

Hugo is a special kind of movie, a kind of movie that makes you realize how you love the movies.

The basic plot follows Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield) a orphaned boy living in Paris in 1931. His father raised him when he was younger, but ended up dying in a museum fire, leaving behind a broken-down Automaton for Hugo to look after. Hugo is taken away by his uncle, an alcoholic watchmaker who is responsible for maintaining the clocks in a railway station. His uncle teaches him to take care of the clocks and then vanishes.

Hugo lives between the walls of the train station, working on the clocks, stealing food and attempting to fix the Automation

Hugo steals some mechanical parts in the station's toy store, hoping to use them to repair the automation, but is caught by the owner, who takes Hugo's blueprints that he used for the automation.

Hugo's quest to fix the automation, leads him to meet a girl named Isabelle (Chloe-Grace Moretz, who I must admit I felt a sorry for, because she was the only major cast-member who was American). Isabelle turns out to be the Godfather of the person who owns the Toy-Store. She helps him with fixing the automation, and along the way he shares his love of movies to her, something she has never seen, because her Godfather has forbid her from ever seeing one.

Hugo is a brilliant film, one of the best I've seen all year. Scorsese directing is spot on, and France is brilliantly recreated to look like the 30's. The screenplay by John Logan (adapting Brian Selznick's the Invention of Hugo Cabaret) is excellent, with memorable dialogue.

The acting is extremely good. I never let the non-french speakers (most of the actors in the movie were from the UK, not France) distract me from enjoying the film, but I wanna credit to Sacha Baron Cohen who is excellent as Inspector Gustav. A sort of buffoonish French Inspector (his voice reminds me a lot of Peter Seller's Inspector Clouseau) who looks for orphaned child so he can send them off to the orphanage. His performance is assuming and brilliant at the same time. If I had my way, he would get an Oscar Nomination for his performance. Ben Kingsley (another person deserving of a Academy Award nomination) is also excellent in his role as the Toy Store Owner (known as Papa Georges), who has a secret to hide. Asa Butterfield is impressive as the title character, and shows promise to became a great actor in the future. Jude Law does well playing Hugo's Father, but he doesn't have much screened time, and he only appears near the beginning. The rest of the cast is good, especially the immortal Christopher Lee as the Bookshop Owner.

You'd think from the trailer and advertisements, this be another family film, but the truth is, it's not. Hugo is more than just a family film, it's a film for film lovers. Scorsese really shows how much he loves film. I left the theater feeling really satisfied.

10/10, nearly flawless.