Film Forum

(2011, Martin Scorsese) 12-year-old Asa Butterfield pretty much has the run of Paris’ Gare Montparnasse – but is toy store owner Ben Kingsley really early film magician Georges Méliès? Oscars for Cinematography, Art Direction, Visual Effects, and Sound. Plus three turn-of-the-century shorts made unintentionally in 3-D by Méliès (courtesy Lobster Films, Paris; special thanks to Serge Bromberg). Both DCP. Approx. 133 mins.

Reviews

“An enchantment… It’s serious, beautiful, wise to the absurdity of life and in the embrace of a piercing longing. […] Hugo is specifically about those observers of life who, perhaps out of loneliness and with desire, explore reality through its moving images, which is why it’s also about the creation of a cinematic imagination — Hugo’s, Méliès’s, Mr. Scorsese’s, ours.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“One of Hollywood’s greatest directors using Hollywood’s trendiest gimmick to awaken audiences to the glory of the past.”
– Village Voice

“TRANSPORTING USE OF 3-D! Both a movie about young Scorsese and a movie that young Scorsese would have loved, while also bearing the distinct signature of the filmmaking world’s most passionate historian and preservationist. And at a time when film itself seems headed toward extinction, it celebrates the mechanical wonder of celluloid running through a projector at 24 frames per second—during a period where the phenomenon wasn’t taken for granted. […]. It’s a complex fusion of film history and personal history, filled with dazzling embellishments and unabashed sentiment about the glories of cinema. Decades in Hollywood haven’t whittled down Scorsese’s boyish enthusiasm about the medium, which fully animates Hugo.”
– A.V. Club

“Hugo is both a summing up of the cinematic past and a push forward into new 3-D technologies.”
– David Denby, The New Yorker

“Leave it to Scorsese to make his first 3-D movie about the man who invented special effects…Scorsese uses 3-D here as it should be used, not as a gimmick but as an enhancement of the total effect.”
– Roger Ebert

“HEARTBREAKING, FUNNY, PASSIONATE AND IMPOSSIBLY BEAUTIFUL, Scorsese's Hugo is a must-see! Scorsese isn’t using 3-D as a stunt or a value-added effect but as a storytelling tool, a method of infusing his tale with humor, humanity and often breathtaking depth.”
– Salon

“It’s a film about making films, about losing your heart – and finding yourself – in a pitch-black movie theatre…There’s a flashback to Méliès seeing the Lumière Brothers’ film of a train pulling into a station. The audience ducks – as they really did. It’s a terrifically cinéastic defence of 3D: movies were always meant to jump out of the screen at you, Scorsese is saying. And he puts 3D to good use: yes, in the complex machinations of the station’s huge clocks, but most satisfyingly in his actors’ faces which light up the screen with depth and beauty.”
– Time Out (London)

“Leave it to Martin Scorsese to use 3-D not as a gimmick, but as a means of drawing us into a unique and magical environment. The director’s approach to 3-D demands use of the overworked word “immersive.” Yet that is the only accurate way to describe the way we lose ourselves in this film, with its spinning gears, mechanisms, and pixie dust in the air.”
– Indiewire