Wonderful story with a sensitive homage to silent cinema and specially to George Melies

Rating: 8/10 (11 May 2012)

The pic is a magic story with rip-snorting adventures , exciting fantasy , state-of-art FX , sensational scenarios and good feeling . Set in 1930s Paris, an orphan (Butterfield) who lives in the walls of a train station is wrapped up in an intrigue involving his late father (Jude Law) and an automaton , Hugo is tending to the station clocks during his uncle's (Ray Winstone) mysterious absence . Hugo's father was a watchmaker and he has inherited his father's talents for all things mechanical . During the early scene which introduces the interior of the train station , there are appearances by characters representing Django Reinhardt, James Joyce, and Winston Churchill . On his adventures , Hugo meets with a shopkeeper , George Melies (Ben Kingsley based his characterization of 'Georges Mèliès' on Martin Scorsese) who works in the train station , a nasty Inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) , a librarian (Christopher Lee) and a beautiful woman (Emily Mortimer) who has a flower shop . Hugo befriends Melies's ward, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz) , and together they have a lot of adventures , one that centers around Melies and wife (Helen McCrory) .
One of the most legendary directors of our time , Martin Scorsese's first PG rated film in 18 years , takes you on an extraordinary adventure full of amusement and entertainment . This is an impressive production with awesome scenarios , groundbreaking set design and over-the-top 3D visual effects , being the first movie in this system directed by Martin Scorsese . The opening track shot of the city ending at the train station was the very first shot designed and it took one year to complete , it required 1000 computers to render each frame required for the shot . Brian Selznick book's imagination is brought to life with top-notch computer generator special effects . Marvelous performances by the entire casting as Butterfield as an orphan who lives in a Paris railway station, Grace Moretz as a likable little girl who befriends and helps Hugo and of course the great Ben Kingsley as the magician George Melies . It packs amazing fantasy , breathtaking adventures and overwhelming images that convey us a sense of wonder and surprise . Provides enough amusement to keep the hands on your seat and dazzling eyes until the moving ending . The film displays a colorful and evocative cinematography by Robert Richardson , winning the Oscar's cinematographic category for this film meaning that he and Vittorio Storaro are the only present living cinematographers to win the award 3 times . The picture pays tribute to George Melies , in fact in flashbacks we see Georges Méliès staging his productions with lavishly colored sets and costumes. As the real Méliès only used sets, costumes and make-up in grayscale, since colored elements might turn out the wrong shade of gray on black and white film , many of the prints were then hand tinted in post-production.
Emotive and imaginative musical score by Howard Shore . This enjoyable story is lavishly produced by Johnny Depp , Barbara De Fina and the same Scorsese . This Martin Scorsese movie won the same number of Academy Awards as Scorsese's ¨The Aviator¨ totaling five . Both were nominated for Best Picture and Best Director Oscars but lost out. The film also won the same number of Oscars in the same year as ¨The Artist¨ , both films examined silent cinema . Rating : Very good , better than average . Essential and indispensable watching .