Magnificent steampunk meets David Copperfield in Cinema Paradiso

Rating: 9/10 (12 March 2012)

Hugo is a standout. Nothing I've seen competes with the visuals on show here ... if the plot had been limited to a reading of the telephone book I'd still watch it happily. However and fortunately, and despite some of the incomprehensibly negative reviews posted earlier, the storyline was engaging and satisfying: not sophisticated and not subtle but just right for the extraordinary, magical steampunk world Scorcese has created in 1930's Paris.
The evocation of the days when you could see and feel how machines worked (so, steam and clockwork) and its presentation in 3D was sublime, staggering, entrancing. The intricacy of the mechanisms, the beauty of the metal and patterns in gears, grates, railings and steps, the lighting, colour palette, size and scale were enough to make this memorable, but the extra sense of involvement made possible by a near-perfect use of 3D technology raises this to another level, a masterpiece.
We were engrossed from start to finish, luxuriating in the created world while following the story with interest and hope and absorbing the film's unsubtle but moving messages about purpose, belonging and the wonder of films and illusion.
Don't see this on DVD and don't see it in 2D; it's a big-screen must. I'm not normally a fan of 3d (gloomy and gimmicky) but for this film it's essential, as is the scale of a real cinema screen.
Fabulous.