A huge potential for an exceptional film.

Rating: 7/10 (12 December 2011)

A resplendently sweeping opening shot that promised of an exceptional film with complex themes completely took unexpected turns for the worse.
Scorsese expresses his love for his profession of film and film making and reminds us of how cinema has shaped us and our dreams in the past century. However, he chose to tell this amazing story within a lame over used and formulated context. The film was slow and at times seemed uninspired, the film's one dimensional characters and many pointless subplots didn't help bring it back to life.
But I left the theater thinking of similarities with Cinema Paradiso - the clips of film so lovingly edited out and then reconstituted by Alfredo the projectionist shown to Salvatore in CP, and those of Melies in Hugo... and what a wonderful medium film is when it is placed in the hands of an artist. Scorsese should've only focused on the story of Melies.. A good film that had a HUGE potential to be exceptional but failed to do so...