Hugo

A wonderful tribute to cinema as such, which could only have been made by a filmmaker for whom cinema is truly the one and only purpose in life. In his amazing career, Scorsese has produced many successful and legendary films that have rewritten and greatly influenced the history of cinema, so he decided to pay homage to the man who started it all. And it wouldn't be him if he didn't embellish the story with a special atmosphere, if every detail wasn't perfectly executed and on point, and if he didn't shape the entire film in a way that's simply unforgettable. Hugo is sweet as a family film, charming as a playful fantasy, and as a whole incredibly wholesome, funny and harmonious. Though it’s true that they could have gone a bit easier on the sugar and that all the motifs don’t quite fit together as intended, but these are slight flaws perfectly masked under Scorsese's precise direction. I didn’t like Butterfield very much, but Kingsley and Cohen in particular are brilliant. 4 and 1/2* (14/01/2013)

Some dreams do come true. The magic of film intertwined with reality, sketches with meticulously crafted images fly through the air, and Martin Scorsese pays homage to the beginnings of cinematography without getting overly sentimental or desperately trying to make the movie into a classic. Hugo seems like a sophisticated fairy tale about a boy and his great adventure, only to ultimately transform into a fascinating journey through human imagination and determination. And that nostalgic hurricane of memories of children's books and movies, as well as fascination with unreachable worlds, has a power that managed to captivate me completely. (25/02/2012)

2009 – Pandora. 2010 – the cyberspace of TRON Legacy 3D. 2011 – A Parisian train station. Three very different magical worlds and three reasons to pay a few crowns more of a 3D cinema ticket. In addition to the intoxicating visuals, Hugo captivates with its two child protagonists (such likeable kids is not something you see everyday in film – with Chloe is no surprise, but Asu was unknown to me) and its sincere love for cinema. As it’s clear from all the reviews, Hugo is a beautiful celebration of the beginnings of cinematography and it’s very easy to surrender to it. What’s worth noticing is that both Hugo and the silent and black and white The Artists are this year’s biggest Oscar favourites and they’ve received the most nominations. Both deal with a certain period that marked a turning point for cinema. Hugo focuses on the beginning of the century in France, and in particular the work of G. Mèliès, which was setting the trends at the time, and the turning point means WWI, due to which the epicentre of the film world moved to America. The Artist, in contrast, celebrates the American silent movies of the 20th century, and the turning point is sound. Both of them imprint the world into their format, where The Artist is a silent romantic comedy and Hugo is a fairytale that uses special effects to bring the viewer into its (3D) world (and that’s why you must watch it in 3D). Almost like Mèliès A Trip to the Moon, init? :). It’s interesting how it came together this year… (04/02/2012)

Paradox: the simplest film illusion created in the most technically complex way. A return to the initial astonishment. For me, it’s not closest to The Artist and other parallels presented here, but rather Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Even Scorsese tries to return to the magical moment of ecstasy from the world of visions, to the dimension in which the image on the retina changes into the complex world behind it. I spent two hours in the movie theatre in bliss and ecstasy from something that was not and is not. Hugo's value is not in its (factually dubious) encyclopedic teachings, but in the fact that the film teaches us to rejoice in the imagination - not in the stimulating visual expansion that evokes its utter stunting, but in the journey into the interior in which the most beautiful spells are always performed, stimulated by the magic of pen and celluloid masters. I hope that one day I will raise a kid that the anachronistic illusionist Hugo will entertain, even with its embarrassingly romantic (and soothing) vision of the world as a mechanism in which everything has a fixed place... (06/03/2012)

Martin and his big movie. Not his best, but undeniably his most personal. Here Scorsese (Hugo is him) professes his lifelong love of stories in the form of a melancholic kids’ movie which isn’t so much for kids, after all. And in addition to this he was the first to prove that 3D has its rightful place in cinema, where it can be something more than a mere good-looking bolt-on. Mainly and primarily this is a darn good movie; and that is all that is important in the end. (04/02/2012)