Monthly Archives: February 2012

I admit I rushed out on Thursday evening to see “Hugo” before the Academy Awards on Sunday, just to see if it would change my opinion on anything. It’s a good film and I should have seen it sooner, but I didn’t get to see it in 3D because the theater just showed it in regular dimension. So much for the 3D experience!

My favorite part about “Hugo” is that it’s set in the Paris train station in the 1930s and is about a lonely boy who lives high up in the clock tower working the clocks. Like his deceased father, he’s a fixer of machinery and is desperate to fix an old automaton robot left by his father convinced that it will contain a message from him. But instead it prints a drawing that is linked to the station’s toy store owner (played by Ben Kingsley) who once was a filmmaker before World War I put him out of business. The boy, aided by the toy store owner’s goddaughter, comes up with a plan to get the reticent man to divulge his past and passion for making movies.

The sets and characters of the train station are terrific, with a funny performance by Sasha Baron Cohen as the station inspector. And though it’s been said that “Hugo” is director Martin Scorsese’s “valentine to the birth of cinema,” I found myself a bit more drawn to the trains, inventions, clocks and automaton of the station than the early cinema part of the story. The brass automaton especially captivated me; apparently such remarkable old machines really did exist in history, check out the YouTube videos at: http://www.theinventionofhugocabret.com/about_hugo_auto.htm.

It seems “Hugo” is both a film for kids and adults. Adapted from the 2007 kids’ book “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” by Brian Selznick, it has a crossover appeal that reminded me a bit of “The Lion, the Witch and Wardrobe” film and perhaps a few other kinds of kid-adult combos.

Of course, Martin Scorsese deserves a lot of credit for this. I give him and “Hugo” a few awards in my Oscar pick list, which is likely to be heavily trumped by the film “The Artist,” which I have Not seen yet and therefore did not pick much. Of the films I saw and have reviewed, below is a list of favorites from 2011. Enjoy the Oscars!

1) tie – Moneyball & The Descendants
2) The Iron Lady
3) Midnight in Paris
4) Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
5) Ides of March
6) The Help
7) Hugo
8) Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
9) The Debt
10) Drive
11) Bridesmaids
12) Win Win Continue reading →

Granted, many critics took the much-anticipated “Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” to the woodshed and beat it to a pulp. The local paper’s review called it “extremely disappointing”; the New York Times’ review called it “kitsch”; The Washington Post labeled it “cloying sentimentalization” and “insufferable”; and The New Yorker review longed for the main character to shut up. And yet the film has nabbed a few Academy Award nominations, including one for Best Picture. It’s almost reminiscent of director Stephen Daldry’s last film “The Reader,” which drew Oscar nominations and a win for Best Actress despite criticism of its humanizing depiction of a Nazi guard.

Similarly “Extremely Loud” takes on an emotional, weighty subject matter, this time the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Adapted from the novel by Jonathan Safran Foer, the film unfolds through the mind of an 11-year-old boy who has Asperger-like symptoms and is dealing with the death of his father in the World Trade Center. The boy, Oskar, finds a key in his deceased father’s belongings and goes on a city-wide search to try and find the lock it will open, feeling that it will keep him connected to his dad and tell him something more. It’s quite an emotional treasure hunt from there as the grieving boy journeys all over NYC over many weeks meeting sympathetic strangers to try and find the lock and answer.

So far so good? Not to critics who bemoaned the film’s adaptation of the novel and its sentimentality. Also the boy’s precocious depiction drove some crazy, and others felt the story’s suspension of disbelief was too great. But despite a couple hokey parts, I thought the film quite powerful. Did it use the World Trade Center tragedy to manipulate emotions at every chance? Did it turn it into kitsch? I think it’s for everyone to decide. Personally I was surprised at how negative some of the reviews were and actually how good and moving and well made the film was. The actor, Thomas Horn, does a good job as the hyperactive boy, and the supporting performances by Viola Davis and Max von Sydow were excellent as usual. I remembered 9/11 and navigated the film without feeling overly cloyed. Now if only the film’s title were less of a mouth full. I never seem to get it right. Extremely what? Continue reading →