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  Hugo’ Tops List of Must See Films, But Don’t Overlook “My Week with

                     Marilyn’   ‘The Muppets’ or ‘The Artist’

                    by Sandra Olmsted

Georges Méliès, a pioneer of French cinema, perhaps said it best:  “Films have the power to capture dreams,” and this holiday season, there are lots of films to see and dreams captured:  The Muppets, Happy Feet Two, The Descendants, The Adventures of TinTin, War Horse, We Brought a Zoo, My Week with Marilyn, New Years Eve, and The Artist.

The exciting array of films includes dramas, comedies, and children’s films, which touch on the dreams and desires, and sometimes nightmares, of every audience, so whether a viewer finds a meaningful drama or a light comedy to be the perfect entertainment, there a film for everyone this year.  For those who make films, love films, or just love films about films, there are several Holiday films which showcase filmmakers and filmmaking as an important part of their storylines, and there’s even one about Georges Méliès—Hugo, which is director Martin Scorsese’s big, 3D, family-friendly film.

Hugo is the story of Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), a 12-year-old orphan, left in charge of all the clocks in a Paris train station. While the job of clock tending provides Hugo with a place to live and food to steal, the job also isolates him from society and other children.  Hugo interacts with the station inspector and the station merchants, but hardly in a positive way.

Hugo steals food and toys, which angers the station inspector, played by Sacha Baron Cohen as a comically vaudevillian cop, somewhat reminiscent of the silent film comedians.  However, it is the toy merchant, Georges Méliès, played perfectly by Ben Kingsley as an unhappy, cruel man who life has beaten down, that Hugo irritates the most.

Hugo steals Georges’ mechanical toys not to play with them, but to take them apart because Hugo needs the gears and fly wheels to fix the only inheritance he has —an automaton, i.e. a mechanical man, which his late father (Jude Law) found in and was given by the museum where he worked.  Georges confiscates a book of mechanical drawings of the automaton from Hugo and threatens to burn it if Hugo does confess what the books means and where he got it.

Because the secret of the book and the automaton is so close to Hugo’s loss and grief, he refuses to tell Georges anything, but Hugo does befriend Georges’ granddaughter, Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz).  Together they will solve the mystery of why Georges is so unhappy and so interested in Hugo’s book of his father’s mechanical drawings.

While Scorsese, who is better known for the violence of Taxi Driver or Goodfellas, may not seem a natural choice for a film that stars children and is for families, he does a terrific job of directing John Logan adaptation of Brian Selznick’s illustrated, 526-page novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which won the Caldecott Medal normally for children’s picture books.  However, Hugo deal with several ideas which are touchstones for Scorsese: the development of the artist, the plight of the forgotten filmmaker, and the preservation of films and film history.

Hugo’s isolation resonates with Scorsese’s own as a child because Scorsese was asthmatic and couldn’t play outside with the other children in his New York neighborhood and, instead, spent time watching movies on TV.  Having developed a deep love for film and filmmakers, Scorsese would later rescue director Michael Powell and his work from obscurity.

Scorsese also become a driving force in the film preservation movement which works to save and restore the work of earlier filmmakers, such as Georges Méliès, who was the first filmmaker to make science fiction films such as “A Trip to the Moon,” which is featured in Scorsese’s Hugo.  While Méliès, who was a magician and began making films to record and expand on his magic tricks, made hundreds of films, only a few of his films survive.

While all the higher objectives of Scorsese’s Hugo give his film depth and emotion, the bottomline is the film is enjoyable!  Hugo is fun and exciting, and the 3D is awe inspiring.

The story works on so many levels and hits so many emotional points, that it has something for everyone, except maybe the youngest children, who may not have the attention span for the 2 hour and 6 minute film or may be frightened by the harshness of the thematic elements.

Hugo is a Paramount Pictures release and is rated PG for mild thematic material, some action/peril and smoking.  Hugo is a must see this Holiday season!

Filmmakers and filmmaking are a running theme through the Holiday fare this year, and several other films in the theaters now or coming out soon reflect some aspect of film history.

Hugo is the story of Hugo Cabret, a 12-year-old orphan, left in charge of all the clocks in a Paris train station’

  My Week with Marilyn chronicles the adventures of and conflicts between Marilyn Monroe and Sir Laurence Olivier during the production of The Prince and the Showgirl and how Olivier’s assistant, Colin Clark, spent a week with Monroe, who went AWOL from the production.  Michelle Williams, who plays Monroe, is already getting accolades for her performance, including Actress of the Year from Hollywood Film Awards.  My Week with Marilyn, a Weinstein Company release, runs 99 minutes and is rated R for some language.

Even The Muppets, in their return to the big screen, get in on filmmaking theme by breaking the four wall, addressing asides to the audience, and making jokes about making their film.  In The Muppets, Walter (voice of Peter Linz) and his human brother Gary (Jason Segel) are inseparable, but eventually each must find his own place in the world.

For Gary, it is Mary (Amy Adams), but when Walter horns in on Gary’s romantic trip with Mary, the three of them end up rounding up all the members of the now disbanded Muppet Show in hopes of saving their historic theater from Tex Richman (Chris Cooper), who wants the oil underneath it.  In addition to nostalgia of seeing the lovable and familiar Muppets, the filmmaking jokes and asides provide this already fun and happy film with something more for adults to enjoy.  A Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures release

Finally, in some kind of odd cultural exchange, Martin Scorsese makes Hugo, about French filmmaker Georges Méliès, and a French filmmaker, writer/director Michel Hazanavicius, makes The Artist, a film about the silent era in Hollywood which stars Jean Dujardin, Bérénice Bejo, and John Goodman.

   The Artist has already won several awards, including Cannes Film Festival’s Best Actor for Jean Dujardin, New York Film Critics Circle Awards for Best Director Hazanavicius, and St. Louis International Film Festival’s Audience Choice Award for Best International Feature.

  The Artist runs 100 minutes and is rated PG-13 for a disturbing image and a crude gesture, The Artist is a must see for those heed the buzz regarding award winners and nominations.  The Artist opens in St. Louis on Dec. 25

This Holiday Season, there really is something for everyone in theaters or coming soon, so don’t miss the magnificent entertainment that movies have been since their beginning and continue to be!

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