Hugo (film)

Hugo
Directed byMartin Scorsese
Produced byGraham King
StarringBen Kingsley, Asa Butterfield, Jude Law
Music byHoward Shore
Production
companies
GK Films
Infinitum Nihil
Distributed byParamount Pictures
Release date
November 23, 2011 (2011-11-23)
Running time
128 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Box office$83,611,561

Hugo is a 2011 American 3D adventure drama movie that is based on Brian Selznick's novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret. The movie is about a boy who lives alone in a Paris railway station and the owner of a toy shop there. It was directed by Martin Scorsese, while the screenwriter was John Logan. It is a co-production of Graham King's GK Films and Johnny Depp's Infinitum Nihil. It stars Asa Butterfield, Ben Kingsley, Chloë Grace Moretz, Sacha Baron Cohen, Ray Winstone, Emily Mortimer, and Jude Law.

Hugo is Scorsese's first movie to be shot in 3D.

Plot

In 1931, Hugo Cabret is a 12-year-old boy who lives with his father, a widowed, but kind and devoted master clockmaker in Paris. Hugo's father takes him to see movies and he loves the movies of Georges Méliès best of all. Hugo's father is burned alive in a museum fire, and Hugo is taken away by his uncle, an alcoholic watchmaker who is responsible for maintaining the clocks in the railway station of Gare Montparnasse. His uncle teaches him to take care of the clocks, then disappears. Hugo lives between the walls of the station, maintaining the clocks, stealing food and working on his father's most ambitious project: repairing a broken automaton – a mechanical man who is supposed to write with a pen. Hugo steals mechanical parts in the station to repair the automaton, but he is caught by a toy store owner who takes away Hugo's blueprints for the automaton. The automaton is missing one part – a heart–shaped key. Convinced that the automaton contains a message from his father, Hugo goes to desperate lengths to fix the machine. He gains the assistance of Isabelle, a girl close to his age and the goddaughter of the toy shop owner. He introduces Isabelle to the movies, which her godfather has never let her see. Isabelle turns out to have the key to the automaton. When they use the key to activate the automaton, it produces a drawing of a movie scene Hugo remembers his father telling him about. They discover that the movie was created by Georges Méliès, Isabelle's godfather, an early – but now neglected and disillusioned – cinema legend, and that the automaton was a beloved creation of his, from his days as a magician. In the end, the children reconnect Georges with his past and with a new generation of cinema lovers who have come to appreciate his work

Cast

Top ten lists

The movie appeared on the following critics' top ten lists for the best movies of 2011:[source?]

Critic Publication Rank
David Denby The New Yorker 1st
Harry Knowles Aint It Cool News 1st[1]
Noel Murray A.V. Club 2nd
Glenn Kenny MSN Movies 2nd
Peter Hartlaub San Francisco Chronicle 2nd
Richard Corliss Time 2nd
Roger Ebert Chicago Sun-Times 4th
Lisa Schwarzbaum Entertainment Weekly 4th
Richard Brody The New Yorker 4th
Peter Paras E! Online 5th
MTV 5th
Keith Phipps A.V. Club 6th
Todd McCarthy The Hollywood Reporter 6th
Peter Travers Rolling Stone 6th
TV Guide 7th
J. Hoberman Village Voice 8th
Mark Kermode BBC Radio 5 Live 9th
Kim Morgan MSN Movies 9th
Sean Axmaker MSN Movies 10th
Glenn Heath Jr. Slant Magazine 10th
Jeff Simon The Buffalo News
Manohla Dargis The New York Times
Phillip French The Observer

References

  1. Knowles, Harry (2012-01-06). "Harry's Top Ten Films of 2011..." Retrieved 2012-01-24.