Hugo (Martin Scorsese 2011)

[cinemabon]

Chris, you make me smile. Besides, I've been out holiday shopping all day, so I'm in a good mood. I'm looking forward to the rush of good end-of-the-year films, although some won't make it into general release until January. I suppose that someone, meaning probably you, needs to start that "Best of 201" list unless I've missed it. I wish "The Artist" was in general release. I'd like to see it. Any movie that gets a standing ovation at Cannes must be pretty darn good. Mazeltov!

[Chris Knipp]

Weinstein bought The Artist as well as My Week with Marilyn so he'll make the most of it, but it is limited release. Here's Harvey hyping both movies http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7390295n.

I did start a BEST MOVIES OF 2011 SO FAR thread way back. It's out of date now. I have much better candidates and need to update it.

So I started a 2011 OSCAR PREDICTIONS thread.

Click on either one and contribute. There was an IndieWire prediction of most likely films so far that I pasted in. On that list, I have not seen War Horse, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (Christmas Day), Tinker Tailor (next weekend), Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, , Young Adult, We Bought a Zoo, and The Land of Blood and Honey. I guess the best are the ones we haven't seen. A lot of these will not be easy to see but that's a good thing because it means if it's a true list that the Academy Awards are going for my sophisticated less totally mainstream stuff. A King's Speech (also Harvey Weinstein) is an example of the cusp of the new trend. It's art house, but it's got mainstream appeal. That might be true of The Artist. It might be true of The Descendants. Nearly all of these, really.

[cinemabon]

I was looking at the IMDB app on my android phone and it lists the top critics for "Hugo." So guess who is listed (alphabetically)? Chris Knipp at Filmleaf.net. Kudos, Chris.

[Chris Knipp]

That's nice but maybe something's wrong with your android phone!

[tabuno]

With the amazing incorporation of the more subtle and less blatant, commercialized use of 3-D, Scorese has introduced to the film world a magical visual story telling experience, and captures the youth imagination where time for the audience seems to become irrelevant and the delightful characters seem to be artificial yet somehow vibrant in their performing presentation. One of the best movies of the year, this movie sparkles for its emotive storyline, its rich focus on detail, and yes even its more qualitative slow and perhaps less "energized" pacing that allows the audience to immerse itself in a wonderful, leisurely and historically insightful look into the beginnings of film for the lay audience.

[cinemabon]

go to filmleaf.com and see whose name is mentioned with this site... NOT MINE! so what do my opinions matter.

[Chris Knipp]

My lack of a rave for Hugo (and Walter Chaw's) means nothing. It is listed #9 in the top 10 of Film Comment's list, and #6 out of the top 10 of the Metacritic list collating their set of critics annual best lists. Everybody loves it. It's not your opinion that means nothing, it's mine.

People might pay more attention to your reviews than to mine because they appear less often.

This is Scorsese's 2nd credit at least for the year if we count documentaries for HBO, the one on George Harrison; but my recent favorite from him (since the Stones film) is his HBO documentary on Fran Lebowitz last year, Public Speaking.

If you're referring to IMDb again that listing of my Hugo review (now #103 out of a list of 300+) is there because recently I've been going on IMDb and adding the link to my Filmleaf reviews. You can do the same thing for the reviews that you put on Filmleaf. Howard Schumann explained to me how to do this years ago. You click on "critic" on any movie page on IMDb, then click on "EDIT PAGE," then click on the "no change" dropdown and click on "add one item," and "continue," and then you fill in the link to your review and type in on the right "Filmleaf [cinemabon]" and "check these updates" and then finaly "submit." It 's 5 steps and it's easy once you get the hang of it.

But whether you do or not, your opinions matter plenty to me and the other Filmleaf readers.

[Johann]

I was looking at the IMDB app on my android phone and it lists the top critics for "Hugo." So guess who is listed (alphabetically)? Chris Knipp at Filmleaf.net. Kudos, Chris.

Chris is on Twitter too. I've never tweeted ever.
Chris is a real critic- he always stays on topic and always lowers his sights properly.

[Chris Knipp]

Yes, tabuno but 3D will still be a device to market movies and make money, no matter what distinguished director allows his film to be formatted in it. I thought it worked best in the new Harold and Kuman: it suited the jokiness of the genre and overtly mocked the device.

[tabuno]

1. Chris with his typical creative talent, sums up in concise and clear language in his first paragraph the totality of the movie.

2. By his second paragraph, though, he begins his paragraph with a somewhat misleading sentence using "celebration" and "ennobling" only to go negative with his personal belief that Hugo "lacks the magic" of earlier films suggestive that "more" is "often less" implying that Hugo has too much 3D and special effects that perhaps "ballet" or "music" can better present the magic of film. Curiously, Chris also implies, perhaps unintentionally that without more "sex" and "violence" that the raw energy in Hugo is lost. By calling Hugo "old fashioned" and "artificial" he seems to be comparing the movie to an artificial Christmas tree compared to a naturally cut, still living Christmas tree using the artlike sensation of the traditional ballet or carefully crafted music as preferable approaches to making great movies. The irony here, however, is that while Chris based on his past references to his distain of 3-D he at the same time close to contradicting himself by describing Hugo as "old fashioned" when in effect, Hugo incorporates the most advanced technology use of 3-D and CGI where Scorsese has accomplished the very opposite of "old fashioned" and brought a period film into the contemporary modern era with its rich and amazing use of leading edge science which in some ways replicates in parallel the same evolutionary path that early cinema took as if in a supreme gesture and tribute to Georges Méliès, Scorsese is himself following a similar path as Méliès. The difference between Chris's use of the word "artificial" and his early mention of the lack of "magic" is also suspect as both are similar in that "magic" is artificial and not real, and in essence Scorsese has accomplished in this movie is truly an artificial recreation of the magic of film within a film, bringiing actors and lavish set designs like Georges Méliès to reflect a dramatization of real life. What Chris views of neither "earth shaking" nor "exciting" may reflect in part Chris's having been desensitized through his having committed much of his time and energy and passion to experiencing so many, many movies and films that after a while, nothing seems new or fresh anymore. But for those of us who cannot commit their money and time to experience the wonderful plethora of movies, much like Charlie in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, a single piece of chocolate to last an entire year and like Hugo, it can be a wonderful, amazing, and yes, exciting experience to discover a whole new 3-D and seemingly understated magical world of early film making and the stylistic characters that seem almost like a ethereal dream. Chris's complaint that children seemingly were not "energized" and only "entranced" seems to evoke within me more puzzlement. Chris's depiction of the "energy" criteria for judging a movie is mysterious in that his focus on "sex," "violence," and "energy" seems to be so blatantly Americanized, so commercially imbued with America's passion for high physical, perhaps brainless, almost meaningless hyperactivity that it surprises me how Chris whose international foreign experience could be so accepting of what seems to be a crass acceptance of American exploitation films. Personally, using Chris's own description of children and Hugo - that they appeared "quiet" and "entranced" seems to be a wonderful emotional behavioral experience for any movie to create... Just like the amazing, magical bed time stories - children are not necessarily jumping up and down on their beds, throwing pillows everywhere, but are dreaming and smiling delicious happy and content thoughts and feelings which for me in this hectic state of our society any parent would be gushing over with great satisfaction for any movie to be able to "entrance" their children in a quiet way, instead of a hyper-kinetic way. Yet by the end of the second paragraph Chris ends it like he started the paragraph changing to a positive tone for the movie which makes for a confusing paragraph indeed.

3. The third paragraph seems to be a rehash of earlier comments, though as with any of the eye of the beholder arguments the supposedly overly long movie at two and a half hours, is only as one's either boring experience or one's compelling, captivating, thrilling experience time sense allows. For those whose experience of the film and its 3-D is magical and entrancing, time seems to take a back seat and the experience becomes timeless instead of long.

4. Chris's fourth paragraph is somewhat of a puzzle in that, he has departed from his rather traditional flow of his earlier more fluid movie critiques in that usually such descriptive movie plot outlines (which is well done here) is almost always found in the beginning of the his commentaries so as to separate storyline from opinion (though Chris at times has departed from the absolute demarcation between storyline line and personal opinion). One might suspect that Chris's passionate feelings about this movie had him subconsiously move his strong beliefs about this movie to earlier in his usual commentaries so that readers would immediately feel his passionate distaste for many of the elements in this movie.

5. Chris's concern about the lack of the serious attention to early film history seems misplaced here, because the tone of this movie, its magic and as Chris would say "artificiality" isn't supposed to be a serious documentary or even docudrama as a film history lesson. The film's focus appears to me to be on the characters, the mystery, and the use of film history as an added but delightful backdrop to the main storyline which serves to enhance the primary story, placing the characters in a meaningful context and in somes way increasing the emotive and visceral experience by allowing the audience to discovery the mystery in the same time path as the boy in the story and with the same childlike viewpoint of the discovery (unlike that of an adult film historian).

6. Lastly, Chris's final paragraph is his complaint of the Oscar's playing it "safe" with its selection of nominated and best film choices. In the world of politics and art, the final choice of the best movie can always be argued on several levels as to its artistic merits, its political change the world merits. Such subjective aesthetic moral judgments eventually fall into the realm of philosophy and metaphysics and the neverending debate of art. Personally, for me, a great movie is one that stimulates, fascinates, evokes powerful emotions, educates, and leaves one with a great deal of satisfaction for having spent the time and money going to it. And Hugo did this for me.