Review: Hugo

During my quest of trying to watch as many Oscar nominated movies as possible before the big day, I finally managed to watch the most nominated this year: Hugo.

After the disappointment of “The Artist” I am very happy to tell you, that “Hugo” is a beautiful, enchanting and worthy oscar-nominated movie – well in my opinion at least.

Martin Scorsese manages to bring his love for the movies to life in this sweet story
of the orphan Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), who lives in a train station in Paris in the 1930’s. He keeps all the clocks of the station running on time but he really wants to fix his automaton as he believes it holds a message from his deceased Dad. On his quest of finding missing parts and pieces, he meets Isabelle (Chloe Grace Moretz) and her Godfather Papa George (Ben Kingsley) who has holds a secret the children are about to uncover. Hugo is also constantly on the run of the station inspector (a hilarious and wonderful Sacha Baron Cohen) and the chases give way to some great comic relief during the sometimes tragic story.

At first I was weary of the fact that the movie would be shown in 3D but unlike many directors before him, Martin Scorcese uses the 3D technique in order to support the storytelling of the movie (take note all you action directors who seem to think  that 3D MAKES a movie). And unlike “Warhorse” (review still to come) this is a proper family friendly movie that pretty much everybody can enjoy for various reasons. During the movie you will see some of the most enchanting movies from the pioneering stage in the early 20th century – excerpts from Charlie Chaplin, “A Trip to the moon” and other movies from George Melies. It did what I must assume was the intention of Martin Scorsese – it makes you want to watch all of those old movies and it also reminds you what movies really intended to be: Dreams coming to life. For that reason alone I truly loved “Hugo”: for me movies are a way of escaping reality and exploring dream worlds for at least 90 min. This movie does just that!

As to be expected from a Scorsese movie, the acting is top-notch and it’s nice to see that (although I love him) he doesn’t have to cast Leonardo DiCaprio in every movie. Especially the kids surprised me with the skills but for me Ben Kingsley was the heart of the movie as the forgotten film pioneer who gets a second chance at fame and happiness.

So if you can’t decide, which Oscar-movie you really want to see, I urge you to choose “Hugo” over “The Artist”!

Trailerwatch: Undefeated

I used to not really give a lot about documentaries but recently I found a lot that seem really interesting and that make me want to see more.

Here comes the trailer for the oscar nominated movie “Undefeated” which tells the story of an inner city school football team of rather troubled kids that grow above themselves. It looks very touching and very intense and don’t we just love good things happening to good people!

Hopefully it will be shown outside the US as well! So far there are no international release dates.

Trailerwatch: The Descendants

George Clooney is one busy man. Apart from filling the yellow press around the world with his love life, he is also releasing 2 movies in this years awards season. One (Ides of March) where he is the producer, director, star (gripper, lighter, puller and maybe even caterer?) and the other one where he simply stars in Alexander Paynes (Sideways) new movie “The Descendants”.

The Descendants won’t be released this side of the pond before next year (26th January) but be sure to read a lot more about it once Award Season is going into full gear.

Trailerwatch: Carnage

We are coming closer to the awards season and with the TIFF just around the corner we are getting more and more trailers for the movies in competitions. So here we have the trailer for the latest Polanski movie: “Carnage”. If the oscars devided between the cast are anything to go by this will be one hell of a movie. Check out the trailer:

 

It stars Kate Winslet, Jodie Foster, John C. Reilly and Christoph Waltz with an impressive sounding us-american accent. It actually looks really interesting and I am really looking forward to seeing it (if it will ever show in German cinemas…)