Hugo (Asa Butterfield) is a resourceful kid living in the clockworks of a train station.  He works to uncover the secrets of an automaton that his father (Jude Law) was working to repair.   Hugo crosses paths with a man who runs a toy store at the train station and discovers this man was one of the first great filmmakers, Georges Melies (Ben Kingsley).  He and Melies' goddaughter (Chloe Grace Moretz) work to uncover who George was as Hugo seeks a safe place he can call home. 

HUGO is a magical work.   It is a also a celebration of the first great filmmaker of cinema, Georges Melies.  Melies has been responsible for the creation of movies that featured a moonship crashing into the eye of the Man in the Moon, Faust, and various visual effects and editing techniques.   Director Martin Scorsese  creates an adventure that is so different from his usual thrillers, gangster films, and dramas.   It is a visual world that takes you back to the days of late 1920s Paris where a boy struggles to survive and avoid capture by the sinister trainmaster (Sacha Baron Cohen) who would send him to an orphanage.   Through Hugo's eyes, we see a poor filmmaker forgotten by people and feels like a broken man until Hugo starts to uncover who Georges Melies because Hugo believes the automaton is ties to it and the last message left behind by Hugo's father.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

Disc 1 (Blu-ray)-

SHOOT THE MOON: THE MAKING OF HUGO-   a 19 minute making-of which reveals that Martin Scorsese wanted to create a film a film that his daughter could see, why he wanted to film HUGO in 3D, why he loved the book the film is adapted from, the casting of HUGO, and other things that went into the making of HUGO.

THE CINEMAGICIAN: GEORGES MELIES- a celebration and look at the films of Georges Melies and his life

THE MECHANICAL MAN AT THE HEART OF HUGO- a history of automatons and a little on the automatons created for HUGO

BIG EFFECTS, SMALL SCALE-   A behind-the-scenes look at the filming of a miniature train crash

SACHA BARON COHEN: ROLE OF A LIFETIME-  Sacha and everyone are in on the joke as Sacha Baron Cohen says he did the opposite of what Marty told him and supposedly he was a pain to work with, but I think this short three minute featurette is tongue-in-cheek

Disc 2 is the film on DVD.   A digital copy download is included with this two disc set.

FINAL ANALYSIS:  HUGO is a charming visual tale that also honors the first master of cinema, Georges Melies.

this review is (c)3-2-2012 David Blackwell and cannot be reprinted without permission.  send all comments to feedback@enterline-media.com