Hugo

Included in Brian's Best and Worst of 2011

Almost a year ago, I was leaving a movie theater when somebody handed me a flyer for a free early screening of Hugo; apparently, the title wasn't grabbing enough people, because he made sure to point out that it was Martin Scorsese's first 3D movie.  Obviously, as someone who enjoys the occasional film, I was very excited to see this movie and see how audience feedback would alter the final product.  I went through the proper steps to reserve a spot for me and the Mrs., but on the day of the screening, the location for the film was moved about 40+ miles from a convenient Chicago suburb to Chicago proper during rush hour traffic.  Since reaching the convenient neighborhood location was going to be a close call, this change of venues made it an impossibility.  What does this have to do with anything?  Aside from supporting claims that AMC Theaters is made of jerkfaces, very little.

Hugo's secret screening title: Reverse Flava Flav - the Movie, Boyeeee

Hugo follows the life and times of Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield), an orphan in 1930s Paris.  Hugo lives an invisible life inside a train station, where he maintains all the clocks in the building and sleeps in the walls.  How did he get there?  Just about anywhere is better than the Paris orphanage, apparently.  Since nobody knows he exists, Hugo isn't paid for his labors, which means that he has to scavenge and steal to get along.  If he gets caught, or is even suspected of a crime or of being an orphan, the station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) will lock him up and send him to the orphanage.

"Be on the lookout for gingers without pupils"

Aside from sustenance, Hugo is also collecting parts to repair a clockwork automaton that Hugo and his late father (Jude Law) found.  Working on the device had been a bonding experience for the two, and Hugo has the unreasonable expectation that the automaton, when fixed, will transmit a message to Hugo from his father.  How he came to that conclusion, I don't know.  But, hey, it's not like Hugo's ever built an automaton that didn't transmit messages from beyond the grave, so I can't totally fault his logic.

Why would you create a robotic pygmy?  Unless...the children are giants...!

To get the parts for the automaton, Hugo pays particular attention to a toy shop in the train station, run by Georges (Ben Kingsley).  Being a grouch, but not an idiot, Georges has noticed the quiet boy loitering near his stand and has made a connection to parts that have gone missing.  Georges threatens to turn Hugo in to the station inspector, unless he works off his presumed debt at the shop.  When he's not working at the shop, Hugo befriends Georges' orphaned goddaughter, Isabelle (Chloë Grace Moretz); she introduces Hugo to the world of books and he introduces her to the world of cinema.  Ultimately, we all know the automaton has to be finished, but the final piece and the automaton's message take the film in a direction you might not expect.  Unless you read a plot synopsis or the book, I mean.

Hugo is a noticeable stylistic departure for director Martin Scorsese for many reasons, but I'm specifically referring to it not being propelled by a particular actor's performance.  The two leads are some of the better child actors around right now, but they don't steal the show.

They still look smug, though

Asa Butterfield is believable in both his childishness and his stubborn determination; I was also impressed by how well he managed the demanding emotional scenes.   Chloë Grace Moretz continues her surprisingly respectable filmography here (she hasn't been in anything too embarrassing for her age, except Big Momma's House 2), although I was slightly irritated by her voice in this film.  I don't know if it was an accent or an affectation, but she was good aside from that.  The supporting cast is noteworthy, although few got the chance to shine.  Ben Kingsley, as the top-billed actor, was predictably good; Kingsley doesn't always act in good movies, but pairing him with a great director makes for good stuff.  I like seeing characters balance prickishness and warmth, and that's what Kingsley delivered here.  I was far less impressed with Sacha Baron Cohen; I get that this is a children's movie and not a Scorsese gangster pick, but I felt that Cohen's physical comedy was clumsy and...well, unfunny.  I was okay with the rest of the supporting cast, though.  Helen McCrory may be far too young to play Kingsley's wife, but her makeup was tastefully done. 

You look about 70, your wife is about 40...nice job, man

Ray Winstone, an excellent film ne'er-do-well, was suitably nasty as an uncaring alcoholic.  Jude Law was charming and loving as Hugo's father.  Christopher Lee shows up to be friendly (in a creepy way).  Meanwhile, Emily Mortimer filled out the station inspector's subplot and Harry Potter alums Frances de la Tour and Richard Griffiths had their own romantic subplot.

The thing about Hugo that struck me as odd was how inconsequential the hero was to so many parts of the plot.  When the film began I thought it was obvious that he would try to help de la Tour and Griffiths overcome their dog-related problems and find love.  At the very least, I thought he would have a hand in the station inspector falling in love, which would inevitably lead to the inspector giving him a free pass when Hugo was inevitably caught.  It might have been a tad predictable, but that never hurt Amelie, did it?  And yet, none of that actually happened in Hugo.  The main character takes no action in these subplots, and they do not appear to affect him in any way that fits the film's theme.  So why are they included?  I don't have that answer.

Sadly, it doesn't require a heart-shaped key

Of course, it is not just the subplots that have little to do with Hugo and his quest to reconnect with his dead father.  The main plot veers off from a touching --- if ill-advised --- quest of a young boy trying to (essentially) make the impossible happen (reconstruct the automaton) so something even less possible (his father communicating to him from beyond) could happen and winds up finishing with a touching story about the importance of film preservation.  As someone who enjoys many films made before my birth, I understand and appreciate film preservation; I would pay through the nose for a good copy of His Girl Friday and have been contemplating upgrading my awful copy of Charade for its Criterion Collection version.  That does not mean that this is necessarily the right venue for a treatise on film preservation. 

But who am I to refuse that adorable mustache?

Despite my reservations, Hugo is a very well-directed and -acted film.  Big surprise, right?  Hugo gained some attention for being Martin Scorsese's first 3D film, so I suppose I should examine how well he did in this new/1950s format.  The short answer is "good."  There are not a lot of movies that make good use of 3D.  For every Avatar, there are at least six Clash of the Titans.  Thankfully, this is a movie that uses 3D for depth, rather than for machetes stabbing the audience.  The 3D isn't essential, but it looks good and makes some of the clock scenes far more interesting than they would have been otherwise.  Outside of the 3D, Scorsese did a great job.  It has been a long time since he has made a risky movie (in my opinion, I would say Kundun was his last big risk), but adapting a children's book was fairly ballsy for a man known more for elevating Joe Pesci than his last family-friendly outing, the music video for Michael Jackson's "Bad."


Am I the only one who forgot about the keyboard solo in this song?  I love call-and-response as much as the next guy, but  how does Wesley Snipes not shoot MJ in the face here?  Still, it is a pleasure to see a master director at work.  He manages to blend conventional premises with the source material and winds up with a story that is surprisingly surprising and not nearly as conventional as it initially seems.  Most importantly, though, Scorsese succeeds in his ultimate mission; I have to admit that, after seeing this film, I went home and quickly researched Georges Méliès (who directed an astonishing 555 movie shorts in less than twenty years) and was suitably impressed by what I saw.  If that is not the ultimate goal of Hugo, I don't know what is.

Is Hugo a great film, worthy of comparison to Scorsese's best work?  Definitely not.  It absolutely is, though, adorable and heart-warming.  This is a nostalgic movie, disguised as something that kids might want to see, and it is disguised well.  Is Hugo manipulative?  Oh, lord, yes.  Thankfully, it doesn't leave you feeling dirty, like Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.  It is not a whole lot better than that film, though, for similar reasons.  It barely made it into my top ten of last year, but it is still worth watching, especially if you have a fondness for older films.  This may not make you want to watch silent movies, but it is at least as effective as The Artist.

My first exposure to Georges Méliès was this music video from Smashing Pumpkins.  I don't know what made Billy Corgan choose this as a theme for his video, but it is still pretty cool.

Harry Brown

I have always had a soft spot in my heart for stories about bad-asses that have given up their violent ways, only to have circumstances back them into a corner where they have to murder defeat a hell of a lot of people.  That's the basic plot to almost every good martial arts film, let alone the Rambo series and countless other action movies.  But what how long can a bad-ass retire from bad-assery and still have what it takes to get the job done?

Harry Brown (Michael Caine) lives in a bad neighborhood in South London; he lives in a housing estate, which is the British version of a low-income housing development.  There is a lot of graffiti, youth gangs openly deal drugs and regularly assault people without provocation.  It's a generally scummy place.  Harry visits his comatose wife in the hospital daily, and then goes to the pub to have a few pints with his best friend, Leonard (David Bradley), over some chess.  Even there, though, social decay can be seen; the pub's owner, Sid (Liam Cunningham), gets kickbacks from drug dealers/stolen merchandise vendors.  To be honest, it's not a particularly sunny look on old age.

If time flies when you're having fun, I bet the clock hasn't moved in years.

A pair of unrelated tragedies shake Harry up.  First, Harry receives a phone call from the hospital, urging him to rush over for his wife's final moments; he leaves the house, but opts not to take the gang member-filled underpass that would save him time (assuming he doesn't get robbed, beaten, or killed) and winds up just missing her death.  Almost immediately after, Leonard tells Harry that he can't handle living in constant fear any more, and he has taken to carrying an old bayonet tip for protection.  The very next day, Detective Inspector Frampton (Emily Mortimer) and Detective Sergeant Hicock (Charlie Creed-Miles) arrive at Harry's door with the news of Leonard's death.  Local gang members are suspected, but no charges are made.  With nothing left to lose, Harry (consciously or subconsciously at first) prepares to take out his frustrations on the scumbags that caused them.

You can't to the "That's not a knife..." bit if the other guy is senile

As luck would have it, Harry Brown used to be a Royal Marine who had fought in the urban areas of Northern Ireland forty years ago.  What can an elderly marine do against a youth culture that is starting to resemble the ultra-violence of A Clockwork Orange?  If nothing else, he can prove that an out-of-practice bad-ass almost always has the edge over hot-headed idiots. 

He may look grandfatherly, but he's not here to tuck you in

While I wouldn't say that the acting in Harry Brown is fantastic, there were no bad performances in the bunch.  Michael Caine can be awfully hit-and-miss due to his mercenary attitude toward taking roles, but he's good here.  His portrayal of Harry is a depressing one, and he is fueled less by rage and revenge (as is common in this type of film) and more by despair.  His gang member counterpart is played by Ben Drew, AKA British musician Plan B.  I thought he was pretty good as a thuggish nogoodnik, although his character wasn't particularly complex.  Emily Mortimer was fine as the only cop that actually figures out what is happening in the film, and she has more than her share of good small moments.  Her character's motivations seemed to be more than just doing her job, but no insight was ever really given to her character; I think that was a missed opportunity. This was the first time I had ever seen David Bradley outside of a Harry Potter film, and he was okay in his small part.  The only other actor that stood out to me was Iain Glen as an insincere and mildly incompetent superior police officer.  There were a number of small character roles for street thugs, but none of them were terribly developed.

Kids, don't do drugs

Harry Brown is Daniel Barber's first feature film, although it is worth noting that he received an Oscar nomination for his only other credit, a short film.  Barber did a good job with the cast, getting realistic performances out of a story that could have occasionally been over the top.  I liked the action in the film --- it looked good and painful, and none of the characters appeared to be accomplishing anything unrealistic.  I was surprised that my biggest take-away from the film did not involve Michael Caine's performance.  Instead, I was impressed by how frightening the youth gang members were.  The opening scenes, featuring a gang initiation and some random violence set the tone for the movie.

The only real problem I have with Harry Brown is that it is retreading familiar ground.  The obvious comparison is to Death Wish (the first one, not the ridiculous sequels), where a good man takes steps to fix what the law cannot (or will not) fix.  Harry Brown isn't as focused on its action sequences or the brutality of the hero (as in Man on Fire, Taken, Law Abiding Citizen, or Edge of Darkness).  Instead it focuses on the despair of the main character, kind of like Death Sentence.  Of course, this movie also features an elderly man killing a number of younger men on his path to vengeance, which is awfully similar to The Limey.

I've seen this scene before.  I bet the sleazy arms-n-drug dealer lives.

I'm totally okay with Harry Brown being just another revenge movie.  What I didn't like was the conscious effort to make this movie sad.  Harry's situation is hopeless and there is no real happy ending for an old man who is alone in the world, since he's unlikely to start over somewhere new.  Seriously, this feels less like a revenge movie and more like suicide-by-gang-member.  This isn't a movie that glamorizes or glorifies violence, either.  It's a fairly realistic look at the probable effects of vigilantism in a crime-heavy area.  While this makes Harry Brown unique, it also makes it one of the more depressing revenge movies out there.  It was well-made, but is kind of a downer.

When I discovered that the main thug in the movie was a British pop star, I checked his credits and found a music video from the Harry Brown soundtrack.  This is Chase & Status ft. Plan B - End Credits.  It's not my cup of tea, but it is very British.

Shutter Island

It's difficult to write about a thriller or mystery movie because nobody wants to be That Guy who reveals that Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's Keyser Soze.  This presents me with a challenge: to ramble on at length without being That Guy.  I think I can manage that, but this is a mystery movie, so it has a twist.  That's as much of a spoiler as I'm going to give you.

Adapted from Dennis Lehane's best-selling book of the same name, Shutter Island has more than a few similarities to Lehane's Mystic River.  Boy, that Lehane has a tough life; a best-selling author who gets his books optioned into movies that are directed by some of the most talented directors in the world.  You would think he'd write happier tales.  Anyway, both Mystic River and Shutter Island are mysteries that rely heavily on their characters' secrets to reach their logical conclusion.

Here, we have Teddy Daniels (Leonardo DiCaprio), a US Marshall that volunteered for a case that would give him an excuse to poke around Shutter Island, a maximum security mental hospital for the criminally insane.  On the ferry ride to the island, Daniels meets his new partner, Chuck (Mark Ruffalo), and they enter the facility together.  They are ostensibly there to investigate the disappearance of Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), a patient --- not a prisoner! --- that managed to escape the facility, despite a locked door, barred windows, no shoes, rugged terrain, and several guards stationed throughout the building.  That doesn't sound like an inside job at all, does it?  Rachel was incarcerated for drowning her three children.  The real reason for Daniels' visit is to learn the fate of Andrew Laeddis (Elias Koteas), the pyromaniac that burned down Daniels' home with his wife (Michelle Williams) inside.  Laeddis was assigned to the facility after going to jail, but his paper trail ended on Shutter Island...but no one admits to knowing him.  Once inside the facility, Daniels and Chuck meet Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), a practitioner of humane treatment for the mentally ill, and Dr. Naehring (Max von Sydow), a member of the old-school of psychiatric treatment that prefers lobotomy over patience.

From the start of the investigation, nothing goes Daniels' way.  The facility guards refuse him entrance while armed, so he has to give up his gun.  He asks for files that are clearly commonsense ways for him to get the essential information he needs, but he is blocked by the facility's bureaucracy at every turn.  He lost his cigarettes before the boat arrived at the island, and is forced to bum smokes from his new partner.  Orderlies and nurses are sarcastic and generally less than helpful.  The patients he interviews appear coached and seem afraid when he questions them about Andrew Laeddis.  When he faces the truth that the doctors are refusing to aid his case, Daniels can't even leave the island because a hurricane is on its way.  With nothing else to do, Daniels continues his investigation.  Clearly, there is some secret that is being covered up, and he is determined to discover that truth.  He eventually meets with an old informant (Jackie Earle Haley) that is now confined in the most violent ward of the facility, who seems to confirm Daniels' greatest fear; Daniels can uncover the truth behind the island and blow the lid off the whole conspiracy, or he can find out what happened to Andrew Laeddis.  He cannot do both.  The question is what is more important to Daniels: uncovering a terrible truth for the world to see, or finding (killing?) the man responsible for the death of his wife?

Martin Scorsese's direction really stands out in this film, particularly because of Daniels' dreams.  Daniels is suffering from a string of nightmares, hallucinations and waking dreams that are reminding him of his late wife and the Dachau concentration camp that he helped liberate in World War II.  In the dream world, identities are transposed, but the emotions are not.  Memories are shown, but they are spliced with his own subconscious.  At times, the imagery is a little trippy, like when his cigarette briefly smokes in reverse.  Other times, it is sad, as when his wife becomes ash in his arms while he professes his love for her.  And yet other times are the stuff of nightmares, with Holocaust children accusing him of not doing enough to save them.  Scorsese is given free reign to use a lot of symbolism in these scenes, and he throws a lot at the viewer.  In a lot of Scorsese films, he makes good use of camera angles and general cinematography to imply moods or hint at his characters' frame of mind.  He does that in Shutter Island, as well, but he has a lot more freedom to get creative, thanks to the dream scenes.

As far as acting goes, it is all pretty much above board.  Leonardo DiCaprio is consistently good, and working so frequently with Scorsese seems to have taught him the value of subtlety and nuance.  I'm not saying that he was ever an over-actor, but there are a lot of little things he does with his character that I appreciate, from the hunched shoulders and bold stance to the frequent (but not horribly obvious) reminders of his character's tendency for migraine headaches.  DiCaprio carries this movie on his own, but there are a lot of good supporting cast members that briefly pop up.  Mark Ruffalo does a pretty good job as the junior partner and his compassion shows through consistently.  Ben Kingsley and Max von Sydow both play their parts well, but what else would you expect from two respected actors?  Ted Levine has a very brief, but frightening, cameo as the facility warden.  Jackie Earle Haley appears to be having a career renaissance playing disturbed characters, and that pleasant trend continues here with some of the more curious wound makeup I have seen in a while.  Michelle Williams was impressive in her small supporting role and was used effectively.  The rest of the cast (including Patricia Clarkson, Emily Mortimer, and John Carroll Lynch) is good too, but perhaps not as attention-grabbing.

Even with good direction and good acting, a mystery movie can still be underwhelming if the mystery is no good.  I really liked the story in Shutter Island, even though I was not particularly surprised by the ending.  Normally, if I guess the ending to a mystery correctly, it bothers me a bit.  Here, though, Scorsese drops a lot of hints that flesh out the story and the characters.  While one side effect of those choices was a less than surprising answer to the mystery, it was also satisfying because the twist made sense.  You still might not guess the ending correctly (or, at least, not entirely correctly), but you won't feel as if the end came out of left field.  Since the movie spent so much time on Daniels' subconscious mind, the mystery really takes a back seat to that as the primary plot propeller.  As such, the surprise-worthiness of the ending turned out to be a lot less important than I thought it would be.

This is the sort of film that college students love to write about.  It has excellent direction with a lot of stylistic choices and meaningful symbolism and imagery.  After the movie, you can revisit scenes in your head (or just re-watch the scenes on your DVD) and pick out important details that you missed the first time through.  This is a movie that I expect to be better the second time I watch it because being fully informed of the story will allow me to understand many of the scenes from a different angle next time.  While I completely understand anyone who enjoyed the movie less because the mystery's answer was a little predictable, I thoroughly enjoyed the story, acting and the film as a whole the first time through, and look forward to a repeat viewing.  I may be a little artsy fartsy with movies sometimes, but I appreciate good craftsmanship when I see it.