What Are 3 Movies I Recently Watched?

Hugo (2011): adapted by John Logan from the novel by Brian Selznick; directed by Martin Scorsese; starring Ben Kingsley (George Melies), Sacha Baron Cohen (Station Inspector), Asa Butterfield (Hugo Cabret), Chloe Grace Moretz (Isabelle), Helen McCrory (Mama Jeanne), Christopher Lee (M. Labisse), Emily Mortimer (Lisette), Michael Stuhlbarg (Rene Tabard), and Jude Law (Mr. Cabret): Hugo pretty much swept the 2011 artistic and technical Academy Awards for sound, art direction, visual effects, and cinematography. It was Martin Scorsese's first foray into 3-D film-making AND Young-Adult-friendly narrative.

On the small, non-3-D screen, Hugo still boasts some impressive set and production design as it depicts a somewhat fanciful Paris c. 1932. Unbeknownst to the authorities as embodied in Station Inspector Sacha Baron Cohen, the orphaned Hugo Cabret keeps the clocks running in the film's central location, the main Paris train station. 

Hugo also works to repair an automaton rescued from museum storage by his late father. And unbeknownst to Hugo, the cranky toy-stall owner at the station is seminal French film director Georges Melies. Is that a spoiler?

Hugo is slow in its initial hour or so, and the supporting characters never seem to be drawn sharply or funnily enough. However, the movie looks great, and Asa Butterfield and Chloe Grace Moretz make a charming pair of investigators. More time devoted to recreations of Melies' fanciful films would have been nice -- there's a little too much lead-foot in the movie's shoes when it comes to film's ability to transport a viewer to new, strange places. Scorsese may simply be too rooted in the quotidian, no matter the goodness of his intentions, and John Logan (Gladiator, Star Trek: Nemesis) is something of a literal-minded plodder when it comes to the fantastic. Nonetheless, recommended.

The Boy (2016): written by Stacey Menear; directed by William Brent Bell; starring Lauren Cohan (Greta), Rupert Evans (Malcolm), and Ben Robson (Cole): Who names their son Brahms? Oh, well. Lauren Cohan plays an American hired as a nanny/au pair by an elderly English couple. She's there to take care of their eight-year-old son while they go on vacation. The son is a life-sized doll. OK!

The Walking Dead's Cohan carries much of the film's best moments, as improbable as they often seem. And the movie plays fair until the epilogue, which one could argue is as much an imagined nightmare as the 'hand shots' that appear near the ends of Carrie and Deliverance. Rupert Evans brings a muted affability to the thankless role of New English Love Interest. The doll is pretty creepy. 

The director whiffs several times on disguising the fact that the movie was shot in and around Victoria, British Columbia rather than England. Either that or The Boy takes place in an alternate universe in which England has redwood trees. Lightly recommended.

Spider-man (2002): created by Steve Ditko and Stan Lee; written by David Koepp; directed by Sam Raimi; starring Tobey Maguire (Peter Parker/ Spider-man), Willem Dafoe (Norman Osborn/ Green Goblin), Kirsten Dunst (Mary Jane Watson), James Franco (Harry Osborn), Cliff Robertson (Uncle Ben), Rosemary Harris (Aunt May), and J.K. Simmons (J. Jonah Jameson): Still a mostly jolly, romantic romp, this Spider-man. Maybe a bit too romantic, but the doomed love affair of Mary Jane and Spider-man was a key factor in drawing in a better-than-average-female-audience (for superhero and/or action movies, that is). 

Raimi and company dumb Spider-man down, eliminating the comic-book wish-fulfillment genius that allowed him to create mechanical web-shooters and many other awesome Spidey gadgets, which is a shame -- organic web-shooters are gross, and suggest that Peter Parker must spend a lot of time eating high-protein foods after a particularly heavy bout of web-slinging. 

Still, the cast -- even James Franco as Parker pal Harry Osborn -- is a delight. Would that they had come up with a better rendition of the Green Goblin's comic-book costume, though, if only so that many scenes didn't look like Spider-man vs. the Green Mattel Chocobot. Recommended.