Hugo (Martin Scorsese, 2011)

Hugo Cabret: Asa Butterfield
Georges Méliès: Ben Kingsley
Isabelle: Chloë Grace Moretz
Station Inspector: Sacha Baron Cohen
Mama Jeanne: Helen McCrory
Rene Tabard: Michael Stuhlbarg
Uncle Claude: Ray Winstone
Lisette: Emily Mortimer
Monsieur Labisse: Christopher Lee
Madame Emilie: Frances de la Tour
Monsieur Frick: Richard Griffiths
Hugo's Father: Jude Law

Director: Martin Scorsese
Screenplay: John Logan
Based on a novel by Brian Selznick
Cinematography: Robert Richardson
Production design: Dante Ferretti
Film editing: Thelma Schoonmaker
Costume design: Sandy Powell
Music: Howard Shore

Martin Scorsese's fantastical tribute to pioneer filmmaker Georges Méliès begins with a spectacular traveling shot, a combination of CGI and live action, sweeping across Paris and into the Gare Montparnasse until it finishes on a shot of young Hugo Cabret in the clock tower. Normally, I feel that too much CGI robs a movie of its grounding in reality, drawing attention to itself at the expense of characters and story. But on the other hand, who can really doubt that if computer graphics had been available to Georges Méliès, he wouldn't have done something similarly amazing with them, the way he relied on papier-mâché, cardboard, flash powder, and whatever camera tricks he could muster? One of the great delights of Hugo is its re-creations of parts of Méliès's movies, particularly from the behind-the-scenes angle. It's a charming film, perhaps a little overloaded with effects, but Scorsese has a light touch with the story and he has a cast equal to the task of standing up to the computer trickery. A few critics demurred, finding the special effects oppressive, especially in the 3-D version, but on the whole the reviews were raves. It also won Oscars not only for the effects but also for cinematography, art direction, and sound mixing and editing, and was nominated for best picture, director, screenplay, film editing, costumes, and musical score. It seems to me a much better film than the year's best picture winner, The Artist (Michel Haznavicius), coincidentally a movie set in a significant moment in film history. Yet it was a major box-office flop, which may have shadowed its chances at the awards.

Clouds of Sils Maria (Olivier Assayas, 2014)

Kristen Stewart and Juliette Binoche in Clouds of Sils Maria

Maria Enders: Juliette Binoche
Valentine: Kristen Stewart
Jo-Ann Ellis: Chloë Grace Moretz
Klaus Diesterweg: Lars Eidinger
Christopher Giles: Johnny Flynn
Rosa Melchior: Angela Winkler
Henryk Wald: Hanns Zischler

Director: Olivier Assayas
Screenplay: Olivier Assayas
Cinematography: Yorick Le Saux
Production design: François-Renaud Labarthe
Film editing: Marion Monnier

Olivier Assayas's Clouds of Sils Maria demands almost as much attention after you've finished it as it did while you were watching/reading it. The set-up is this: An actress, Maria Enders, is asked to perform in a revival of the play that made her famous when she was only 18. Now that she's in her 40s, however, she will play the older woman who has a relationship with the character she earlier played. She accepts reluctantly, and then wants to back out when she finds that the younger actress, Jo-Ann Ellis, who has been cast in her original role is a Hollywood star best known not only for working in sci-fi blockbusters but also for her off-screen affairs that draw the attention of the paparazzi and Internet gossip sites. However, Maria's personal assistant, Valentine, thinks Jo-Ann is a good actress who has been exploited by the media, and persuades Maria to take the role. Maria and Valentine retreat to the home of the play's author, who has recently died, in Sils Maria, a Swiss village, where Valentine helps Maria learn her lines. As the film progresses, the lines of the play echo not only Maria's own feelings about growing older, but also the somewhat ambiguous relationship between Maria and Valentine. Indeed, it's often not entirely clear whether actress and assistant are reciting the lines of the play or are voicing their own feelings for each other. And then the casting of the film brings out another layer of meaning: Stewart is best-known for the Twilight movies, precisely the kind of Hollywood film that Maria turns up her nose at when she first hears about Jo-Ann's career. Assayas, who also wrote the screenplay, deftly juggles all these layers of art and reality, but the film would be nothing without Stewart's superb performance, which won her the César Award in France as well as the best supporting actress awards from the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Society of Film Critics. There are those who think the film is more talk than substance and that it feels like a "high-concept" product: Persona (Ingmar Bergman, 1966) meets All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950), perhaps. But seeing Stewart interact with Binoche more than justifies it for me.