Hugo

Directed by Martin Scorsese

(PG)

***

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In his first foray into family films, Martin Scorsese has created “a wondrous blend of fantasy and mystery,” said Claudia Puig in USA Today. Using 3-D imagery, the director also puts to “best use” a technology that’s “too often employed but rarely used well.” The story is set in 1930s Paris, where a young orphan named Hugo (Asa Butterfield) lives in a train station while trying to solve a mystery involving his late father. Scorsese throws in too many pursuit scenes between Hugo and a station inspector (Sacha Baron Cohen) who’s intent on sending the boy to an orphanage, said Todd McCarthy in The Hollywood Reporter. These interludes might engage younger audiences, but they also feel as if they’ve been “padded to give more screen time to Cohen.” Scorsese wisely “shoots from the children’s view as often as possible,” though, causing the 3-D to play as “an enlargement of everyday life,” said David Denby in The New Yorker. Grown-ups “are as threatening as the Roman legions,” and small spaces appear enormous, adding to a sense of childhood wonderment that lifts the entire film.