This Thanksgiving season I am thankful for the movie theater that kept me entertained Thanksgiving morning. My family is spending the holiday in the mountains and I stayed behind, but I’m not mad about it. I’m not big on holidays and family get togethers anyway. I like the quiet time and the solitude. I went to a 10:30am showing of Hugo in 3D, Martin Scorsese’s new film. Quite different for him. Crime dramas and thrillers are his cup of tea, and he’s good at it. He has a particular style and it works for him and his audience loves it. No doubt it my mind, I knew it would be good, but I wasn’t sure what to expect for him. With a spectacular cast (Chloe Grace Moretz being my obvious favorite) and new 3D technology, when it’s done right, you can’t go wrong. With his first dip into the waters of family film, Hugo is an absolute dream. Talented cast, great writing, and beautifully shot, I can’t think of one thing about this film I would call wrong. Simply put, it’s amazing and a must see for all ages. Martin adds a piece of himself into this film, and it’s not what people would expect. Martin Scorsese loves film, but it breaks his heart that the humble (and often accidental) beginnings of the film industry are unknown by the general public. I studied film in college, and it’s not just the pieces themselves that are so important, it’s the audience reaction to seeing motion picture for the first time that is so worth knowing. I’ve seen “A Train Arriving at the Station” and I’ve heard the story of the premiere where people panicked and ran out of the theater because they thought the train was coming right at them. No one knows that story unless they know their history, and Martin Scorsese wants to remind the world how far we’ve come in this industry in such a short time. Not only that, but he also wants to understand the mindset. With that thought, he “recreated” that early film for this modern audience so we could taste that panic.

I’m a dork, so of course it brought tears to my eyes to see “The Kiss”, “The Great Train Robbery”, Buster Keaton, and Charlie Chaplin. To see “the cutting room” and to watch people learn about “tinting”. To see him use the match cut, which no one uses anymore, to open the film. Martin Scorsese’s Hugois gold and should be treasured as such. He combines two eras of film making just to remind us that film had a beginning and the illusion is endless.