Hugo (2011)

Most people think so. 73% of audiences gave it a thumbs up based on 7,586 votes. Critics gave it 88%.

Orphaned and alone except for an uncle, Hugo Cabret lives in the walls of a train station in 1930s Paris. Hugo's job is to oil and maintain the station's clocks, but to him, his more important task is to protect a broken automaton and notebook left to him by his late father. Accompanied by the goddaughter of an embittered toy merchant, Hugo embarks on a quest to solve the mystery of the automaton and find a place he can call home. Wikipedia ↗

Hugo is a 2011 American adventure drama directed by Martin Scorsese, based on Brian Selznick's 2007 novel The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Asa Butterfield stars as Hugo, a 12-year-old orphan living secretly within the walls of a Paris train station in the 1930s, maintaining the station's clocks while trying to repair a broken automaton left by his late father. Hugo's quest brings him into contact with Georges Méliès, played by Ben Kingsley, a bitter old toy shop owner who is actually the pioneering filmmaker, forgotten and destitute.

Martin Scorsese's most personal passion project was a love letter to early cinema and the magic of filmmaking itself, incorporating real footage from Méliès's revolutionary films and lovingly recreating the wonder of cinema's birth. Hugo was Scorsese's first 3D film, and the technology was used not for spectacle but to create an immersive sense of depth within the clockwork mechanisms and train station architecture. Hugo won five Academy Awards from eleven nominations, all in technical categories.

The film earned $185 million worldwide on a $150 million budget.