Billy Elliot (2000)****

Seen on 31-05-2013 in Acton

-Made by an independent English director, Stephen Daldry, this film won Oscar nomination for best director for 2001.  It also won Oscar nomination for best original screenplay (Lee Hall)
--this about a boy getting admission into Royal Academy for Ballet against many odds.
--it's good 

Outside The Law***

--this is about Algerian independence struggle, focusing on one family uprooted from their ancestral land.  The film covers the period from early twenties to middle sixties, until declaration of freedom by the French colonial power for Algeria (during the time og Gen. De Gaulle??)
--well made, although a bit dragging at times.

Hugo***

Seen on 23-05-13 in Tony's home
--searched for 2012 films which received Oscar nominations and zeroed in on this because This  is readily available on Netflix.
     It is about a boy unexpectedly finding the lost key of a robot his father left behind and this discovery in turn leading to the  man who made this robot.  The man turns out to be a pioneer maker of films (Georges Milies** who preceded ? the Lumiere brothers), now living in obscurity trying to forget his glorious past in which he wove dreams through a large number of films he made.
      But the film narrative is made interesting by unfolding events of early cinema through the life of boy who lost his father.  Martin Scorsese's imaginative treatment of the theme is what made this film unique.

**Martin  Scorsese refer to him in        http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/aug/15/persisting-vision-reading-language-cinema/