Posted: 7/14/2005 5:50:26 AM EDT
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Anyone seen this movie? IMDb Link I was very hesitant to rent it becaue Leonardo DiCaprio kind of irritates me. As much as I like the movies he's been in and the characters he's played, he's just one of those guys that bugs me. Well, after seeing this movie I might be a little more open to watching him in future movies. I thought he did a pretty good job in this movie. It's usually hard to accept him because he looks so young... toward the end of this movie they did a good job of making him look pretty weathered. I generally see hims as one of those actors who, when he plays a real person, is just the same actor with a different name. It was kind of like that in the beginning, but eventually I saw past DiCaprio and it felt more like I was watching Howards Hughes than DiCaprio playing Hughes. I didn't realize that this movie would actually go into his reclusiveness and "obsessive compulsive" behavior, but it did and then some. I'm probably not the best movie reviewer so I'll just say it was an enjoyable movie to watch and I'd say I know a little more about Howard HUghes than I did before... not that everything in the movie is dead-on accurate but I read some stuff after watching it and they seemed to hit on pinnacle events that happened in his life rather well. The scenes where he starts whigging out and repeating himself were pretty strange to watch. (I can't remember for the life of me where I saw that sort of thing in another movie... I can remember a scene where the guy starts doing that and the person he's talking to laughs at first but then I think the guy ends up going into a seizure or something). I kind of gauge a movie by how much I get "engrossed" in it and how long it stays with me afterward. This one did a pretty good job of it... I was starting to feel a little nutty after it was over... 
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I thought Decaprio was very good in the movie just as he was in Gangs of New York. The movie was just to long. It just kinda began and just kinda ended. And the middle was boring. I don't want to be railed on for not liking long movies, that is not the reason I was not a super fan of this film. |
Yeah, in that regard I guess it didn't really have much of a "plot"... it just kind of went along... which is how life plays out... I think it just showed a point in his life when he was "gaining speed" and then it showed the rollercoaster ride that came with it... the ups the downs and what would lead to the stop... or something like that... 
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I liked the first half of the movie. The second half was really poorly orchestrated. I also though DiCaprio did an excellent job in the role, as he did in "Catch Me If You Can" as well. No doubt he's a very good actor, but I also find him to be rather annoying. The XF-11 crash in "The Aviator" is as vivid an action sequence as I've ever seen in a movie. If you read up on the documented history of that crash, the movie protrayal of the events is astoundingly accurate. Remeber, one of the richest men in the world crashed a plane in a Beverly Hills (or Burbank?) residential neighborhood. There are many, many accounts of the event, and I think that Scorcese did a great job of that scene in particular. There are numerous technical goofs in the movie, but for the most part, it's technically OK by Hollywood standards. |
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I really liked it. It reaffirmed what I had previous suspected. Katherine Hepburn was a batshit crazy fucking loon. The movie really shows socialists for the pathetic pieces of shit they really are. Ava Gardner was a class fucking act. And Kate Beckinsale in the role of Ava Gardner is worth the price of the rent alone. Toss in Gwen Stefani as "Jean Harlow" and you have a really decent film about Hughes, his films, his contribution to aviation and his problems with OCD. One of the few worthwhile movies of 2004. |
| I liked it. I have read a couple of Hughes biographies, and the movie tracks the actual events pretty well, but a few are out of sequence and/or out of context. If he had held it together, Hughes would have gone down as one of America's greatest heroes. All anyone remembers anymore is his later bizarre behavior. The movie is worth watching for the great aircraft depicted, if nothing else. |
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Haven't seen it but the comments are making me want to. Anyone remember the 70's TV movie that Tommy Lee Jones did on Howard? Good piece of work. imdb.com/title/tt0075670/ |
Yeah, I loved it when Hughes draws down on Hepburn's limousine liberal family. |
Yeah I saw that. Hughes went crazy, became a billionaire in the 60's through his stake in TWA, holed up in a Vegas hotel for the rest of his life. |
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I did enjoy the movie, and I think the Decaprio did an exceptionally good job too. What I didn't like was the focus on Hughes mental problems. Yes, he was a batshit loon. Yes, to make a movie about him you need to realistically show this. What you don't have to do is focus 2/3 of the movie on a good man's mental problems to the point that when walking out the theater it seems like it was more of a character assasination of a prominent historical figure. |