| The Aviator | | Cast : | Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale | | Director : | Martin Scorsese | | Studio : | Warner Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen, Dolby | | Released Date : | December 25, 2004 | | DVD Released Date : | May 24, 2005 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), French (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled) | | Audience Rating : | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 08, 2005 | | Summary | Flying High with Howard Hughes | Content
 | In The Aviator, Leonardo DiCaprio portrays the young Howard Hughes, one of America's first billionaires. Hughes inherited a huge fortune from his family's tool and dye company and decided to use the money to push the world forward. He was a prominent director, who pushed the limits of violence and promiscuity in film, and he was a constant innovator of aviation technologies. As the owner of TWA, he took on corrupt senators to prevent Pan-Am from having a sole monopoly on transatlantic flights. Yet, despite these accomplishments, Hughes had undiagnosed Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder that led him to fall into madness as he always feared that germs and sickness loomed around every corner.
In the movie, DiCaprio portrays Hughes perfectly since he is able to play the cocky, Hollywood playboy that Hughes was, and at the same time, he conveys to the audience that Hughes is not stable and falling deeper into insanity. One actor that really annoyed me though was Cate Blanchett's portrayal of Kate Hepburn. Her voice is whiny, her accent pierces the ears, and it makes Hepburn seem like an annoying and overzealous women.
One place where the DVD adds to the movie is the special features which include a short documentary about OCD and its effects. In this feature, they even interview some real life patients to show that the portrayal of Hughes's disease was not too farfetched. Another aspect that I enjoyed was the History Channel documentary on Hughes that adds some new historical information to the film.
All together, I think this is one of the better movies that have come out in a long time, and despite the length of the movie (170 Minutes), I found the plot intriguing enough that time seemed to fly away.
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| Rating | | | Date | August 07, 2005 | | Summary | The Way of the Future........ | Content
| Martin Scorsese has made several great movies that capture your attention till the very end and makes you relate to the characters and what their likes and dislikes are. [Such examples would have to be Goodfellas, and even Gangs of New York, both of them with Oscar worthy performances....]
Although I personally feel that this isn't Scorsese's best work, The Aviator is one of those types of films, with Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn and Leonadro DiCaprio as the eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes. This movie tends to focus more on Hughe's lifestyle and his inavoidable turn to obsessive compulsive living rather than show much of his legendary movie, Hell's Angels...
Scorsese always manages to make camera angles unique and the dialogue superb. The flying scenes of Hughes trying to test his new model airplanes manage to capture Hughes' excitment and show us why it's so exciting. His first few conversations with Hepburn are wonderfull and both DiCaprio and Blanchett bring out the best in each other.
There are many things that contribute to Hughes' downward spiral to living by himself: The stress of trying to put together a movie that needed 26 cameras for different angle shots [Which was unheard of at that time] plus new inventions of airplanes that couldn't fly or ran out of gas way too early. Even one too many broken hearted girlfriends cause Hughes to be the center of attention in the press papers.
There are scenes not for children, the biggest one being when Hughes suffers a plane crash and almost dies as he struggles to get out of a burning plane. The injuries he suffers makes me wonder how even managed to move after the plane hit the earth. There is some language but besides those things this is a movie for almost everyone else.
The biggest push that led Hughes into a stlye of living in his theater room by himself for months was germophobia. Everytime Hughes' became filthy [well at least in his mind] he would go into the bathroom and wash his hands with a bar of soap he had since his childhood. DiCaprio does a great job of showing just how desperate Hughes is when he throughly washes his hands, even refusing to hand a paper towel to a man on crutches, just so he doesn't dirty them again.
Yet Howard prevailed after all those horrible things and managed to make his greatest comeback of them all by making the biggest plane ever built to fly. A huge plane with the wingspan of a footbal field [I think it was even bigger than that] and once again managed to crawl back to the top of the wealthy mountain.
This isn't an instant classic [Again my opinion, don't judge me on that] but this is definately one of the best movies about Hollywood film making and the rise and fall of a man who had visions no one else at that time ever dreamed of having. Definately worth a look if you are a Scorsese fan.... |
| Rating | | | Date | August 06, 2005 | | Summary | I LOVE IT!!!!! | Content
| I bought this movie before I saw it, and when I saw it I was so glad that I owned it. I really think Leonardo DiCaprio did a great job as Howard Hughes. He really showed how much of a great man Howard was and how he could have done many more great things had he lived in an era where his OCD could have been treated.
Million Dollar Baby definately deservered to win best picture last year, but if it didn't win this movie would've. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 05, 2005 | | Summary | So So | Content
| This movie is OK. I thought all the actors were very good but there was just something missing. I think Hughes life was almost too interesting - meaning that the story keeps switching to different plots (movies, aviation, women, his anxieties, aviation, another woman, etc). There was just no real plot and it ends poorly. Also the story is kinda sad; Hughes' life just keeps getting worse and worse. Probably the best parts of the movie are the portrayals of historical figures. Alan Alda does a great job as the evil Senator. Kate Blanchett is a great Kate Hepburn. |
| Rating | | | Date | August 04, 2005 | | Summary | Over-rated Leo Movie | Content
| I used to like Leonardo Dicaprio. In movies like Basketball Diaries, What's Eating Gilbert Grape, and even Titanic, but he's really become very dull to me, and this film is very spotty and inconsistant. Dicaprio wasn't awful in this movie he just wasn't great by any means, and this movie is watchable but nothing more really. Dicaprio and Scorsese's last pairing Gangs of New York was a disaster so this one seems excellent by comparison. If Dicaprio and Scosese want Oscars then they really need better material than what they've had lately. I'm hoping they both have a return to form. |
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