I just saw this today and thought it was very good as well. I agree with your Irishman that Leo has improved tremendously over his last three films and believe people will start to take him as a serious actor and not just the young kid in Titanic.

****SPOILER****
Vercetti, you did get a feel of the older Howard Hughes when they show him right before the hearings near the end of the movie. He is essentially sitting in a room alone by himself naked watching movies just like you described before. I know it didn't show him at an old age, but you get the main idea that that was how he turned out.
****End of SPOILER****

I won't say it was the best film of the year because I thought Hotel Rwanda was better. I think it will and should be nominated tho and Leo should be nominated, as well as Alda and Blanchett in supporting roles.

Yeah, but from what I've read, that NEVER happened. He didn't become a hermit until TEN years after that scene. I hate when true stories like that are altered. It should've shown those later years and a possible ending on the airplane where he died, or at least show us those years.

Yeah, I agree, that would have been a great ending. It would have also showed more of the life of Howard Hughes as well, which would have made it better. That was one of the problems with Ali, was that it stopped after he beat Foreman, even tho I was really hoping to see how his career ended and how he reacted when he found out he had Parkinson's disease. Anyways, back to The Aviator, my guess is Scorcese just had him acting like that during that period in his life to show how he ended up when he did get older. It does make it confusing tho because now it becomes unclear to the viewer when he really started to lose it. Either way, it is still a great movie worth seeing.

Don Vercetti: To quote the legendary scripter David Mamet on "historical movies":

"Just because its true doesn't necessarily make the movie better."

Fact is, we moviefans should try to seperate the artistic/quality merits of a film on its own and the inaccuracies or whatever.

As for CGI...from the many posts on this thread, I see most people's impression on CGI as nearly right but just short of a cigar. For a platable metaphor, imagine you are stuck in a room in your room. You try to turn the doorknob but the door won't open. You get pissy and curse at that blasted doorknob for locking you in, yet you never bother to question if it was something else with the door that is wrong itself besides the doorknob, like the floor or rusted door hinges or the fact that someone locked you in.

For the 99% of you that don't understand where we are going, lets consider this.

CGI is as fake as prosthetics or rubber latex monsters/aliens(like Jabba the Hutt) or models or motion control or stop-motion animation or whatever the f*cking special effects that has been used for the last few decades for the movies. However, where these SFX go wrong is not the special effects themselves but how they place "visually" in a movie and if it fits.

Really, CGI is a tool that can be wielded wisely(LOTR, James Cameron movies, etc.) or be used for lousy results(you get the idea).

As for some of you b*tching about the CGI in AVIATOR.......what would you suggest that ole Marty do instead? His movie was already way over $100 million in expenses as it was...I mean I guess it could have been accomplished with model-work or something but still, Scorsese hasn't gone overboard like say Bay or whatever. In fact, remember the ending of GANGS OF NEW YORK? Scorsese used CGI.......he just didn't cake walk everything in the movie with it like Lucas has done lately. Of course we keep forgetting that GONY upwards of $175 million(more or less) while AVIATOR didn't cost as much but that is another matter...

As for the CGI in STAR WARS........it never bothered me(really, the dark side of the force with EPISODE I & II was the script and other things I don't have time & space to talk about, people).

Instead what bothered me was the infamous "Gredo Shoots First" crap. In terms of the script, it doesn't work as well as the original theatrical version(where instead of Harrison Ford blasting the green alien bounty hunter through the table after saying "Yes I bet you have!", it becomes that Mr. Indiana Jones does it in "self-defense" after Gredo blasts first). I mean imagined Coppola went back to THE GODFATHER and changed the famed diner sequence from Al Pacino quickly taking his smuggled gun out and blasting the cop and mobster to being that the corrupt cop fired first THEN getting capped. Stupid, huh? Besides, it goes against the nature of criminals that Ford and that man-in-green-suit character was, you know?

Now what really f*cked it up royally was that done with CGI, it looks stupid. Even the "improved" version on the newly-released DVD doesn't fix this(with Ford "dodging" the blaster fire) doesn't improve it much.

Medically speaking, what was wrong with him? I know he was kind of a "germ-a-phob" but something mentally was wrong with him as well.

He had OCD, which didn't "exist "at the time and all the years of being unable to be medicated, plus his germ phobia, eventually took a toll on his mind. For anyone who wants the best understanding of his life, I suggest this, which Barnes and Nobel can order for you. There were broken needles in his arms from all the codeine injections he gave himself.

ronnierocketAGO, I have no problem with changes, even Goodfellas changes many minor things, but I just don't like major changes to a true story, such as the complete time change of his reclusion. Maybe it's more of the fact I am heavily interested in this story so much that I want as much accuracy as possible.

I saw it yesterday. My thoughts, as originally posted on the MFA .

The Aviator
2004, Martin Scorsese, US

There’s something electric about watching a Scorsese film for the first time, especially on the big screen. But when it comes down to it, this was always going to be worth seeing because of the director credit only, and although it lives up to its expectations with surprisingly high satisfaction, it was never going to propel itself to the heights of the director’s previous oeuvre.

For Scorsese’s work, it seems, is getting bigger not better. With Gangs of New York (2002), his high ambitions almost ruined the project; a visually inspired piece which was helped by a roistering and overpowering performance from Daniel Day-Lewis, but the director tried to cover too many aspects at once: romance, history, war, and never quite succeeded as he did in combining elements in Mean Streets (1973).

With The Aviator Scorsese has set his ambitions further, and it indeed shows in the final product. His style has scarcely changed since Who’s That Knocking At My Door (1968), if at all; but while his first feature was experimental and fresh, so The Aviator is not so experimental anymore—albeit still fresh, and still some way ahead of the field. With high ambitions for a biopic about a man who was equally set in his ways and almost destroyed by them, here Scorsese tells the tale of Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio), film producer, director, and ultimately a hygiene freak who happened to, as the promotional posters claim, “Build the future” (while others only dreamt it). The film focuses on his production of flying extravaganza Hell’s Angels (1933), and his playboy ways with the women—Jean Harlow, Katherine Hepburn and Ava Gardner no less. Not to mention his company war with Pan American Airlines, and his increasingly paranoid obsession with cleanliness and self-quarantined sanitation.

It’s too much for three hours, and three hours is too much for the material which is skimmed over. This should have either focused on one part of Hughes’ life and be kept at a digestible running time, or be blown totally beyond proportion (and Scorsese’s bank account) to give efficient respect and time to the areas it tries so hard to cover. Instead, we’re stuck somewhere inbetween, like we were in Gangs of New York, with the director trying to cram too much of John Logan’s script in at once. He did it so well with La Motta in Raging Bull (1980), and Henry Hill in GoodFellas, and even Sam Rothstein in Casino (1995), but doesn’t quite pull it off here with the same consistency. Perhaps Hughes was simply too fascinating for a three hour film, but with the other three examples, the characters’ lifestyles (the Mafia, not Hollywood) enabled for a fast-flowing, hyper-kinetic, kaleidoscopic onslaught of verbose narration and visual indulgence; he struggles to acquire the same effect for Hughes.

Nonetheless, this maintains a certain fascination from start to finish, mainly thanks to Robert Richardson’s striking cinematography and successful visual recreation of the time at hand (the film gradually moves from early two tone Technicolor to the grandiose aesthetics of the forties with subtle awareness); and of course this is surely DiCaprio’s coming-of-age as an actor. Sourly underrated (and overshadowed?) in Gangs of New York, here the man who was once the dream pinup for adolescent female drooling carries the film admiringly, capturing a real sense of the growing paranoia and stubbornly determined obsessions—not to mention genuine if flawed genius—of Hughes himself. Cate Blanchett meanwhile is a revelation as Hughes’ equally eccentric counterpart Hepburn, from the accent to the mannerisms to the way her acting style finely compliments that of DiCaprio.

But let’s face it. If any other director had made this, it wouldn’t have generated half the buzz as it has and probably will do in the coming awards-laden months. It seems ironic that Scorsese’s first direct look at the movies is one of his lesser works, and if the rumours of his Infernal Affairs remake are true, surely he’s running out of creative steam? This is a fascinating film which grasps the attention for as long as it lasts, but only because, with every scene, the viewer is subconsciously reminding themselves of the director’s credit. As it is, one can only hope this master filmmaker returns to his roots soon with smaller features, a la The King of Comedy (1983) or After Hours (1985).

Mick