OSCAR SPOTLIGHT

THE AVIATOR
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett
Directed By: Martin Scorcese

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Rating: 4.5 (out of 5)

I feel a certain kinship with Howard Hughes. The late billionaire and I actually share a lot of qualities with each other…you know, other than the fabulous wealth and nailing hot movie stars parts. Check it out:

HOWARD HUGHES: Obsessively made movies despite the fact that they cost him a lot of his own money
NAKED CRITIC: Obsessively reviews movies despite the fact that he's not making any money doing it

HOWARD HUGHES: Terrified of germs, suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder
NAKED CRITIC: Although not terrified of germs, I suffer from an obsessive compulsion to avoid even the most rudimentary efforts to clean my apartment

HOWARD HUGHES: Spent years in isolation, barricaded in rooms, for fear of contamination
NAKED CRITIC: Hey, it's February, and it's cold, and I'm not leaving my apartment unless I absolutely have to

That's the trouble with these damn things...you can never find a place to park.

The Aviator doesn't chronicle Hughes' entire life, just the somewhat glitzy bits, when he was one of the most admired men in America. That's because if you want people to really look up to you, nailing Katharine Hepburn is the way to make it happen. (Note: Do not try this now. It probably wouldn't work as well, although your picture would probably still make all the newspapers.)

The movie opens with a rather short and pointless scene of Hughes being bathed as a young boy. I suppose this is supposed to give us a hint of where his germ-phobia comes from. I don't think it was necessary though. I had plenty of strange things happen to me as a kid, and I don't blame them for the countless neuroses I have now. Well, except for that thing that happened which made me deathly afraid of Brussels sprouts…long, terrifying story.

"Ahhh...smooth as my permanently stubble-free cheeks."

At any rate, we soon jump forward to the late 20s, where Hughes (now played by DiCaprio) is directing a movie. He's already a millionaire, but like a delicate sapling, he wants to branch out to become a mighty oak. Either that or he was bored and he wanted a good way to meet hot actresses. Hughes wants the movie - Hell's Angels - to be the greatest movie about war in the skies ever made. Or, as Donald Trump would say, "This movie is gonna be YOOGE…and it's gonna turn the movie in-DUSS-tree on it's EAR!"

An aside: Thank God Trump doesn't make movies…yet. Oh crap, I think I may have just given him an idea.

But Hughes is a bit of a perfectionist…and EVERYTHING has to be just right. He delays production for months waiting for just the right cloud formations to appear in the sky. He scraps everything they've shot at one point in order to shoot it again as a "talkie" instead of a silent film. (Well, it's his funeral…talkies are a fad…they'll never last. NEVER! Just like Radio and these blasted horse-less carriages, by gum!). Pilots are KILLED doing the insane stunts he asks of them. But he's a stubborn, stubborn man, and he gets his way…probably because he's a crazy Texan millionaire. Those guys ALWAYS get their way, no matter how many people tell them that they're batshit insane. (See: Iraq, Invasion of)

"You know what I've got a hankering for? Dodo egg omelettes. Make it happen, chief."

But, as mentioned earlier, he's got more interests than just making those moving picture shows. He also loves his planes…he designs the suckers, has them built, and even test-flies them himself. This is the kind of dedication (or insane obsession - you be the judge) that will eventually lead to TWA, Hughes Aircraft, and about a billion other companies. I'm pretty sure he owned a chocolate factory staffed entirely by Oompa-Loompas at one point, but I can't find any data to back that up.

And then…there are the ladies. I guess the hot movie stars will ignore the obsessive insanity if you're rich and good-looking. That explains why Elisha Cuthbert and Keira Knightley never returned my calls. Among his celebrity conquests were Hepburn (Blanchett), Jean Harlow (Gwen "Oh crap, not that talentless bimbo again" Stefani), and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale). You know, for a guy who was so super-scared of germs, he sure liked dipping his pen in a lot of different inkwells.

It's a long par 4 up Kate Hepburn's legs...

Ah yes…his insanity. The movie does a great job of showing the progression of his mental illnesses. One scene in particular takes place in a restaurant where Hughes orders "the usual." This means a steak and exactly 12 peas, lined up in a precise order. When Errol Flynn (a cameo by Jude Law, who has now been in EVERY SINGLE MOVIE made in 2004) snags a couple of peas off the plate with his grimy paws, Hughes can only look on in horror before refusing to eat.

Of course, you can't be a well-known industrialist, multimillionaire, and playboy without making your share of enemies. Among the people who take aim at Hughes are rival airline owner Juan Trippe (Alec Baldwin) and corrupt Senator Ralph Owen Brewster (Alan Alda). I think they were both just jealous because they couldn't nail Ava Gardner, but that's just my opinion.

"Mr Hughes...this committee has it on good authority that the 'enourmous' fish that you claimed 'got away' was only THIS big!"

Pretty much everything works for me in "The Aviator". I'm tempted to say that this is one of Scorcese's best films, but who would I be kidding? EVERY movie he makes is one of his best. He does some visually gorgeous things here…with the colour of the film we're watching gradually improving over the "years". Some of the flight scenes…especially the one with Hughes shooting a climactic Hell's Angels battle scene…are so gorgeous to look at that you wish you were up there with him. Meanwhile, when he crashes an experimental plane into Beverly Hills, you may vow never to get into a plane again.

Meanwhile, it's almost easy to understand where some of Hughes' - oh, let's just call them "quirks" - come from. There are moments when he's walking on the red carpet and flashbulbs are going off all around them. Scorcese brings you almost right into Hughes' head, making the scene a dizzying, strobe-light-like nightmare. I'm surprised I didn't have a seizure watching it. With all the lights, and the crunching of spent flashbulbs underfoot, it almost makes me glad I wasn't a celebrity in the 30's and 40's. Although banging Ava Gardner would have made up for it.

The performances are almost all top notch. DiCaprio has always gotten a bum rap, as far as I'm concerned. I consider his performance in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? to be one of the best I've ever seen. Sure, he's young, good-looking, and baby-faced…so what? Heartthrob status aside, he's a phenomenal actor. The only people who will tell you different either don't know Jack Shit about acting, or once had a girlfriend in high school that had Leo's picture all over her room. He'd be busy, trying to make his "big move", and she'd be wistfully staring at her Titanic poster the whole time.

"Fucking critics...fucking tabloids...I'll make them all pay..."

He's fantastic here. He plays Hughes brilliantly. He's good looking and charming enough to make us understand why he was such fertile tabloid-fodder. But he also plays the scenes dealing with Hughes' "quirks" to perfection. I think I can say without hyperbole that this is the single greatest performance by a Growing Pains cast member since Kirk Cameron set the world on fire in Like Father, Like Son.

He's got a pretty solid cast around him too. The always-reliable John C. Reilly is great as his right-hand man, who has to constantly prevent him from going broke. Alda plays the corrupt with a subtle, easy, smarmy evil that I quite frankly didn't know he had in him. (Hawkeye…how COULD you?) There are a lot of entertaining cameos as well, from Law's Errol Flynn to Willem Dafoe as a creepy rag-sheet reporter. I was dreading the big-screen debut of Stefani (whom I despise more than Kim Jong Il) but she's got exactly one scene and one line. It's still one too many, but you can't have everything.

In this scene, Errol Flynn describes the two things he's looking for in a woman.

I will say one thing though…I was VERY underwhelmed with Cate Blanchett as Hepburn. On one hand, her every word, movement, and vocal inflection is classic Hepburn. But Martin Short used to do that too, and nobody was handing HIM Oscars. It's not so much a performance as it is an IMPRESSION for me. For all the good it did, they might as well have just cast Fred Travalina.

"How DARE you insult my performance! Why, I've got a good mind to call up Spencer Tracey and have him kick you right in the berries!"

The ending might leave a few people cold. This picture doesn't really end as much as it just stops. Of course, we all know what happened…what with the craziness and the fingernails and the Kleenex boxes on the feet. (I was tempted to end that sentence with "…and the INSANE in the GLAYVIN", but Morn says I should stop ripping off The Simpsons.) Back to the ending…I understand that they had to wrap things up…I mean, the thing is 3 hours long…but it really caught me by surprise. It just stopped.

Other than Blanchett, I think every single one of the Oscar nominations were spot on. Hopefully, Scorcese finally gets some Academy love…he deserves it.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to make like Hughes and grow my fingernails. After all, I'm already pretty much a hermit. Hey…do Kleenex boxes come in size 10?

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