Leonardo DiCaprio and Gwen Stefani in Aviator.
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Heading to the movies this weekend? Find out what's worth your time according to the top women film critics at the nation's best publications. Every Friday morning we'll give you the female perspective on what to expect when the curtain rises.
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The Aviator
Stars: Leonardo DiCaprio, Alan Alda, Alec Baldwin, Kate Beckinsale, Cate Blanchett, Gwen Stefani
Director: Martin Scorsese
Rating: PG-13
The challenge of making a biopic of a mad genius like Howard Hughes: Just how much of the madness and how much of the genius do you focus on? Is it more important to tell how he collected his own urine in jars and died a drugged-out recluse or how he was directly responsible for launching the jet age of the airline industry? And that leads to the problem many reviewers have with Scorsese's Golden Globe-nominated film. While there's a consensus that the movie is entertaining and contains terrific performances, Salon's Stephanie Zacharek thinks it goes too lightly on Hughes's well-documented eccentricities: "While Scorsese gives us an inkling of Hughes's future madness, he turns his gaze away, politely, well before it takes a firm hold." Ditto L.A. Weekly's Ella Taylor: "All his life Hughes seems to have felt like a loser in winner's clothing. In leaving him a winner, Scorsese may be acting like a true American, but he's not necessarily acting as a true artist." And the New York Times' Manohla Dargis sums up The Aviator as a "visually sumptuous if disappointingly hollow account" of Hughes's early life.
As for the work of Hughes's portrayer, Globe-nominated DiCaprio, who's been largely absent from the big screen lately, the New York Daily News's Jami Bernard says he gives a "dashing, meticulously focused performance." And though DiCaprio, all agree, is much more attractive than the real Hughes, the Times' Dargis admits that Leo "captures Hughes's oddball charm and confidence."
Female consensus: Good movie, though lensed behind rose-colored glasses
photo credit © Miramax